The Occasional Blog of Jonah Weiland

From The Superficial:

Geri Halliwell and Penn Jillette are apparently competing in an unofficial contest to see who can come up with the worse baby name. Jillette and his wife named their baby boy Zolten Penn Jillette, saying in a statement: “Zolten is a common Hungarian name, it’s my wife’s maiden name and most importantly, it’s the name of Dracula’s dog.” Not to be outdone, Geri Halliwell announced that she named her daughter Bluebell Madonna Halliwell after a rare flower and, well, Madonna.

I’d much rather be named Zolten than Blueballs. That poor girl is screwed from day one in High School. And I thought all the whale and big fish jokes I put up with were bad.

Well, it turns out that lengthy post below about getting a new phone and switching from Verizon to Sprint was for naught — LetsTalk.com has no more Treo 650 phones in stock and won’t be getting any more as they’re no longer being manufactured for Sprint. You know, it would have been nice if they told me that prior to spending half an hour on the phone with them and having my credit card charged. Christ.

So, now my choices are switch to Cingular or simply buy one of the phones at full price and stick with Verizon. Not happy about either choice, really.

But I just learned something. See, everyone’s been telling me to get a Treo 700, which is a Windows based phone, versus the Palm based Treo 650. I’ve owned Palm devices my entire life and have no interest in moving to a Windows based organizer. I just visited the Palm Web site and discovered there’s a Tero 700p, a Palm based Treo 700 series phone.

I’ve got options once more!

Two years ago I switched my mobile service from AT&T Wireless to Verizon Wireless. My contract was up with AT&T and I had decided I wanted to go cell only, giving up my home line completely. AT&T wasn’t at all interested in doing anything to keep me as a client, so I decided to jump ship since telephone number portability had just been implemented.

Two years later and my contract is up with Verizon. It’s time for a new phone. I’ve had my eye on a Palm Treo 650 for a long time, but was waiting for a good price. It’s a $400 – $500 phone, but no way am I interested in paying that when I see deals for as low as $150 when you sign a new two-year contract.

I first contacted Verizon to see what they could do for me. They could get me a Treo 650 for $200, but I’d have to sign a new two-year contract with them and buy a monthly data plan starting at a minimum of an additional $10 monthly. I really don’t need the data plan. The primary reason for my getting this phone is to integrate my Palm contact list with my phone. I hate when I leave the house without my Palm, only to discover I need a phone number in there. I don’t plan on sitting on the Internet with my Treo 650 or even checking my e-mail all that often. And even then, I plan on getting a WiFi adapter for the phone, so I can just use free WiFi instead of a data plan.

So, I began shopping around and discovered that Verizon had a deal through Buy.com which would give you a Treo 650 from them for only $125, but it’s new subscribers only. I called to see if I could get the offer extended to me – I’d sign for another two years – but they said it was for new subscribers only and I’d have to get a $15+ monthly data plan. If I wanted to get a new number, it could be done, but not if I kept the same number. Let’s count the number of ways that’s retarded. Clearly, mobile phone companies have no interest in customer retention, just new customers.

So, the choice was made. It was time to switch.

Let’sTalk.com had a couple of deals for the Treo 650 phone. Through both Cingular and Sprint you could get a Treo 650 for only $150 after mail-in rebates. I opted to go with Sprint because they had the best wireless rate plans and didn’t require me to get a data plan. Plus, I hear dealing with Cingular customer service is like trying to pay attention to you. Forget that.

The folks at Let’s Talk were quite nice to work with. My service guy, Michael, answered all my various nagging questions and gave me some helpful advice on handling the mail-in rebates. But here’s where it gets stupid.

So, my contract with Verizon expires on May 29th. Now, I ordered the phone yesterday and it’ll be shipped today, the 24th, and will arrive on the 25th. Let’s Talk must activate the new phone right before they ship it. Now, I want to keep my same mobile number as I’ve had for the last six years, so porting the phone to Sprint immediately wouldn’t work because then I’d be without a phone for a full 24 hours. That’s no good. Plus, if I port my number even one day before my contract is up with Verizon, I’ll be hit with a $175 early termination fee. I’m sorry, but one day early on a two-year contract does not qualify as early termination you fucking mongoloids! Insane levels of retardation. So here’s what we had to do.

Let’s Talk will ship my phone with an entirely new number. It’ll arrive here on the 25th with that new number. For the next five days I will basically have two mobile phone numbers. On the 30th I have to call Verizon to tell them I’m canceling my service and will be porting my number over to Sprint. Verizon will have to pro-rate me for one day of service. Then I need to call Sprint to have them port my old number to the new phone and tell them to turn off the new number. Then I need to call Let’s Talk to make sure they know everything has been taken care of, or else I loose out on a variety of rebate deals.

All this just to get the phone I want. I really thought once telephone number portability became available that the wireless phone companies would get their shit together and be more interested in customer service. Completely wrong. All they care about is increasing recurring revenue, while spending the minimum amount of time possible talking to and wooing their existing clients. Absolutely retarded.

According to Variety, the NBA playoffs bradcast on TNT and ESPN this year have seen a rather nice sized ratings boost. Need I point out that the Clippers played in 14 of those games, while Kobe only played in 7. Oh, and the biggest gains have been in the second round, where the Lakers were no where to be found. OK, enough being mean — no, fuck that, be mean! But I especially like seeing this slug under a photo that accompanied the story:

Game seven between the Phoenix Suns and L.A. Clippers was a hot TV draw.

Eat it, Lakers Fans!

There’s a new documentary coming out in June I’m really looking forward to. “Who Killed The Electric Car?” is a new film that looks at why GM’s EVI electric vehicle was scuttled. Here’s a description from the Web site:

It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert?

Back when I worked in radio, arrangements were made to have my host and I test drive the car for a few days. The host lived unbelievably far away from our Korea Town studios, so he didn’t end up taking it home with him, which meant I got two spend 48 hours with the EV1 and I can honestly say I’ve never had more fun driving a car since. I’ve driven Porsches, Corvettes, even a Ferrari, and none of those cars matched the experience I had with the EV1.

The EV1 was fast. Really quite fast. It was so fast that if you hit the accelerator, the wheels would spin and your tires would screech. It was very zippy, getting you around LA traffic with ease. The dashboard was something out of “Star Trek,” running the entire width of the car. You didn’t have to use a key — you could simply punch in a code to unlock the car and start it. If you were parked at one of the many electric vehicle charging stations in Los Angeles, you could “gas” up your car for free and the neat thing was, while it was connected to the charger, you could leave the A/C on inside the car to keep it cool in the Southern California heat. This was a big deal considering the A/C used up a lot of current. This way, when you got in your car, you didn’t have to use a lot of battery power to cool the interior off.

The car got looks like you wouldn’t believe. It may not have been as flashy looking as a Ferarri, but peoples interest was piqued by the uniqueness of the car. I drove around in that thing a lot and had probably 10 people in two days ask me questions about it. They’d roll down their windows or stop me in the parking lot to ask questions. Everyone would ask, “Is it on?” It was so quiet that you actually had to install a beeping sound to signal to people you were backing up. I even had one car full of teenagers waving their arms frantically at me while driving down the 101. That was weird.

The car handled beautifully, hugging turns real tight. At the time I was driving a 1994 Ford Mustang GT and the EV1 easily outperformed my Mustang in every way, unless you wanted to drive 130 mph. The car had a governor that topped out at 85, but that’s OK. Never bothered me.

Yes, there was the drawback that you could only get about 130 miles to a charge, but if you needed to drive to San Diego or Las Vegas, simply rent a convertible for a fun drive. That being said, most people who owned an EV1 admitted they had a second gas vehicle, but mostly drove the EV1. And really, how many of you out there drive more than 130 miles a day? And if you did, no biggie – the portable charger that came with the car could be hooked up at your work and you could get yourself another 20 or 30 miles, probably. And it maybe cost $.25 cents a day to charge fully.

It was a great car. It’s a major shame GM scuttled the line. Yes, it was expensive to produce. It was years ahead of its time and really only appealed to a niche group of drivers back then. Today, this car would be radically popular.

I’m really looking forward to this film.

A surprising number of people checked in on me today to see how I was holding up following last night’s Clippers loss to the Phoenix Suns, which brought an end to their season. Really, I’m quite OK with it. The Clippers Game 5 loss, that double overtime thriller, was much harder to stomach than this one.

See, I didn’t really expect the Clippers to win Game 7. Sure, I had some hope, but I knew the veteran leadership and experience the Suns had was a huge advantage over the Clippers youth and inexperience. Yes, the Clippers easily could have won this series and gone onto the Western Conference Finals, but it was a long shot. They battled hard, though, and learned a lot.

How can I be disappointed when, for the first time in 16 years, the Clippers had the kind of game that forced me to go to a sports bar to watch the game? I wanted to be with other Clippers fans to watch this game and there were plenty at this crappy little sports bar by my house. For an organization that doesn’t have much in the way of history to be proud of, the fans certainly showed their support during these two series.

The Clippers have a lot to be proud of. They posted their best regular season record this year since moving to Los Angeles. They returned to the playoffs for the first time in nine years. They made it to the second round of the playoffs for the first time in 30 years. Their season was 17 days longer than their cross-hallway rivals the Lakers. The Clippers turned a lot of heads this season, created a whole new group of fans (I’m happy to have the band wagoners aboard), have elevated Elton Brand and Chris Kaman to celebrity status and much more. Never in the 16 years of being a Clippers fan have I seen a team with this much potential. Provided everything goes well in the offseason, and everyone stays healthy, the Clippers should be back better than ever next season and will be a series contender for the Western Conference Finals.

Am I sad today? No, not at all. Maybe a little disappointed, but not sad. No, today I’m real proud to call myself a Clippers fan … and I look forward to Dallas crushing those bastard Phoenix Suns! CANADIANS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO PLAY IN THE NBA!

Sorry, anger crept in for a second. I’m under control now.

Rocking out at the NoHo Arts Festival May 20th, 2006.