Rants

/ Don

Who Drank the Kool-Aid?

Who Drank the Kool-Aid?Yesterday, I took a train to Manhattan to stand among my peers and watch the election results come in. This was the same ritual I performed four years previous—and four years before that—to hear the roar each time the blue strip edged closer to the fated 270.

Last night at 2am, I left Rockefeller Plaza struggling to identify an ache inside me that I hadn’t felt in almost a decade. I kept asking my brother: “how could we be so deluded?” His response was that we weren’t the ones that were deluding ourselves. I understand what he meant, of course. Despite Hillary winning the popular vote, just as Al Gore had in 2000, she didn’t win the election. But this wasn’t the delusion I was feeling. Read more

/ Don

AT&T Next Hustle

AT&T Hustle

This past weekend, on a trip to see my girlfriend’s family for Father’s Day, my phone was stolen. Or lost, perhaps. I really don’t know how it came to be out of my possession, but it really doesn’t change the fact that I was without a phone. In truth, I’d planned on upgrading my Apple iPhone 5, anyway, as I’d been out of contract for a few months. However, despite the manufacturer’s planned obsolescence and my excitement for new-fangled gadgetry, I still couldn’t see myself upgrading unless I absolutely needed to. I despise contributing to the e-waste problem and conspicuous consumption and teetered on the fence between keeping the phone and turning it in to AT&T for a paltry exchange payment. Read more

/ Don

A Typical Friday Night at Hometown Bar-B-Que

Tumbleweed

This Halloween, I found myself crossing two rivers by PATH, subway, and bus, to attend the jungle-themed party of a sustainable furniture studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The venue was fantastic. And while the party, libations, costumes, energy, and attendees were stocked in excess, the food was not. It was then that we remembered the massive, metal barbecues that we passed, one lot east of us. The smokers belonged to Hometown Bar-B-Que, he said. And though the lot had been rented to prepare the meat, they didn’t have any to sell.

Strike One.

I walked back to the party, dejected, and spoke with Dan, my host. He said that they had to use Eventbrite for ticket reservation because the previous year yielded unprecedented numbers. This year, they decided to cap the list at 650 attendees before declaring the party sold out. He then fished me and my friends a craft beer from the ice tub, and ladled a hearty serving of jungle juice for my date.

I wasn’t going to last long with this guy offering me free, hoppy beers all night. I returned to the entrance and Googled Hometown Bar-B-Que. Mitchell answered. Read more

/ Don

Optimum Online v. Verizon FiOS

Ever since FiOS lines were installed in Hoboken, Verizon has been fairly aggressive about getting people to switch over from Optimum. They were in the middle of a massive lawsuit that year—over a free flat-screen TV offer, phone bill cramming, pension cases, or something…who can keep track?—and they still had people going door-to-door at least once a month. Read more