Portfolioso.com Blog

I strongly advise the United States to adapt the portfolioso.com solution to the situation in Iran: do nothing. That’s right folks, this issue they are having with elections and oppression has absolutely nothing to do with the United States and is of no concern for this country. Who cares if people are going around screaming “death to America.” It’s not doing anything to me. Does it suck the way protesters are being treated? Yes. Should elections be fair? Yes. See, apparently even in the United States, elections are full of shit. Just look at 2000 – the majority of voters chose Gore (although he was also a moron along with most other politicians, but that’s not my point right now and he couldn’t have been worse than Bush). But we have this genius thing called the Electoral college, designed for morons on horses who couldn’t communicate easily in the 1700s and 1800s to vote for electors to vote for a person – mostly because government officials back then thought the common man was a moron (which is still true to this day). Even so, you don’t see people here turning into looting animals when the election goes awry.

By telling other countries what to do, it simply angers some people and this is why foreign countries end up hating the United States. Read Persepolis. Iran was a mess during the Iranian revolution and it will be that way again, because they don’t have their shit together. We have our shit together and it shouldn’t bother us what other nations do, unless there is a direct threat to American freedom. Last time I checked, their oppression has nothing to do with me. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but lots of people are being oppressed. Why should the country get involved with Iran and not for instance, Darfur and everyone else all over the world also being oppressed? Political interest/oil/money. It all comes down to that. There is no monetary benefit for helping Darfur, so you don’t see the US anywhere near there. But the Middle East? Oil, etc. There’s simply too many problems in the world, and those being affected need to deal with them. Take the advice of the country’s founders – stay away from entangling alliances and remain neutral in foreign affairs. We don’t do that anymore, and this is why the United States is going to the doghouse.

Dear Verizon,

I do not appreciate you LOWERING my internet speed. For a few years. I have had the 20MBPS downstream package, which ran at 20.3MBPS. How nice of you to go over slightly. A few days ago, the company announced speed increases for all, especially in competitive markets. The new low tier is said to be 25MBPS/15MBPS. Nice. However, not only has my speed not been increased yet, but it seems that a few hundred KBPS are missing off my downstream. I now max out at 19.3 MBPS. This is unacceptable. Is this how you make room for the extra bandwidth you are giving away? I’ll be expecting 25/15 by the end of next week.

love,
Portfolioso

Edit: Verizon says nothing is wrong. True, nothing is wrong, except for the fact that some engineer throttled my speed and didn’t inform the morons answering the phones.

Part 2 in the series on ripping apart Verizon Wireless (even though I still like them): Their voicemail system sucks. It takes 4 years, has 400 menu options and never works right. When you go to leave someone a message, I have to wait an extra 25 seconds after their greeting is over to listen to the annoying woman telling me to talk after the beep or ask if I want to leave a callback number. 1) I already know I need to talk after the beep, this is how voicemail worked since 1983 and 2)What the hell is the point of leaving a callback number if you show up in my missed calls? There is a skip button for the greeting, but I always forget it because it’s different for every wireless company. And can’t we get a British woman to read the menu options? Their accents are hot. No, we get an annoying nag that grinds on my nerves.

Second annoyance: I call voicemail, listen to my message and hang up. Two seconds later, my phone is beeping, vibrating and flipping out that I have a new voicemail. Um no I don’t, I just listened to it idiot. The problem here is that Verizon only flags the message as old only if you listen to the whole thing OR press 9 to save or 7 to delete it. I never do this because it wastes my time. What the system should do is mark the message as old once you begin listening to it. Sometimes I get the jist of the message after 5 seconds and want to hang up and call back ASAP rather than hearing the person ramble on.

Fix it, Verizon.