Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The One With Mr. Washington


As you all know, this weekend was a holiday (for some, and evidently a bitter point of contention for others). We celebrated President's day on or around George Washington's birthday, presumably because he was the first president and set the precedent for all other presidents after him and was an all-around good guy except that time it was totally his fault that the French and Indian war started. (Yeah, a little FF fun fact for you). 

Anywhoodle, Kyle and Nicole came to visit this weekend and it was really fun. I really wanted to go to a Revolutionary War re-enactment, but we didn't quite make it to that on time. We did, however, make it to Mt. Vernon in time to wish Mr. Washington a very-special-once-in-a-lifetime 277th birthday. 
We were waiting line outside of the mansion for the tour, and Kyle went around to investigate and see if he could locate Mr. Washington. He did, and reported back that there was a) no line, b) the actor playing Mr. Washington looked like he was using his real hair and c) was very serious and would not break character. 
I was really excited to go see him, so Nicole and I went over and creeped up on him and just sat down next to him in some chairs on the back porch of the mansion and didn't say anything. Mr. Washington asked us where we were from, and when we said Oregon, he said he did not know where that was, because of course he was in George Washington times and America stopped at the Ohio River. 
Essentially, it was probably the most awkward I have ever felt in all of my life (which is saying a lot, considering the amount of awkward situations I find myself in), and I am sure it was quite painful for Mr. Washington as well. I am not satisfied with the way that encounter went at all, and plan on studying my GW facts so that Nicole and I can give him a pop quiz the next time we visit him at his home. 
Ugh. 

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Trapped in the AOL vortex

Remember back in about 1996 when everyone had dial up AOL on their computers and it was so awesome to sign in with your screenname and chat with people. And then AOL evolved and it was more just chatting with people on your buddy list in high school and college and everything was rainbows and butterflies? Well, now I am an adult, and adults use gmail, and chat with their parents and friends and coworkers on gchat all day and it is all much more respectable. So today I decide to clean up my gmail inbox and had to delete some 600 emails from the last year or so that were no longer pertinent. I am down to 30 in my inbox and feeling pretty good about myself. 

As a curious individual I decided to see whatever happened with my AOL mail account. I logged on, and low and behold I had approximately 4,000 emails, dating all the way back to May 2006. All of the e-mails were complete junk, so I decided I better just cancel the account entirely and free up some space on the ol' AOL server...
First I looked in the AOL help section about canceling accounts. All they had in there was about canceling acounts that you pay for and converting them to free. I didn't even know that people still paid for AOL, and kind of felt like if they still did than maybe they didn't deserve to have free ones and were also possibly living in a cave and using their etch-a-sketch as a computer. No word on how to cancel your free account, so I went to google. All I could find was how hard it is to cancel and how you have to do it by phone, mail, or fax. I chose phone, because I am such a people person and love to dialogue with customer service representatives. I feel it adds a nice cultural aspect to my otherwise vanilla day. So, I call and spent about 10 minutes with a very polite automated menu system. Unfortunately, he cannot locate my account information and sends me to a "counselor" to help me...enter: Simon. 

Simon: Thank you for calling AOL, My name is Simon, how can I help you?
Me: I would like to cancel my AOL account.
Simon: I am very sorry to hear that, but certainly...what is your name?
Me: Ashley Joyce
Simon: Hi, can I call you Ashley today? Like I said before, my name is Simon.
Me: Yes. 
Simon: Great, now you mentioned that you wanted to cancel your account? Is this correct?
Me: Yep.
Simon: Ok, can you spell your AOL SCREEN name for me, one character at a time.
Me: (I really tried to enunciate because this is where the automated system got confused) A-S-H-A-N-N-E-2.
Simon: Hmm...you said A-S-H-A-N-N-E-Number 2?
Me: Correct.
Simon: Why do you want to cancel it? 
Me: Well, mostly on account of I haven't logged into it since 2006 and when I logged in today there were over 4000 junk emails and it is just ridiculous.
Simon: But you don't pay for it?
Me: No.
Simon: Then why do you care?
Me: Because I do not use it. 
Simon: Then just ignore it, don't even worry about it. 
Me: Oh, ok. 
Simon: I don't think it is even active. 
Me: There was a lot of junk mail.
Simon: Yeah, well, don't worry about it and just don't even go look at it. 
Me: Ok...
Simon: Well, it has been a pleasure helping you today. Good bye! 

No, no, Simon. The pleasure was all mine. 

I would like to make an observation about AOL's alleged spam filter. However it is not filtering my mail that well, considering I had 4000 junk mails in the inbox, and only 20 in Spam.