Products that Just Don't Work Anymore

I had been a subscriber to the Chicago Tribune for 22 years. I had been happy, then less happy, then unhappy. The dumbing down of newspapers that began many years ago with the USA today has now become the standard. I still read the Wall Street Journal every day. At least they write with some intelligence. The other issue is the ubiquitous Internet. I read way more stories on the Internet than any newspaper can give me other than the Wall Street Journal. The reporting has become biased and unreliable as well. I used to get the New York Times and still will buy it on Sundays but it as a newspaper is now a badly written propaganda arm of the left wing.

The Chicago Tribune has become a left wing newspaper as well. So, this week I said goodbye to it. It no longer is readable. All pictures, graphs, big headlines, badly written charts, summaries and incomplete stories. It is far less informative the big life magazine sized children's publication I used to get when I was a kid.

SO, the Chicago Tribune is a goner in the Redlin House.

Sam Zell bought it and tried to turn it around. He didn't. Bu Bye.

Verizon Wireless. You know the commercial. The network. The Geek like guy and his posse. But, it seems like there must be too many of them to go a lot of places I do. My dad always said that if a product or a company has a weakness, they advertise it more to offset the weakness. It's true. Verizon's weakest link is it's network. They don't much care that I couldn't drive down I-39 and lose signal several times, that I could drive down IL 47 and have it drop off the edge of the earth, that driving one mile from my home in St Charles have no signal, and that in my own basement have no signal at all. I guess that bunch of network guys and the geek don't follow me into the basement.

I complained to Verizon. Kept telling them that the system was weak. They denied it and insisted I was wrong. Mistaken. Cranky. Yet other people with other services didn't seem to have my problem. Calling the Verizon help line only led to people trying to sign me up for an additional two years. That what I needed was a new phone.

So, I have said goodbye to Verizon after 13 years. I had a huge phone when I started. Brick.

I have "Upgraded" several times. But this was too much. The system just doesn't work any more. They told me at Verizon that the reason I was losing calls is too many people were using the network. Traffic.

Waaa.

I'm tired of Verizon hosing me so I switched to US Cellular. I have had it for a week. Not ONE dropped call. Not ONE blank spot.

So, Bu Bye Verizon.

Some products, even though I have used them for a long time, just don't work anymore.