For a while now, I’ve needed a new phone. My old phone was stable, and it worked, but it was getting older, and was pretty beat up, and quickly becoming out-dated. So I’ve been shopping around for a while, looking for deals, but have been hesitant to pull the trigger, until just recently.

A couple of weeks ago, while at work, one of my co-workers, Andre, pointed out a phone that he had found on Buy.com. It was a Motorola MPX220, and it was the same phone that he had. The phone had a retail price of $459, but Buy.com was selling it for $299.99, and including $300 dollars worth of rebates if the buyer would sign up for a two year agreement with Cingular. Since my service agreement with Sprint is month to month, and getting a phone of that quality for free was simply to good to pass up, I bought it. And that’s where everything that eventually went wrong over the last two weeks began.

I purchased the new phone on February 10th, and what happened after that was a series of blunders, mishaps and screwups that were so blatant they were seemingly intentional. It’s all funny to me now, but to appreciate my anger and frustration during the series of events that I’m about to describe, please remember that I’m planning to leave for Vermont on Monday, and my cell phone is the only phone that I have, and thus, vitally important to me for both business and personal reasons.

After a few small problems in processing my wireless service order with Cingular, my phone was finally shipped on February 17th, a week after I had purchasaed it. While I thought that odd, I didn’t worry too much, because I did have to answer a few questions for them wile they were processing my order. So it took a little longer than I thought it would, no big deal.

However, the next morning when I checked the tracking number for the phone, the real problems began. I noticed that the package had started in Maryland, and was now in Lexington, KY. In doing a lot of online purchasing, I know that Lexington is sort of a hub for UPS packages, sort of like Memphis would be for FedEx. As I watched it the rest of the day, I realized that it was going to my firm’s office in Jackson. I called our receptionist, to let her know that it would probably be there Monday morning, and to decide whether she should just receive the package and then send it to me, or whether she should refuse the package, so I could then have UPS reroute it. She asked the UPS delivery man this question when he dropped of the firm’s afternoon deliveries, and he said it would be easiest to refuse it, and then reroute it.

I didn’t think about the package all weekend, and on Monday morning I checked online to see the shipping information, and saw where it had already been refused by the receptionist. I called UPS and told them that I wanted the package rerouted to my home address. The woman that I spoke with at UPS proceeded to tell me that since the package had been refused, it was being sent back to the shipper, and that I would have to take it up with them and have them resend it to the correct address. At this point I was livid, because I had initially just wanted our receptionist to resend the package to me, but had decide to go the other route ON THE ADVICE OF SOMEONE FROM UPS. I yelled, I screamed (and those who know me know this is a big deal, I don’t ever do that) but the woman on the phone didn’t care, and I promptly hung up on her mid-sentence.

I called the wonderful help line at Buy.com next. Buy.com is one of those great companies that out sources all of their customer services to third world countries like India and Pakistan, and so I spent about 30 minutes describing my problem to someone who I couldn’t understand, and to someone who couldn’t understand me. Once she finally figured out what I was saying, she told me to call Buy.com’s wireless customer service line.

I could describe the call to the wireless customer service line now, but it would just really be easier for me to tell you to read the above paragraph one more time, and you’ll get the idea. She told me to call Buy.com’s regular customer service line. This went back and forth for about 2 hours, and finally someone with the wireless customer service line told me that they’d cancel my previous order, and reorder me the phone and ship it to the correct address.

At that point, Andre and I went to lunch. While at lunch, though, the Buy.com wireless customer service line called me back to tell me that they didn’t have my phone in stock, and so they would have to either wait until the phone was returned to ship it, or to send me another phone. I yelled a little bit more, and then told them I would call them back and let them know what to do a little later. All this was happening with me knowing that I had to have this phone by Monday, Feb. 28th (tomorrow), because I was leaving for Vermont.

When I got back from lunch I made one last desperate phone call to UPS. I was finally put in touch with someone who actually seemed to give a damn about helping a customer with their problem, and so a solution was reached. I was told that while they still would not be able to reroute my package, they would be able to send it back to it’s original destination. I told them to go ahead and do that.

My next move was to call my firm’s office again, and tell them to expect the package, and to accept it when it arrived. When I called, I found out that the normal receptionist had needed to leave early that afternoon, and wouldn’t be back. I said that was fine, and asked if they would accept the package, and send it to me the next day. They said that was fine. With that, I was done for the day.

I checked the tracking information the next morning (Tuesday, Feb. 22nd) and saw that the package had been received at the office. So I called to see if they had sent it to me yet. I found out that in actuality, the normal receptionist had arrived at the office that morning, seen the package, and, not being privy to the previous afternoons events, had refused it again, and sent it back with the UPS delivery man AGAIN. So I told her I would have it sent back, and to receive it and to send it to me when she did. She received the package, AGAIN, and sent it to me that afternoon. The package was sent overnight, and was waiting for me at Andre’s house when I got there on Wednesday morning. With that the whole ordeal was over.

Except that it wasn’t. As I opened the box, and went through the phone information, and the order summary, I noticed that I had been given a new number, a number with an area code that I didn’t recognize, instead of having my current number transferred with me. In summary, I had a phone, with service in Alexandria, Virginia, that was shipped to Jackson, Mississippi, and that was given a Peoria, Illinois phone number. This order couldn’t have been screwed up any worse if they had tried. After spending most of Wednesday on the phone with Cingular, trying to get the phone in working order, and by late afternoon, I had succeeded.

I’m always being presented with different deals or special offers by Andre or other coworkers or friends. “Hey, sign up for this service, you can get this deal”, someone will say. Or, “hey, they have a special offer on these, I know you said you had wanted to get one”, another person will say. I’m always hesitant about these things, and I always catch hell for it. Well, listen people, this shit is why. Things like this always happen to me, it never fails. So the next time you see some special deal or offer, and you think I might like it, and you think you should let me know about it, just don’t. I don’t want to fucking hear about it.

Let them screw with some other poor asshole. Thanks.

What is it with the older generation and technology? What is it that they’re having trouble getting about the whole deal? While I was in Mississippi over Thanksgiving, I had three series of events occur that absolutely blew my mind…

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when I woke up, I did so to the slightly irritated voice of a less than happy stepmother, “Did you do something to the phone last night, Matt? It’s not working this morning.” Of course it had to be me. Nobody else could have done it right? I finally got out of bed and began stumbling around their house, trying to find the origin of the voice that had just awoken me. As Joann walked out of the upstairs office and down the stairs, she added, “the computer isn’t working either. I hope you haven’t really broken something, Matt.” I sauntered into the office myself, without a word. I suppose in a roundabout way it was sort of my fault, really, in the same way that it would be your fault if you put a bb gun in a 12 year old’s hand and he promptly shot his sister in the ass with it. Or something. The night before, during a very bad thunderstorm, I had been on the computer when Dad and Joann had told me to turn them off and to come downstairs, to huddle in a hallway closet while a thunderstorm passed over. More specifically, at the time I had been on MY computer, after having pulled the cable connecting their computer to their cable modem from the back of their machine and plugged it into mine. Upon turning the computers off, I had put my computer in my room, leaving the cable dangling in the office. So Joann walked int the office on Wednesday morning, wanting to use the computer, and in attempting to do so, promptly plugged the cable into the wall outlet. Screwing up both the computer and phone services. And then blaming it on me.

On Wednesday night, we were planning on having Thanksgiving dinner, with my Dad, Joann, my grandmother, my sister, her boyfriend and myself all attending. Joann wanted to watch a television program that was going to be on in the middle of dinner, and asked that Dad and I tape it for her. That afternoon we were attempting to do so, but having problems. After checking out their setup, I suggested that maybe the cable was running straight from the digital cable box to the television, and never running through the VCR. “I can fix it by doing this and this, ” I said as I showed him the solution. “No, no, I don’t want you to mess anything up, I’ll just call the guy that set the whole thing up and see if he can come out and look at it.” This was at 5:30, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled”, I thought to myself. Well, the unfortunate man answered the phone, and while he wasn’t willing to come to the house, he was able to tell my Dad how to fix the problem over the phone. And do you know what the man told him? THE EXACT SAME THING I HAD. So we end up doing what I initially said we should have done, and by the end of the process, I am so frustrated that I just have to ask, “Dad, why don’t you just get the digitial cable box with the built in digital video recorder? You can record whatever you want, whenever you want, by pushing one button, and it’s only like ten bucks more a month.” His reply? “What’s that? I’ve never even heard of that.”

On Thanksgiving night, after a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my mom’s house, she asked me to go takea look at her computer to see if I could do something to fix it. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, but she knew it wasn’t quite right. Turns out the reason that the computer was running slow when she was on the internet was because she was using a dial-up connection. An MSN dial-up connection to be exact. I told here that it would be much faster and easier to use if she would just switch to cable internet service. She didn’t think she knew how, and asked me if I would do it for her. (Sidenote: she called me the other night asking for directions on how to work her DVD player. The one that I bought her for Christmas last year, and that she finally had someone hook up in September. Sheesh.)

So my question is, why are they like that? I have my own theories. I believe that ignorance breeds fear, and the older generation is simply ignorant of most new technology. But why? It’s not as if all of this stuff was invented to make our lives harder. It’s not like the pretty, shiny machines want to hurt them. I just don’t get it. But I do ask this of you. Please, help the old people understand.

Late last week, former Ole Miss Rebel quarterback Eli Manning, the first pick in last spring’s NFL draft, signed a contract with the New York Giants. There was nothing really out of the ordinary about the deal, except for the fact that it was worth $54 million dollars over 7 years, including $20 million dollars in signing bonuses. The signing bonus was the highest ever for a rookie in the NFL, and the second highest of all time, behind only the $34 million dollar signing bonus that Eli’s big brother, Peyton, received for resigning with the Indianapolis Colts earlier in the year. So yeah, the family is doing alright.

As staggering as the amount was, it got me to thinking. What in the hell does someone do with $20 million dollars? I mean, even being a single guy in New York, there are only so many cars you can buy, or so many trips to Scores you can make, before it gets old. Right? What would you do with that money? What would I do? Well, I sat down and made a list, and here’s what I came up with (in no particular order):

• A 2004 Hummer, H2 SUT, Black, customized by the West Coast Customs crew from Pimp My Ride: 85,000
• A Vegas Trip, with all the works (hotel suite, gambling, strip clubs, shows, buffets, Bunny Ranch) including a $1,000,000 hand of blackjack on the last day: 1,250,000
• A lifetime supply of Sonic chili cheese dogs and frito pies: $2,500,000
• A private concert for me and my closest friends by The Who: $450,000
• A Private Suite in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium: $750,000
• Pirate’s Cove Island, Florida Keys: 5,200,000
• Ronco Showtime Rotisserie Grill, Set it and Forget it!: $225
• Aston Martin V-12 Vanquish, fully stocked: 220,000
• 25,000 bottles of Basil Hayden Bourbon @ $40: 1,000,000
• 57 lap dances at Platinum Plus, Memphis, TN: $2,280
• Houses in Oxford, MS, Alexandria, VA, New Orleans, LA, and Palm Springs, CA: $3,500,000
• Honus Wagner baseball card: 1,265,000
• A Pony: $10,000
• 10 Tickets each to the Sugar Bowl, Super Bowl, College World Series, World Series, NBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four: $70,000
• An RV to take on roadtrips to the Sugar Bowl, Super Bowl, College World Series, World Series, NBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four: $80,000
• A little walking around cash: 2,000,000
• An evening with 1997 Playboy Playmate of the year Victoria Silvstedt: $1,000,000
• Grand Total: $19,382,505

So there you have it. I think it’s a pretty complete list, and I hope that if it ever finds its way to Eli, that he will be able to use it to make some tough decisions about what to do with his $20 million. And yes, I realize that I didn’t spend all of the money, and I really don’t care. I’d probably just blow the rest of it, anyways.

I hate weddings. Everybody always talks about how weddings are a great place for single girls and single guys to hook up, because they’re all in the same place, and they’ve all got the idea on their minds. Well you know what? Bullshit. The kind of girl I want to meet doesn’t have marriage on her mind, at least not right now. And I can probably meet her in a bar, without having to put on a suit and tie, and without having to sit through a long quiet boring ceremony to do so. “But there’s dancing, and drinking and celebrating and good times all around”, you say. You call that a wedding ceremony? I can do all that at Thursday night happy hour. At least at happy hour, girl’s dresses aren’t’ lavender, or made of taffeta, and they’re much, much shorter (the dresses, not the girls).

I have to go to two weddings in the next two weeks. While I do hate that my friends want me to drive to Poughkeepsie, NY this weekend and fly and drive to Natchez, MS next weekend, I do at least appreciate that they had the good taste to choose women who knew better than to have their weddings during football season. If you want to be picky about it though, there is always something going on that a wedding will interrupt. For instance, this weekend, the SEC baseball tournament is going on. I’m not saying that it’s more important than a friend’s eternal happiness, but it’s close. There’s really only one weekend out of the whole year that is good for weddings, anyway, so if you have two friends get married in the same year, you’re shit out of luck anyway.

I also don’t understand why there is so much happiness at a wedding. Don’t get me wrong, for the bride and the groom, it’s probably going to be one of the happiest days of their lives. Well, for about half of them at least. But really, think about everyone else. The parents of the bride are out a boatload of cash for the wedding and the reception. The parents of the groom are out a slightly smaller boatload of money for the reception, and possibly the honeymoon, if they’re feeling generous. The bride’s friend’s are upset because the entire afternoon is nothing but a constant reminder of how utterly single they still are. The groom’s friends are pissed off because they know that they’ve just lost a really good drinking buddy (or at least someone who will split the tab). Married people don’t hang out with single people. Single people go to bars to drink beer and eat buffalo wings and to talk about sex. Married people go to restaurants and sip wine with their meals and talk about when they’re going to have babies. For the love of God. This upsets single people. If anything, it’s all that being upset that causes people to hook up with each other at weddings. Hmm….Bring on the depressed chicks!

April 15th. A dark day for our nation. Tax Day. Being an accountant though, it doesn’t bother me so much. I actually kind of want to go by a post office later today and watch people scramble up the steps to stuff their mismatched papers and scrap like receipts into that blue box. There are three questions that I do get a lot around tax season though, and I’ve decided to answer them right here, for everyone:

1. Yes, I am an accountant
2. No, I will not do your taxes for you.
3. Because that’s not what I do, that’s why.

Seriously, people, quit asking. I don’t want to explain to you why you can’t just “write off” your truck because you use it to drive to work. I don’t want to have to answer questions about why the Holy House of Shoes & Purses isn’t a charitable organization, and therefore all the money you’ve spent there isn’t deductible. I can give you one piece of advice. www.TurboTax.com. Use it. Live it. Learn it. Love it.