Soon to be a Second Class Sprint Citizen

I’ve been a happy Sprint customer for years, even though every time I go to my home town of Prescott AZ, until a couple months ago, they didn’t even have 3g service. Being such a good customer I was eligible for the Sprint Premier program with let me upgrade my primary device every 12 months and it was just recently that they got any devices that challenged the other networks.

12 months roll around, if there was a decent device, I would upgrade. Starting April 1st, the Premier program turns into a Gold and Silver Sprint Premier tiered program. Gold, stays the same, upgrade each year, Silver, you can upgrade after 22 months. For my demographic with a shared plan at 149ish a month, I fall into the middle of the Silver plan and the only way to get to Gold is to up my bill over the 169.99 hump. As of today, I’m eligible for an upgrade but if I wait till next month, I’ll have to wait an additional 9 months. If you’re a Sprint customer and are interested in all of the numbers and facts, go here.

So my hand is forced. With much arm twisting, I am the owner of a very sleek Samsung Epic. I’m justifying this because my Samsung Moment tended to lock up and crash whenever I was trying to do something important and honestly say, Sprint made me do it. Still a bit urked about the two tier system, I like the fact that Sprint was always the cheaper choice, while I’m glad that I fell into that window, I feel bad for all of the folk who didn’t.

Now, hopefully Sprint doesn’t take away my Premier card because I posted this but someone had to say it.

Also, I'm a little worried about the news story about Sprint might be switching to LTE instead of Wimax considering I just picked up a 4g phone and I'll be stuck with it an extra 10 months (not that I have 4g in Lemoore but still..)

An ode to my ex wife and son…

Saint Patrick’s day holds a special day in my heart, you see my son was conceived today 14 years ago while I was on a weekend trip to Arizona visit my friends for a Saint Patrick’s day party and hook up with who is now my ex-wife. Back when I was younger, a 370 mile drive on a two day weekend wasn’t that big of a deal and bonus, I was going to be hooking up finally with this mystery girl who had been popping in and out of my life for years. Little did we know, that night would affect the rest of our lives forever.

Back when we were both still in high school, I had kissed her one night in the street outside of her house and jokingly told her we would make cute kids because she had a long straight nose and mine was all squished in (our son did turn out very cute). Then a couple days later, I broke it off and I went off to prom with another girl named Heather (no not my new wife and sorry Lisa, that was very assholish of me) and we didn’t see each other for years then we would hit off meeting in some parking lot or at the store or camp. She was like a bolt from the blue, just showing up where I was at.

Someone wanted us to hook up or else we wouldn’t have kept running into each other like that, I knew she wasn’t stalking me and believe me, I wasn’t stalking her either. Then that Saint Patrick’s weekend came about and a couple weeks later I get a phone call where she tells me, I think I’m pregnant and my prophesy came true, we had a cute kid.

She was pregnant and we were young and decided get married without even really knowing each other. The first four years at El Toro were great, we had cool friends and it was like a honeymoon then I picked out orders to China Lake without asking her (dumb) and that was the turning point where all of the loose ties that bound our marriage together unraveled.

We both did a bunch of dumb things, said hateful words and our divorce was so rough that I got out of the navy and ran away to Phoenix to do something totally different with my life. Advice for all of you people getting divorces out there? Think before you spew out the hate that’s inside of you, venting out all of that garbage might make you feel better for a minute but when you want to hang out with your child on some special day and your ex says no way, you’ll regret ever saying it. All it does is escalate the tension, the only thing that really worked on our bitterness is moving on and time. I’m glad it’s over, having the taste of anger and hate in my mouth made me crazy.

These days, I couldn’t be happier with my ex, she’s a great mom, she’s remarried since to someone who suits her better and has another child. Collin gets along great with his step dad and thinking back now, it’s been years since we’ve had an argument.

I wonder where our lives would be at now Lisa, if we had never met that one weekend?

Something new in the air

In one corner, the United States is taking part in a conference of Iraqi neighbors which included Syria and Iran. I think this is a fairly big deal considering our government hasn’t talked to Iran in decades. If you think about it, I’m surprised that our government is ran by men considering it’s usually a woman who can hold a grudge better (no this isn’t sexist!). We’re known for not talking to governments for years because at some spat in the past they blackened our eye somehow. That’s something a woman would do, most guys would get over it and be drinking beer together by the next weekend.

Back on the subject, in the other corner look what’s happening in North Korea. We’ve actually been involved in peace talks with them along with other nations and there’s an agreement in the works. The US accusing them of counterfeiting a while back (which is probably true) and locked down one of their bank accounts with the money in it so foreign banks were afraid to invest and since then, North Korea has been pissed. Do you know how much money it took to ratchet up the entire region to the brink of war? Fraking 24 million dollars! That’s a drop in the bucket of any defense budget, that’s not even the price of an F-16.

While the military is fighting on the ground, in the stratospheres of government, the powers that be seem to be using diplomacy to wage peace all over the place. I haven’t really seen anyone out there really putting a connecting to the two cases but is something going on? I’m totally pro-military but wouldn’t have a single problem with peace braking out and we all get to spend Christmas at home with our families. Even so, I don’t agree with the idea that we should totally pull out of Iraq. Most of the Marines I’ve talked to think Iraq is the next Okinawa, the place you go to do your 6 month deployment. Keep the bases, most of them are in the middle of no-where, we’ve already stamped them, built them up and they are fairly safe. Why throw away that money, I hate wasting money but the idea that we should pull totally out is just that, wasting money. Most of the service members who die, die going around the countryside either by helicopter, foot or truck. Taunt the bad guys and let them go after these bases so when we wax them, there won’t be any talk about us hurting civilians.

Whatever happens with these two peace processes going on, I don’t want to go back to a peace time military footing without Osama’s head sitting on a platter somewhere.

I'm actually part of that 6 percent

This is a poll that Glenn Reynolds ran on Instapundit on the 6th of November,

Selection Votes
Republicans win both houses 61% 3,850
Republicans win one, Democrats the other 34% 2,145
Democrats win both houses 6% 349
6,344 votes total

It gives you sort of a demographic about his readers, I don't think he agreed with them though, I was just reading the signs. Lots of small issues over the last few weeks, months and years adding up.