Tuesday, February 28, 2006

A is for asshole, which is what I am, how rude of me. I owe you an apology I'm sorry.

I got some sleep last night. I slept horribly most of the weekend, and my back was hurting so bad Sunday that I couldn’t get comfortable at all, so I worked yesterday, in a daze, on about 3 ½ hours of sleep. I think I pulled something in my back a few weeks ago when I was moving/emptying boxes, as it has hurt since that time.

I did a little shopping with my mother last night, went home, ran for 30 minutes (not my best running/jogging, but did it for 30 minutes, over 2 miles total) and then passed out from exhaustion. But not before I got to hear Bill Maher opine that a 62 y/o woman giving birth isn’t a miracle, it’s “a vagina with no off switch.” That made me giggle myself into sleep.

I talked to my mom about the Toby situation (while leaving out the FB nature of our relationship, but she ain’t stupid, so I am sure she has that all figured out – I did live with the ‘rents for the 3 years prior to buying my house last May) and she thinks that I shouldn’t feel bad, as if he fails on his won merits, he fails. I asked about the charity angle, help those who can’t help themselves, and she pointed out, quite rightly, that I have helped him time and time and time again, and he doesn’t want to help himself. She doesn’t think he is as stupid as I portray him, but that his selfishness makes him not care about anything outside of his own realm. If it doesn’t help Toby, he doesn’t want anything to do with it.

She remembered the first time that she met Toby. It was him, her, my grandmother & me at a restaurant. The waitress got something wrong on the order, and Toby said “That is why I hate women – they can’t get anything right.” I swear, that was the first meeting.

And yeah, now that I’ve put that down, I can’t figure why I kept him around for many more years, even if it was on a more informal basis. Oh yeah, the unmentionables. I won’t go into that here.

Monday, February 27, 2006

"He's not a lover, he's not a one night stand. He's someone in between, to lend the occasional hand" - Fuck Buddy, Pansy Division

I’m not doing so well today. I don’t try act like I am the most moral person in the world, but I have to admit that maybe something I’ve been doing hasn’t made me feel so good. Problem is, when does a fuck buddy become more than that?

I used to date a guy about 7 years ago, I’ll call him what my grandparents referred to him, Toby; not his real name, and my grandmother knew it pissed him off. My grandfather just thought that was his name. Let me explain that Toby isn’t your usual person of average intelligence. He actually isn’t the smartest guy, and that is being nice. He doesn’t have good social skills – he might not have social skills as we know it. He is not a bad person, but he is extremely selfish. But, after knowing him for so long, he truly doesn’t think he is being selfish; he just thinks of himself.

We used to live together, and I will explain this time of my life as a very black period. I supported Toby from May 1998 through February 1999. During that time, he didn’t have a job until October, and then never paid rent, never paid utilities, never paid for food. After the first few months of living with me, he stopped cleaning the apartment regularly, complaining that he wasn’t my slave. After he got his job (at Best Buy) he stopped cleaning the apartment at all.

I was suspicious at the time and later did find out that he cheated on me at a New Year’s Eve party. I also found out later that he spent from May through October not looking for a job as he had told me but going through all my boxes of stuff I had stored in the attic of the apartment.

When I finally realized it was over and asked him to move out, he already had struck a deal with his parents to move back home. He was gone within 4 days of me asking him. Now that should have been the end of the story. And it should have been, but, obviously, it isn’t.

A few months later, he called up, basically for sex. This went well as we were always compatible that way, and it continued, mostly once or twice a month. It was easy, it was convenient, and we certainly continued to be attracted to each other. This has gone on, off and on, for years. I’ve dated a few different guys, and after it ended, we’d get in touch. I will say that most of the time, it was him who called me. Though he has always said that he is looking for boyfriends, he never seems to get one full time.

Now I have witnesses that I was up front with him, honest that he wasn’t someone I wanted to date or even be seen in public together. I have told him many, many times that I won’t live with him.

He has continued to have problems keeping jobs. He gets low skill jobs, and then hates them after some time and gets fired. Or, as happened once, he was working for a customer service company that gets outsourced contracts to provide customer service (like the “If you are not completely satisfied with this product, call 1-800…” labels on products). When the contract for the product he was working ended, he could have transferred to another product, which happened to be a cigarette company, and he refused because he hates cigarettes (though he chews snuff from time to time) so he was laid off. He accepted 8 weeks of unemployment instead of continued employment because he thought he could get a better job. That was 4 years ago.

Well, he has been doing security work for the past year or so. Just to give you an example of his social skills deficit, after working part time for about 8 months, he asked why they never scheduled him for more than 30 hours, and they said it was because they were under the impression that it would interfere with his disability payments – for a mental disability. It turns out that one of his co-workers told them that he was on SSDI for mental health problems. The sad part is that his employer believed that he was on disability.

Well, as can be expected from his history, in the past few months, he has been unhappy with work, and he got himself fired two weeks ago. That started a chain of events that has led him to being homeless, or mostly homeless. He has to live in an undesirable place right now. I don’t know, and mostly don’t want to know, what that situation is. He asked me if he could stay with me, and I just don’t think that is a good idea. I do know that he lost the use of his car (it is in his parents name and they seemed to have taken control of it and won’t give it back until he has a job – but how is he to get a job if he doesn’t have use of his car? It is horrible, circular logic.)

What if something happens to him? Should I not help him now? But I fear that if I let him stay with me, even if I say it is temporary, he will take that as a sign that he can move all his stuff in and stay indefinitely. And I don’t want that. I like what I have at home.

So for now I told him no, but I don’t feel particularly good about this decision. I feel like it was okay to use in one way, but now that he might need a helping hand, I am turning him away.

I had one friend tell me I should’ve stopped having our rendezvous’ a long time ago – like no shit! But it is more complicated than that now. Since I didn’t stop this like, oh, 6 or 7 years ago, do I owe him anything? Even if it is temporary?

Yeah, I know it is whining and stupid, but that is how I am today. I’ve got myself in a quagmire of my own making. I don’t know how to get out of it. Or how to stop feeling like a heal.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find, you get what you need

I ran for 30 minutes again yesterday. I am going a little faster, 5.3 mph, though still a longer warm up and cool down period, still doing 22 minutes running at 5.3 mph, 4 minutes warm up, 4 minutes cool down. It was a bit harder than Monday, but I didn’t have to stop halfway through due to cramps, so that is positive.

Food doing quite well, chicken & veggies in Caribbean jerk sauce for lunch, chicken & veggies in mango curry sauce. Yummy. But, for what has to be the first day in a long time, NO CHEESE! None. Not on my eggs (with bacon) for breakfast, and none in any of the chicken meals. I don’t feel any different, but I have to be different. I wonder if I can limit cheese if I have it in the house.

I did get the insurance check from my father’s life insurance. I will stock up on food again this weekend. I am going to buy cheese as well, but I will try to be good. No more eating a pound at one sitting just cause it is there. I can be strong, I can be good.

I have been thinking on getting myself something nice, a little present, with the money. I have already paid big chunks on the credit card, paid off some small single shop credit cards (tires on the Goodyear card, oil changes on the Firestone card, some Fiestaware I’d charged on the Kauffman’s charge) and so I was thinking I need to buy myself something nice. But then…I realized that when I bought my child…errr…my iPod in January, it was because I was getting the money from the life insurance. That is when I treated myself. And then, last week when I actually got the check, I ran out and charged a little speaker/docking station for the iPod on the credit card…as a treat to myself. So I treated myself again. And now I’m thinking of treated myself a third time? I think not.

I want to be a little smarter on how I use this money. I am going to pay off m trip to Rome for this summer, so that is a few G’s already. I am paying off bills, so there is a few more G’s gone. I am breaking off cheddar left & right for bills (and, oddly enough, this isn’t about cheese, as I’d been led to believe in the past.)

There is one thing I am thinking of doing with some this less than heard earned cash I’ve received (I don’t think that years of mental anguish over being abandoned by and then ignored by a biological father then to be named as a beneficiary on his life insurance is actually hard earned. My sister might disagree, but it is like found money to me.) In my last year at college, my roommate moved out on me during the first semester. There are some questions as to why he did that, and to this day he sticks to one story, but I’ve heard other stories that it was another story. But either way, he moved out.

At Thiel College, it was customary that if a roommate moved out, a student has to go to the Dean of Students and ask for a new roommate to be given, and you wouldn’t be charged for a private room if one wasn’t assigned. I did this. No roommate was ever assigned me, so I ended up having the dorm room for ½ the first semester senior year and the entire final semester senior year.

At the end of the school year, they came to me and said that I owed them $574.00 for a private room for a semester. I pleaded my case to them, and the accounting department laughed and laughed and laughed at me.

I was staying for the summer to finish work on the year book, as I was the editor. Well, I had also ran the video lab for a professor for my final 2 ½ years of college. Some Lutheran group had made some documentary on life at Thiel College (it was a Lutheran college) and the president asked me to make like 500 copies of this documentary. When you are a small school that can’t afford multiple copy machines, you have to do them one at a time. He offered to pay me minimum wage to do this task. I originally told him that I would do it for free if they would get rid of the $574.00 bill for a private room. He agreed, I agreed, I did the work. At the end of the work, he told me I’d get my diploma. At the end of each week I’d get my pay.

Sometime in 1995, I received a bill from a collection agency for $574.00. It took me some time to figure out what the bill was. When I did, I wrote a letter to the collection agency and copied in Thiel accounting dept. Thiel appealed, and I decided to drive to the college and spoke directly with the president (though it was informal, not a formal appointment - it is that small of a college) and he remembered and agreed and said he’d take care of it.

Flip to 1999. Again, I get a bill for $574.00. This time I am ready. I rewrite my letter appealing it. I hear back that Thiel disagrees and demands payment. I call, and find out that the President that I had made the agreement with had retired. No one wants to back me up anymore.

As it stands now, it isn’t on my credit report. No collection agency is pursuing me for this money. However, until I actually pay it, I will never technically have my diploma. They aren’t allowed to deny that I graduated. They can’t deny sending out transcripts to another college for graduate school (as evidenced by the fact that I have started two separate graduate programs since leaving Thiel, not finishing either one.) but I don’t have my diploma.

So, after much thought, I am going to drive to Greenville, PA, slap down my $574.00 in case, get a receipt, and demand my fucking diploma! That is how I am going to treat myself.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Where we really want to go and we’ll walk in the sun; but till then tramps like us baby we were born to run

Squeak. High pitched squeaking. That is what I am getting when I run on the treadmill. And I am confused, as was fine of Friday when Jack finished fixing it. I ran on it then and it made no horrible, ear piercing, constant bloody squeaking when I ran. Fucking pain in the ears, but that is ok. I can still run, just blast the iPod in my ears and run. Run like the wind. Well, run like a fat bastard running on a treadmill, but still, run.

Monday I jumped right back on for 30 minutes. It wasn’t at the high speed I was going before it broke, but I was still topping out at 5 mph, ran over 2 miles. Wasn’t bad at all, and even my recovery time was fairly short. I was surprised. I was expecting to not be able to make it through 20 minutes, let alone 30 minutes. I was expecting to be sweaty and in pain, lungs feeling like they were going to collapse. I was expecting to have my entire night ruined with recovery. Instead, I got off the treadmill, and within 5 minutes was on the phone with a drunken Carl, in Georgia on business, bitching about the squeaking. Same thing last night, through I did slow down due to a cramp in the middle. Still completed 30 minutes and over 2 miles total. I am figuring I will be up to my previous running schedule next week, and by the end if March, I am on track to be running at least 3 miles a day. Yeah me!

Cooked a lot of food the past two days. I ended up buying a bag of chicken breasts, raw broccoli, cauliflower & asparagus. So I got out those small ceramic baking dishes I’ve had for years and used them, chopped up veggies, put them in with seasoned chicken, and some different sauce/marinade in each one and baked them. I’ve got some Chinese “dragon” sauce which is a kind of a spicy brown sauce, mango curry sauce, Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (my personal favorite), a Caribbean jerk sauce and Thai peanut sauce. I did put mozzarella cheese on the Frank’s Red Hot sauce dish I made, but all others are currently cheese free. And so far, the Frank’s and the Caribbean ones have tasted great.

Still having eggs & bacon for breakfast each day (no cheese today – I have a bag of shredded moz and that is it in my house), had a big salad with peppers on Monday for lunch. Some sugar free ice cream each night. Just the basics, and I like it that way, and everything has tasted great. So all is going well.

Now if I can only stop that squeaking, I’d be happy.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Just for today, I could try to live through this day only: not deal with all life's problems, just for today

Hi. My name is Mike J., and I am addicted to cheese.

Whew – that feels good to get that off my chest. It has been a long time coming, but I have to admit that. Admission is the first step to recovery. I am not sure I want to be completely controlled, but I want to control the cheese addiction instead of it controlling me. When my nephews talk about “breaking off some cheddar” I don’t want their money, I want their cheese. I have dreams of a world where we all carry hunks of cheese around and pay for goods and services based on a cheese currency.

I know I’ve said before in the past that I was going to moderate my cheese intake. I know I’ve promised myself that I would limit the cheese on certain meals. I know I’ve “tried” in the past. I know now that I have failed.

It all started back as a child. Gov’ment cheese was what we had, and I was hooked almost immediately. We were poor, and I know addiction knows all social levels, so it is not an excuse, but it was good, and it made me forget the taste of the broccoli, the taste of the cauliflower. It made it all easier to take. The USDA Grade D hamburger meat with some cheese – so much better than plain.

Then I noticed that I was putting cheese on everything, and not just the good gov’ment American cheese. I was putting provolone, Colby, jack cheese on everything. I started shredding cheddar and putting it on chicken noodle soup. I would have a little bit of salad with my shredded cheese. I would top of a pork chop with some muenster.

And then, I realized that I was not using cheese as a side, or to enhance the flavor of a meal. It started becoming the main course. I would only order dinners out that included as much cheese as possible. My home page on my computer is www.ilovecheese.com. On any given week, I would go through 4-5 pounds of cheese.

And then last night. I was cooking some chicken, and I had one of those mini South Beach diet pizza’s. Of course I put on extra mozzarella cheese on the pizza. Then, while cutting up some veggies to cook with the chicken breast, I got out my pound of havarti. If you don’t know the joys of havarti, you don’t know what you are missing. It is creamy, buttery and has a slight kick to it that makes it near the top of my list of great cheeses. So I had a small chunk of it, dipped in a mustard. Then I had a little more. I was cutting and cooking and cleaning pots, and would have a slice, a small piece, a cube.

I realized it was all gone. In the matter of one hour, I’d eaten a whole pound of havarti. Without even trying. Without the intention of eating more than a mouthful. It was like the many times when I used to smoke, I’d be hacking up a lung at night, say that I was quitting, that I had smoked my last cigarette, that it was all over. And then, in the morning, while walking to work, I’d stop off at the W. H. Smith, get a pack of Camel Wide Lights and light up. I’d be almost through the first one when I’d remember that I promised myself I’d quit the night before. And by that time, I’d owned a whole 19 more cigarettes, so I’d just keep smoking.

I think it was then that I realized that I have a cheese problem. I can’t control my cheese intake. If there is cheese in my house, I will eat it, and I don’t think I can control it anymore.

My name is Mike J., and I am a cheese addict. This is the first step.

I gotta go now. I’ve got some asiago in the fridge to snack on before my lunch.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Back in the saddle again. Whoopi-ty-aye-yay, I go my way. Back in the saddle again

Today is a new day. OK, every day is a new day, but for me, today is the first day of the rest of…oh, screw that. The treadmill is fixed and I will start anew the running portion of our program.

For those of you wondering, or, more accurately, to give detail to it, I have not really exercised for the 3 weeks that the treadmill was out of commission. People have pointed out that I could have run outdoors, but really, I spent the first 36 years of my life proving that running outside regularly for exercise purposes was not going to happen. Hence the spending of $2,000 to make sure I can run inside.

So, for all the bitching I did about the poor customer service NoServiceTrack (That is the most clever I can come up with right now - if anyone has a better bitchy/clever rip name for NordicTrack, please leave it in my comments) gave me, Jack the technician came out not only fixed the bolt, he spent an hour reviewing the entire treadmill for routine problems he has seen. He fixed a few, and then had me run on it for about 15 minutes off and on as he adjusted everything (half of it was on an incline as he made sure the rollers controlling the incline were working properly.) He even suggested that I call NordicTrack about new wheels for the back of the track as these ones are not very good and make a lot of noise, which they do.

My eating for the past few weeks has been hit & miss. Nothing too bad, but not as many veggies as I’d have liked to get into my system. Mostly I’ve been eating cold cut sandwiches with low carb Atkins bread. Not really what I wanted to do, but it was a lzy time for me.

This weekend I did have a wine cooler (how 1987 of me, eh?) which I noted when I was half through was nothing but sugar, so I cutit with some Bacardi…and it was all better. On Sunday went to a Brunch with Kyle where I did eat one Eggs Benedict and a crescent roll. But other than those, nothing too high in carbs.

I spent the weekend organizing my books. When I bought my house, one of the things I fell in love with were the built in bookshelves in the living room. I love books, and I love displaying them. So I buy the house, and then…do nothing with the bookshelves. No, not nothing, I have kept all manner of junk on the bookshelves. While all my books rot in boxes in Carl’s room (I have a three bedroom house – my room, the office, and Carl’s room. It just seems easier to call it that, and it let’s people know that, despite my family insisting on it, Carl & I aren’t dating or sleeping together. He has his own separate room in my house. And duh!, why would we need that if we were sleeping together? Think people, think.)

So I spent the weekend taking books out of boxes, organizing and cleaning them (there was a lot of dust on them from my last place) and now they will be displayed throughout my house. I did all this while watching 22 episodes of “Veronica Mars”, which is a television show my best friend Bethany watched and then she loaned me the first season on DVD. I enjoyed the season tremendously, thought the writing and acting was mostly good. I say watch it.

However, you might not want to listen to me. I will leave you with this warning, though. I love TV. I love watching TV, I love collecting TV programs. Before they started selling every television show on DVD, I would records whole seasons of show on VHS tape and save them. I have boxes and boxes of VHS tapes of older shows, some of which haven’t been sold on DVD as of yet. I will quote Homer Simpson in explaining my view of the wonders of television:

“Television: Mother, teacher, secret lover!”

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The sun is not a place where we could live, but here on Earth there'd be no life without the light it gives

I love reading blogs. I have been reading blogs since 1997, when I found the online diaries of a porn actor and his younger, Midwestern gay friend who wrote e-mails back and forth to each other, while updating their daily entries to let us all know what was going on. These sites aren’t online anymore, or they are so hidden that I can’t locate them on google (I know the porn actors name, but it wasn’t that easy.) But I became an addict then to online diaries as such. If I would actually link all the blogs I like, that would take up most of my page. So I don’t link yet.

Well, to be honest, I’ve always enjoyed reading real life instead of fiction. I was a voracious reader as a child (and up until about 5 years ago I could guarantee that I was reading 1-2 books/week, but for some reason it has slowed down) reading a lot of fantasy/sci-fi (Douglas Adams, Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, JRR Tolkien, some Isaac Asimov, when Terry Brooks started, Katherine Kurtz, even some Stephen King.) Then, when I was 16, I picked up Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, about the Manson Family murders of August 1969. The first page of the book says “The story you are about to read will scare the Hell out of you.” and it did! And I loved it. It is like 700 pages, and I finished it over a weekend, with very little time spent sleeping in the dark cause that is when Charlie and the family members would get you! I was hooked.

To this day, true crime novels are like crack for me. Sadly, in my ridiculously over-active imagination, I then can’t sleep after reading them, because no matter what the situation is (husband murdering wife, mother murdering children, mafia hit man) I know that, when it is dark, they are all coming after me. But I continue to read them when I can.

I also found that I love non-fiction more than fiction. I read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” a 1250 page book that details, well, the rise and fall of Hitler’s Germany from 1933 to April 1945, just for fun. Or, if it is fiction, something more realistic that tells details about peoples lives (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay). I read many things, but I crave the real life more than complete fiction. Even in movies, I enjoy documentaries more than big budget smash’em ups, enjoy a realistic story more than Star Wars. I haven’t even watched the third Lord of the Rings as…well, I don’t know why. I have it on DVD, I have a 55” screen HD tv, and god knows, with only 4 work days per week, I have plenty of time on my hands, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to watch it. It is like my interest is gone. “Munich” raptly held my attention, even when it was way past 2 hours and I had to pee so bad my teeth were floating. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”? Bored 10 minutes into it, even when Brad Pitt was shirtless (and I did enjoy that site, but that was about it.)

So back to blogs. I love them. They are even better than a memoir or autobiography as it is happening right then and there! I can tell how someone’s day is going by what they wrote, by how they said it. I know what they did over the weekend, who they did it with. I read several blogs from writers in the DC area (almost by accident as I didn’t try to get readers from one are.) I know a lot more about what it is like to live in the DC area than if I’d read some travel book or watched “West Wing” or “Commander-in-Chief.”

I don’t know if I lead exciting of a life to keep anyone else’s interest by writing about it, let alone my own interest. But I wan to expand this blog o’ mine. And another problem is that I don’t think I am that good of a writer, or at least not yet. I resisted starting a blog for years as I didn’t want to do it half-assed (check out the last 2 ½ weeks of this blog – once the reason behind continuing the blog was stopped due to the broken treadmill, I don’t do too much with it) that is why I started it only after I started exercise and therefore had at least something to write about, keep a log about.

So, when the treadmill is fixed (this Friday, keep your fingers crossed) I will continue to update on how that is working, but I might stray from that a bit, and see if I have any writing skills in me. Or if I actually have anything interesting to say without prefacing it all with what I ate the night before or how long I ran. Those can be separate entries, I hope.

As long as the fucking treadmill gets fixed.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Look the people in the eye, tell them, my oh my, let your backbone slide

The entire response to my plea for satisfaction:

"Mike,

I apologize for the problems you are having. I have notified the service coordinators about the situation and they will look into it and get things straightened out for you."

My response:

"Thank you for your response. I will advise you that I do have an appointment to get the treadmill fixed on Friday 02/17/2006. My problem is with the abysmal level of customer service I have endured from your organization. And to apologize, though very nice, is not enough. I would like to know that if I call again in 3 or 4 months with a problem, I am not going to receive the same poor level of service.

I was led to believe when I first called into your center that it was going to take 3-5 days for the part and 3-5 days for the technician. That is a minimum of 6 days, maximum of 10 days. Instead, it is going to take a total of 18 days. That is unacceptable. You are in a business that sells a product where expectations are high and use is continuous. I run 5 times a week. I don't run outside well, that is why I paid $2000 for a treadmill and warranty. To have that interrupted for 6-10 days seemed like a problem, but I understood that situation. Sadly, that meant I should have been back up and running, literally, by yesterday at the latest. Instead, it is going to be another week until that happens.

I know I do work different hours than most people. I work 10 hour days Monday through Thursday, but I am home by 6 pm each night. Just off the top of my head, I can name 6 people I know who have treadmills (and most of them are NordicTrack) and they all work a regular work day, all getting home after 5 pm at the earliest. Now this technician has informed me he isn't able to fix the treadmill after 6 pm in the next week. The times he gave me were 10 am on Tuesday and 11 am on Friday. No time this weekend. To tell me that the technician could take 3-5 days does not take into account my schedule, or most of your regular customer’s schedules.

First off, your organization needs to set up realistic expectations. Secondly, they need to actually deliver on the expectations that you set up. And thirdly, your entire organization needs to treat the customer with a higher level of respect. That would go a long way to helping repair the problems that I have faced.

An empty apology isn't enough. Leaving out the timeliness problems I have with the situation, you don’t address the lies and you don’t address the disconnected phone calls I have endured with your organization. If something happens and I need to use this warranty again, I do not want to see this horrible level of service again. If I do, I will not only make sure that I don't buy your product again, I will tell as many people as I am capable of telling not to use/buy your product. Getting my current situation "straightened out" isn't a problem. I've muddled through your process to get the appointment. I would like for there to be some kind of improvement on the process that will make me want to continue to buy your products in the future.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

I can't get no satisfaction...

Actual e-mail I sent today, for obvious reason.

"There had better be some type of satisfaction to this e-mail. My anger level is at an all-time high! This is making me regret, yes I said REGRET, the decision to buy anything from NordicTrack.

I paid $1800 for my NordicTrack 7600R in October 2005. On 01/30/2006 a bolt broke that made it impossible to run on the machine without inflicted damage to the track. I called the "Customer Hot Line" as you like to refer to it, at 1-888-825-2588. It was about 6:47 pm (All times are EST). Do you know what I got? 13 minutes of hold music and then disconnected. When I called back, the outgoing message advised that the service center was closed.

I called back on 01/31/2006 at 11:43 am I called and spoke with Travis. I explained the problem, and he told me that he would send the part out that I need and I should receive it in 3-5 days. Then a technician would call me and I'd be able to schedule an appointment in 3-5 days.

Well, after 8 days (I called early in the afternoon, any mail could have been shipped on the date I called), on 02/07/2006 I called back at 6:05 pm. After 11 minutes on hold, the phone disconnected. I called back at 6:16 pm, and when a service person got online, I was rudely asked for my phone number saying all reps were busy and this was just an answering service. I said that I'd prefer to hold for the next available, and I was DISCONNECTED! I called back a third time - A THIRD TIME!! - and a very nice rep explained that they are swamped and they need to take my phone number to get back to me after the lines closed 7:00 pm EST. I gave my home phone number and cell phone number. No return phone call was ever made.

I called the service number on 02/08/2006 at 10:52 am. I spoke with Christine. She advised me that the part was shipped on 02/02/2006, and that they wouldn't be able to send a replacement part until after 02/09/2006.

The part showed up on 02/08/2006. I, like many people, work until later on in the evening, getting home regularly around 6:00 pm most days. So I tried calling the phone number that Travis had given me on 01/31/2006 for the technician who would repair it - 1-800-326-0406. This number rang and rang. It rang so much that a recorded message came on advising that the other party isn't answering, and disconnected. I tried this another time, in case I got the number wrong, and guess what? Rang and rang again until the line disconnected.

So I called 1-800-326-0406 at 9:33 am on 2/09/21006. I was advised that the would take my information and guess what? A technician would call me to set up an appointment. I asked when he worked, and she advised he did his scheduling on his own and she didn't know when he worked. SO I verified my home and cell phone numbers.

I get home after work today, and there is a message from some technician advising that he could come out some time between 10am-12pm on Tuesday 02/14/2006. Well, I can't be around for that as I work, as most Americans do. But here is the great catch - I need to call him at 1-800-326-0406 if that is good, or to schedule a different time if that isn't convenient.

WHY DID HE GIVE ME THIS PHONE NUMBER??? THESE PEOPLE AT THIS NUMBER MADE IT CLEAR THAT THEY DON'T SCHEDULE APPOINTMENTS THIS AFTERNOON WHEN I CALLED! THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HIS SCHEDULE WAS OR WHEN HE WORKED.

Where is any of this good customer service? I feel I was misled time and again, treated poorly by just about everyone during this whole ordeal, and the only 2 representative who were nice to me lied. I don't think saying twice that I would receive the part in 3-5 days is truthful when I received it 9 days later. I never got any type of call back from your customer service number, and I called again tonight at 6:06 pm and guess what? All reps are busy and someone offered to take my number and have someone call me back. That would be just more lies.

Your organization, if you represent NordicTrack, is about lying, is about poor customer service and is about not taking care of a problem. How is it that you can operate in such a manner?

This has made me look into the possibility of sitting in front of any NordicTrack store and tell the customers exactly what your organization is all about: lies, deceit, passing the buck. This makes me want to shout about this idea of service as loud as I can. I paid $200 for this "extended warranty" and it is, in all likelihood, going to be close to three weeks before this will be fixed.

This is unconscionable. This is egregious. This is unethical. How many people do you think I will make sure I tell about this situation? As many as I can make listen to me.

I demand some satisfaction from you."

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more, I don’t expect to sleep the night. Some people say a lie is just a lie

Anger. That is what I am feeling today over the shitty service I am receiving from NordicTrack. 3-5 days my ass! It has now been, at the minimum, 7 days, since I was told that the part would be received by me in 3-5 days. They didn’t say business days. They didn’t say it would be mailed in 3-5 days. They specifically told me that I would receive the part in 3-5 days. Then I would call the technician, and it would be another 3-5 days to get the technician out there to replace the part.

Come on people, it is a fricken bolt, that is all it is. If I’d had one last Monday, I’d have done it myself. If it weren’t under warranty, I’d have had it done a week ago. But I can’t change it myself, and they are sending a whole new part…well, they say they are sending it, I don’t know if I believe it or not.

So, last night I get home first off there is no part. Then I call the customer service line. After being on hold for 9 minutes, the call automatically disconnects. Then I call back. After 12 minutes on hold, I get some woman from a message center requesting a return phone number for me as all regular customer service reps were busy. I told this woman that I would prefer to continue holding…and she hung up on me.

I call back a third time at 6:24 pm. After 10 minutes on hold a man gets on and says that he needs to take a message because all reps are busy. I ask when I will get a call back, and he says it will be after 7:00 pm as this is when incoming calls stop. I give him my home and cell phone numbers, and he repeats them back to verify that they are correct, and they are. I then wait around and no phone rang all night. Anger and disappointment.

So this morning, when the call center opens, I will be calling them back and I will be mad. I am going to try to contain my anger, but I don’t know if I can. I better go to a conference room at my work so that if I start swearing or raising my voice it won’t be near my co-workers.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

We are the champions...of the world!!

I will have to admit that my interest in writing this blog has decreased since I am not running currently. NordicTrack has taken their sweet time in getting the part to me…and sweet time obviously means more than the 3-5 days they quoted me. Today will mark day 7 (or day 8 if last Tuesday was day 1), and their customer service number is always a long hold time. So last night I called again and some other rep got on the phone and asked me to give them a phone number where I could be reached as they are busy. Well, I said I wanted to keep holding (the joys of a Vonage phone is that I can hold for hours and not be charged an extra nickel) but the rep said that wasn’t possible.

So here I am. I ran for 14 minutes last Monday before I broke the machine and I haven’t run since then. I’ve done some strenuous stuff (cleaning bathroom ceiling to floor can make a guy sweat) but not running. Not happy about this, but still can’t seem to bring myself to run outside. I keep hoping that the part will show up and the technician will show up and I can just get running. I hate speed bumps in the road!

Food has been my regular food from last Thursday through the weekend except for Super Bowl Sunday! Not only did I chomp down two slices of pizza, I ate a piece of the Triangle Hoagie, then sucked down what turned out to be 5 beers. These were very good Raspberry Ale beers, but still full of calories and carbs. But that is all OK because:

Pittsburgh Steelers are Super Bowl Champions!!!!

I don’t want to hear the whining from Seattleites or Seahawk fans or whoever about the officiating, the Steelers have won Super Bowl XL and you can’t take that away! I live in the city of the 2005 World Champions! The 3 rivers are flowing with black & gold, baby boomer steel workers from the 70’s Steelers are able to share their joy with the young technophiles and all is right with the Steelers Nation after a 25 year drought.

Oh yeah, did I mention that Pittsburgh is still a bankrupt city that has to have the state oversee it’s finances that has sadly fucked up so much that the Penguins probably will be leaving in the next year or so as there will be no new arena? I think that a new Arena would be a good thing for the region in general, not just for the hockey team, but we seemed to have spent all of the money allotted to us for the new football stadium (Heinz Field) new baseball park (PNC Park) and the new convention center (David L. Lawrence Convention Center) and there is no money left for an arena.

We also have gambling coming to Pennsylvania, but no one wants to award the Pittsburgh gambling license to a developer that has guaranteed that he would build a new arena. We want to give the license to Harrah’s, a corporation that has given the most money to Pennsylvania politicians in the past 3 years, and who isn’t going to give a new arena to the area.

I don’t understand why we can’t get a privately funded arena with some infrastructure help from local & state governments. It has worked elsewhere (See Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Nationwide Arena in Columbus, or the MCI Center in Washington DC) and I can’t imagine that something along this line could be profitable in Pittsburgh. And we have no good places to see live music in the winter in this city.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

And if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all

When it rains it pours. On Monday, while running, I heard some “Pop” underneath my feet…and then I noted the track was rubbing against the left side. So I got off and checked…and a bolt had snapped. I won’t take it personally, I know it had to be a defective bolt, but it didn’t make me feel thin and beautiful when you note that.

Now, this happened the day after my good headlight blew out. One headlight seems to have a loose wire and will go out sometimes and go on sometimes when I hit a bump, so I am taking it in to get fixed in a few weeks, but on Sunday I was driving home and the good one went out. Well, for those who have a Mazda and try to change their own lightbulb, you will know that there is some insane spring that is supposed to go around the back part of the bulb and snap under and behind it to hold it in place. Oh, and it is squeezed in to such a small space that a flashlight won’t help you see, and you can’t use any real tools as the windshield washer fluid receptacle is directly in front of the headlight.

If that sounds convoluted, that is because it is, and I don’t know how the makers thought it was a good idea. I have changed all my own head lights and windshield wipers on all cars I’ve owned, and yet this is the second time I have had trouble putting a headlight on this car. After a 90 minute struggle, I failed and had to call my brother-in-law. I had even more stress as, at this point of the year, I drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark. If I have no headlights, that is going to be more dangerous than I usually like.

So I had two horribly frustrating days in a row. And now I can’t run when I get home until the part comes and this can be fixed, which should take until mid-week next week. This is making me grumpy. Really, really grumpy. It just hinders what I am trying to do.

Food food food. All week I’ve had bacon & eggs w/ cheese for breakfast. On Monday evening, I cooked up some low carb hamburger helper mac & cheeseburger, using ground turkey. So much less grease. It is good, though the low carb pasta is a bit off taste. Not really bad tasting, but you know you’re not eating real pasta. I had that with some brussel sprouts and 2 actual angus burger patties. I had 4 of the patties left over and I fried them up for the week. On Tuesday, for lunch I had some of the hamburger helper with spinach. For dinner, I ate some turkey & cheese cold cuts, broccoli and spinach. On Wednesday for lunch I had one sausage & ½ chicken breast that I had cooked in the crock pot on Saturday, with a small helping of the hamburger helper (there was a lot of the hamburger helper after I used a pound of ground turkey) and spinach. For dinner, Kyle had cooked for me. We had these great meatballs (3 of them) & cheddar cheese slices for appetizer, a great mixed greens salad with a chipotle ranch dressing, then grilled salmon & fresh steamed asparagus. Man, everything was so good, and I didn’t have to cook, which is great.

I will say that on Sunday I did get a ½ gallon of Edy’s vanilla ice cream and some Skinny Cow ice cream bars. I have had a bowl of ice cream or an ice cream bar each night before 9 pm. I do love ice cream.

I am still searching for different diets to eat, researching online. I have a few ideas, and am hoping that I can come up with something good soon, cause I don’t think the low carb is completely working for me at this time. Here’s to hoping that I can come up with something good.