I’ve been having some trouble with my internet connection. For a few years, actually. It’s only been recently that it’s really mattered, though. I’m losing money by not being connected. Two days in a row my connection has been intermittent. I’ll log into my work environment (for my job, ya know) and BOOM! Kicked offline. Then I’d restart everything, it’s going good, log in and BOOM!
It’s only been two days that it was like that. All last week and the first couple days of this week were fine. I was able to get my hours in and do the work. I’ve lost two days of wages, though, and that is a huge problem.
So, I call Frontier1 and talk to a really nice lady from Indiana. I tell her my problem and why it’s even worse than before. She schedules a test while we chit chat (she was nice and, honestly, it’s hard to find a nice customer service person, ya know?). Then she tells me that Frontier is upgrading their network in my area and that they should be done by the 15th. Fat lot of good that will do me, right? I’ve got to work! She tells me I’ll hear back in a day or two to see what’s going on with my line.
Well, yesterday everything seemed kosher. I was able to get online all day long. Then I went to login to my work. Kicked off. Not only that, but I was on the phone with someone and my phone disconnected. Motherfucker. I call Frontier back. They owe me money at this point. Well, I speak with another nice customer service person (two in a row!) and he sets me up with a tech to come out and look at shit. Sometime between 8am and 12, he says. This usually means that it’s closer to 3pm, right?
Wrong. The tech came at 9am on the dot. Holy shitballs! He comes in and takes a look at shit. Tells me that Frontier was renting bandwidth from Verizon, but Verizon was choking it. He said that Frontier is building their own network so they won’t have to use Verizon’s anymore. Awesome sauce, I say to him. Mostly because I’ve grown to really hate Verizon. Anyway, he explains that there’s a lot of congestion on the line right now while they get that network up. Unfortunately, the boss is only hooking up an initial 200k people to this new line. He explains that traffic will be super fast on that network initially, but that as people are moved over I’ll get a faster connection because fewer people are using it.
He gives me a brand new modem-router. I say “How much am I going to have to pay for that?”2 Nothing. Not a dime. Do I want a second one? Cool beans! No, I don’t need a second one because my network isn’t that extensive, but the thought was nice. He hooks me up and then tells me to call him directly if I have any other problems.
Nice. I can also say that it was nice to talk about upload/download, packets, capacity and networks with someone. And it was nice that he talked to me about that stuff without thinking I was a big ol’ dummy. It was a nice conversation. I’m sad to report, though, that he’s married. *sigh*
Then the damned connection failed again. Fuckity fuck! He shakes his head. He needs to call his boss. So he does. Then he tells me:
“We’re moving you onto the new network today. That should really help.”
Hells yeah!
Do I think he’s half-bullshitting me? Yes, I do. I secretly think that they’re not really moving me to this new network and he’s completely pulling my leg. I’ll be able to tell later today for sure. But that didn’t really matter to me at the time. His bullshit was awesome. It made me happy and he seemed like he was doing me a favor. And he didn’t talk to me like I’m a walking, talking idjit. That means something, right?
Plus, this new router is fantabulous. It’s better than my Netgear. I hooked everything up and took my laptop outside and I get a fantastic signal all the way to the back of the yard. That works for me. But what works better for me is that Frontier didn’t charge me for it. Verizon made me pay $100 for the replacement modem they sent me when my original one failed. They refused to allow me to replace it for free. Every fucking thing costs fat cash. Not this time. Even if I’m getting fed bullshit, there’s something to be said about that.
Anyway, I’m impressed with their customer service overall. I don’t know if they’re going to do what they promise (yet) but I do know that everyone I spoke to was super nice and they did a lot to make me happy. The tech came on time and was respectful when he was here. My attitude toward customer service and other service personnel is respectful until they do something to piss me off, so maybe that had something to do with it. I didn’t call up the first time cussing them out and telling them they better fix my shit right now. I know the folks that I spoke with aren’t the bosses and they can only do what they can do. But every company doesn’t have service like that. We all know it, we’ve experienced it and we’ve hated it. So I’m giving props to Frontier on this one. Big props.
As often as I complain about this thing or that, I think it’s only fair to tell the stories of the good experiences I have with these companies, right? So, there ya go. I’m going to stick it out with Frontier even if my line doesn’t get fixed right away. Why? Because they actually treated me like a person and that counts for a whole lot in my book.
Sisters and Spirituality
I had a really interesting discussion with Other Sis the other day. I think I may have stumped her and made her fear for my soul.
A little background: Other Sis has recently been Born Again. She’s like many other freshly out-of-the-water baby Christians in that she is enthralled with her new religion and wants to discuss it whenever she can. Unlike the others like her, she doesn’t shove it down my throat or try to change me. Of course, she knows I would never go for that kind of coercion, so she’s all subtle and understanding. That’s ok. I accept that. Sometimes she says stuff that makes me want to smack her upside her head, but I’m able to overcome those feelings and not smack anyone.
So, we’re talking about DB and our lives while we were growing up. DB and I have the same father; Other Sis has another father. My father hits the bricks when I was 6 months old and Other Sis’s dad got deported to Mexico when she was 3 (or 2?). None of us grew up with any father in our lives. Not even a step father. DB’s uncle used to come take him a lot, trying to be a dad for him, but it didn’t work. There was a lot of underlying reasons for this, which I don’t want to get into, but this was part of the conversation Other Sis and I were having. We were wondering why DB couldn’t move on from our fucked up childhoods. He was really damaged without his father in his life. And he blames The Mother. So, his life is one big fuck up after another. We were discussing DB’s need for a father in his life and how we (Other Sis and I) managed to grow up not really caring about our fathers. We’re messed up, still, but we’re not fixated on that part of our pasts.
Other Sis says “I don’t need an Earthly Father because I have a Heavenly one.” Hmmm…
So, the conversation goes to religion. I’ve been trying to ignore these temptations I’m sometimes presented with, but I couldn’t ignore it this time. I pulled up The Brick Testament while I was on the phone with her. She was telling me that she was switching churches and other stuff I didn’t quite catch. I asked her why she was leaving her church. She said she didn’t need a home church, she just needed her bible and her pastor. I didn’t get that, but I didn’t tell her I didn’t get it. She told me that since she’s been going to church regularly her life has been better and maybe I should consider going and praying with her. And that’s when I struck.
I start off by telling her a story about Fil and his argument against gay marriage. I tell her that I explained to Fil that because he was previously married and had remarried that he’d become an adulterer and made Millie an adulterer as well. I quote from The Brick Testament for this (because it’s my go-to guide):
She agrees that divorce is bad and all parties are adulterers. Good. I mention stoning of one’s children and she replies “That’s the Old Testament and we’re not bound by those laws anymore.” Interesting.
“Not even the Ten Commandments?” I asked. Ummm…pause. I tell her that I don’t understand that. Why pick which part of the Bible to hold holy and which to scrap? Doesn’t make sense to me, but then it was written by men.
She says she holds the Bible dear because it’s God’s words and how she learns to be a better Christian. Without that book she wouldn’t know what to do. Really?
“I appreciate that you love your church and your book, but really they’re just tools with which you communicate to God. They aren’t necessary for that communication.” Well, that was fighting words right there! I wasn’t worried though, because I could hear her brain turning.
“You could just as easily walk outside, sit in the ground, empty your thoughts and listen to God. Have you ever listened to Him speak to you?” Silence.
“If you listen, he will speak to you. Maybe put a thought in your head about a solution to a problem. Or an idea that would somehow improve your life. You pray, but do you listen?”
She says, no lie, “Ideas don’t just pop in your head. They have to come from somewhere. And usually people get them from the Bible.” Oh, my poor poor sister.
“Have you read about the Internet in the Bible? Or fluorescent lighting? Or flushing toilets? These were originally ideas that were thought of by people who eventually built them. If you rely only on the Bible for guidance and ideas and education, you’re missing out on what God is giving you. You’re not listening.” She’s quiet, but not really buying it. She’s latched on to my assertion that the Bible is just a tool. That bothered her quite a bit.
She asks me “I’ve read the Bible, have you?” Well, as a matter of fact, yes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know who wrote it. It was stories put together from religious men who wanted to gain followers for their religion. She said something about God giving us Him in Jesus so the stories could be told. I reminded her that we went to my great-grandmother’s church and there we learned that Jesus and God were indeed separate entities. God created Jesus; he did not become him. I said “The Bible even offers proof of that when Jesus says ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they’ve done.” I tell her I believe that Jesus was a holy prophet, much the same that Mohammad is a holy prophet for Allah, the Muslim God. I asked her why the same God gave two religions opposing prophets1 and if one is right, how do we know which?
She changed the subject slightly then, because she didn’t even know that Muslims had a God or a prophet. She says those that don’t recognize Jesus will go to hell. I say I don’t believe in hell. She’s astounded. How can I not believe in hell?
“Three things I’ve learned: 1) God is a benevolent and loving Father God and 2) God is omnipotent and 3) God doesn’t make mistakes.” I told her that if we are fashioned in his image and we would never throw our own children into a furnace, then why would he? Why wouldn’t he punish us, teach us a lesson and allow us to learn from it? If we’re not his trash to be thrown away, why would he burn us? And how is it possible that Satan is so powerful that God fears him and uses him to terrorize his children? If Satan had committed such an offense to an omnipotent God, doesn’t it make more sense that God would strike him down and bye-bye Satan? If God is perfect in everything, even the most evil among us have a reason for being here. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t make it so.
“It’s in the Bible,” she says.
“The Bible is a tool, built by imperfect men who had an agenda. Use it for meditation and for comfort and to read the stories, but it’s not perfect simply because it was written by imperfect people. And apparently it’s not even complete.” I was talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls there. She knew that. She’s curious about them. I told her that I’d read there’s a book by Mary Magdalene but the church omitted it because it would give women too much power. I don’t think she believed me.
She asked me when I started thinking about religion. I said I think about my spirituality every day, but it came on strong when Gabriel died. The worst thing anyone could have told me at that time was “He’s in Heaven now.” I thought about that all the time then. And I spent a great bit of time meditating. Just sitting quietly while peacefulness filled me. I used to sit for hours and hours in the night, just listening and feeling. I heard the breeze and night animals and traffic and far away arguments. I would sit in the grass and feel the earth moving. I told her that my God was all around me, speaking to me in every part of my body. My God expected me to be quiet because she knew already what was in my heart and mind and she didn’t need to hear my words. Words aren’t necessary when you’re communing, I told her. Because He can feel you and hear you and see you and then he’ll talk to you.
“God doesn’t talk to people. That’s crazy.”
“But you believe he spoke to the men in that book? Gave them the words to pen on their parchment? And now he’s said to hell with us all because he hasn’t got anything to say to anyone else ever? You rely too much on your tools and not enough on the world around you. Go to your church for community and read your book for comfort, but sit still and listen when you want God to talk to you. You can’t hear him if you’re being too noisy telling him stuff he already knows.”
She said she couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell her. I wasn’t making sense to her. I told her to think about it and remember any dreams she has over the next few nights. She said she’ll read and see if there’s anything in the Bible about what I said. Which, of course, means she’s going to go to her study group and tell them what a hell child I am and that I’ve completely lost my mind.
At least I didn’t scare her with my polytheism or my reincarnation beliefs. She’d have had a prayer chain circling my house in no time. I think next time I might explain to her the origins of Christmas and Easter. I hate to think that she’s at a point where she will only learn something new if it’s in the Bible or only believe science if it’s in the Bible. It’s good she’s got faith, but when that faith hinders real spiritual growth then it’s a little too much. I mean, Jesus prayed, didn’t he? And he didn’t need a church or a Bible to talk to his father.