Dear Verizon,

Hi. I'm apparently one of your "preferred residents." As much as I like to follow economics and business, I can't claim to know the values that make a company a success this day. But if tenacity is one of them, then you guys should be all set.

When I signed up for my apartment here in the mediocre Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I was informed that I could go with Comcast or Verizon FiOS for my TV and internet needs. I was excited to hear I could get FiOS. I was enticed by the notion of 30 MBps downstream and 5 MBps upstream, not to mention reliable HD service. But you have a problem, Verizon, in that you're a traditional telecom that thinks it is beneficial to me to have to sign a 2 year contract. So beneficial, in fact, that if I don't sign up for at least one year or service, my rates skyrocket to about twice what I pay for with Comcast. I found the following particularly amusing: * The bundle discount requires your acceptance of the FiOS FREEDOM BUNDLE DISCLAIMER AGREEMENT that includes an early termination charge. Freedom, indeed.

So I had made my decision before I moved, and had my service with Comcast set up and ready to go. But you wouldn't give up, would you? My first week here, you sent me 5 items in the mail informing me that FiOS is available, and apparently, it is big. Okay. But things did not stop there. I thought American Express was pretty bad with mailings, but you take the cake. In my three months here, I have probably received 30+ items in the mail pleading to get me to switch to superior FiOS service.

One of those mailings was particularly awe-inspiring. It was an invitation to a "residents only dessert party." That's right. I guess you used your early termination fund to sponsor 4 of your employees to set up a tent in my apartment complex and lecture us about FiOS, all the while providing raffles, lousy handouts, and free dessert. I appreciate that your letter emphasized that the dessert was only while supplies last.

Seriously? A desert party? I'm not surprised by the mailings (just the volume of them). I'm not surprised by getting harassed by your employees every time I set foot in a Circuit City. But a dessert party? You guys just will not give up. My hat goes off to you. There is something to be said for tenacity.

Too bad it doesn't change the fact that I'm only here for 6 months and because of that, you want me to pay about $160 a month for TV and Internet. Sorry, Verizon. You apparently just don't get it.

It is time to give up.

With love,

Gray

My apartment building was hit by lightning last night. It was storming and I was watching the olympics when there was a huge thunder clap, a large boom, and the power flickered out. When the power came back, the fire alarm turned on. So I evacuated into my car. Five minutes later, three fire trucks showed up.

Took them about 20 minutes to clear the building. Some apartments were apparently damaged in one way or another, but mine is fine. But after the building was cleared, the FD said they couldn't shut off the alarm. So for an hour, the building fire alarm was going off. The temporary fix was too shut off the alarm system completely, which is why there is now a nice sign on our door that says "FIRE? CALL 911."

My guests (Kevin and Emily) fortunately arrived about 5 minutes after the alarm was shut off. Twas quite the evening.

My photos from Maine have been processed and posted. You can see them right here or at my Mobile Me Page if you have Firefox 2/3, Safari, or IE7.

The photos may get a little redundant, but I think there are some great shots in there.

Okay, so I haven't given an update in a while. Some things have happened.

I've pretty much explored Boston as much as I can at this point. There is no longer much for me to do in the city (at least until I'm 21). So, since I'm in New England, maybe for the last time, I need to go out and see all that New England has to offer. Marlborough is a great central point for this. Everything is pretty much 1.5 hours away. So I need to see Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. And oh yeah, Montreal isn't far away, so I'll try and get up there, too. Things are close enough for me to just go for the day with little planning, so that's nice.

Something not included on that list was Martha's Vineyard, which, as you can see from my last post, I have been to. My grandmother was nice enough to come up and visit me last weekend. We spent some time in Boston, then took a ferry out to the vineyard for a day. If you weren't aware, Martha's Vineyard is an island off the southern coast of Massachusetts, and it is only accessible by boat or air. It is very beautiful and secluded, so naturally it's a pretty rich area. We took a general 3 hour tour of the entire island, and then spent some time around Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs. It was a good time, and I'm glad I got to see that.

And today, I got to cross Maine off of my list. Greg and I drove up to York and Ogunquit. Ogunquit's main pull is the Marginal Way, a mile long scenic route along the rocky coastline, which was nice, but the really nice part of the trip was York, which had a breathtaking coast. I'll be posting photos later (maybe tomorrow), and you'll see what I mean. We had great weather and covered a lot of ground, so it was a nice trip.

Beyond my travels, there isn't a whole lot to report. The weather around here has been nuts. I've had to drive with sunglasses on during downpours, and the other day we had quarter sized hail. My car needed a new wheel bearing and rear brake pads, which was fun. I'm also using a new toothbrush. I know, these are exciting times.

In other news, I'll be glued to my TV for the next two weeks (even more than usual) watching the Olympics.

Last weekend, my grandmother came up to visit, and on Sunday we went out to Martha's Vineyard. We took the New England Fast Ferry out of New Bedford and went out to the island for the day. I have a collection of photos from the ferry and island, which you can access on my site right here, or at my Mobile Me page right here. At the Mobile Me page (requires Firefox, Safari, or IE 7), you can download high res images (but not all 10.2 MP).

I'll update with some stuff soon. I promise.

If you know what this is from, you get a prize*.

*Not really.

I hadn't seen Pete, the spider chipmunk, in over a week, and I was getting concerned... either he had moved on to a new place, or really moved on. But yesterday, I saw a chipmunk in the yard and was hopeful. Today, I got my confirmation.. Pete is back!



He was grazing for a while and I went out on my porch to leave him a peanut. He retreated into the drainage pipe and started poking his head up... he hesitated for a few minutes, but finally came up, in front of me, to get the coveted peanut. Glad to know he's back.

I have finally gone through my images from the weekend. My parents trekked up to Massachusetts to visit me for a few days, which was a nice change of pace around here. We spent some time around the metro-west area, and they went to Maine for a night. The weekend was spent entirely in Boston, doing all sorts of wonderful touristy things.

I now have two options for photo viewing. You can click right here to see the usual web upload that I do on my site (a link will be on the Photo page shortly), or if you use Safari, Firefox (2 or later) or Internet Explorer 7, you can check out my Mobile Me gallery right here, which is a much nicer interface. You can also download high resolution JPEGs there.

I actually had nice weather for these photos, and I'm getting more used to RAW imagery. Hopefully my photos will continue to improve.

In other news, things are going well. I still love my job, and Intel just released some fantastic quarterly results. I got the 2.66 GHz 20" iMac on Monday, and it just happens to contain two chips that I've been engineering! It's a great machine. I'm very happy with it. I think I'm going to try and go out hiking somewhere this weekend. Massachusetts is a beautiful state, so I'd like to see more of it. I still need to check out Cape Cod sometime.

After several days of blood, sweat, and tears, my blog is working again. The powers that be did a PHP upgrade on the server recently and that screwed up my existing code, and it took me a while to work out a solution. But here it is again.

My parents visited me over the weekend, will have pictures soon. I also have a new iMac. I'll talk about that later. Just wanted to post that my site is working again. Thanks for your patience.

Alright, at long last, the photos can be found right here. Some point later tonight or tomorrow, I'll have a link on the photo page.

So this was my first try at the DSLR world. Unfortunately the weather was pretty lousy for photography, and even worse I didn't have a tripod, so my fireworks photos are pretty ordinary. But I had a ton of photos to play around with processing, and I have fallen in love with Apple's Aperture.

This camera is so much fun to take pictures with. I'll probably have some intermittent posts with random photos. Stay tuned.