The Humboldt Park Alligator Saga bothers me and I’m not sure why

Earlier this week a friend shared a post on Facebook about an alligator discovered in the lagoon at Humboldt Park.  Uncle Ivars posts frequently about many bizarre and diverse things, usually ahead of the wave of things that go viral.  I shared it with the following:

Fucking gentrification. When I lived in Humboldt Park, no self-respecting crocodile or alligator would live anywhere near there.  Now they walking with their double strollers, sipping fish-flavored lattes and eating frog and avocado toast. All while causing property taxes to skyrocket for the old time residents.

My audience got a kick out of that.

But soon the media started to pay attention…….The alligator now has a name, Chance the Snapper, though I think Hector Smolinski would be more appropriate.  And two twitter accounts!  @HumboldtGator  and @HumboldtParkGator probably have more followers than I do as well.  People are going to the park to watch the hunt for Chance.  Maybe because the All-Star break is this week and there aren’t a lot of sports to watch?

I grew up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in the 70s, 80s and a bit of the 90s before moving as soon as I could afford a place of my own. Back then, I can tell you, there was nothing interesting or exciting about Humboldt Park.  Nothing that would make you make a special trip to the hood unless you had to be there.  We had crime, gangs, and drugs. Not as bad as many West Side neighborhoods but still. I recall in high school even my Hispanic friends who lived elsewhere were like

“You live where? No, I cannot give you a ride home but here’s some bus fare money.”

The park was actually one of the few bright spots back then. I spent hours after school exploring the park, including the lagoon, which by the way has a man-made island called Turtle Island.

It didn’t really look this pretty back in the day

Where was all this media attention when people when the neighborhood was struggling?

Maybe I’m just feeling a little Daoist and not knowing how this will turn out.  My mom still lives in the money pit crapshack house I grew up in.  The Four Horsemen of Gentrification have already started riding throughout the 606.  What if some developer decides that they really want to step up their game.  Maybe they offer my mom market value for her home.  Or maybe they go the bribe the aldercreature route and suddenly my mom is on a first name basis with the city inspector.  Who Knows.

By the way, it seems the borders of Humboldt Park have been shifted (thank you realtors) and it’s possible I was in West Town instead of Humboldt Park. Fuck that noise, as we use to say, it was Humboldt Park!
New Rule: If you live 2 blocks from a park that a neighborhood is named after, you are in that neighborhood.

 

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Letgo is the Tinder of furniture selling apps

In a pre-move effort, or at least an attempt to light a fire under our butts and look for a new house, We have made the decision to start getting rid of the clutter. This was before I had even heard of Marie Kondo and we aren’t getting rid of things that don’t give us joy so much as things that we just don’t want to take up valuable space in a moving truck.

To that end, I’ve started selling things on Letgo and FaceBook MarketPlace. At first, it was kinda a rush because I’d post something and get some immediate responses and sold things within a few days. Then things started to settle down. Maybe it was the oncoming Winter, or maybe it was the junk I was trying to unload.

People will contact you at the strangest hours

It seems that LetGo is Tinder for boring, old people! We have two small children in this house and as such, tend to go to bed early. So in the morning when I wake up (or at 3 am when the Insomnia Fairy strikes) I am astounded by all the late hour messages from different people  Thrift Saling at 1 am, probably coming down from a wine-and-no-dinner or vodka infused evening.

Especially on the weekends! Do these people have a few adult beverages and then start trolling MarketPlace looking for sweet deals on desks, sofas and that elusive Barrister Bookcase?

You will get ghosted

I’ll respond and sometimes the person writes back. But a lot of times they don’t. Even when they contact me during Normal Hours, we will chat for a bit and then suddenly silence. You can usually see it coming. The graceful ones look for an out: what are the measurements? Oh, that’s too big.

People will try to talk you down on your price no matter how low you go

Pricing is more art than science. No one wants your Pottery Barn sofa that you are discounting by $20 when they can just buy a new one that doesn’t have your ass crack residue on it.  At the same time, no one wants to go across town just to pick up an item for $5 unless it is hard to find, or unique in some other way.

Still, there are some people who will try to talk you down even though you are practically giving something away.

People will not leverage technology

Too often people will reach out to me, ask me about it, and then realize that we are 14568 miles apart. Yet LetGo  and Facebook MarketPlace have built-in mechanisms that will tell you approximately how far someone is from you.  So you don’t have to drive an hour just to pick up some item you could just order off Amazon for $10 more unless you happen to be in that area anyway.

Too often, someone contacts me interested in an item and then they realize we are too far away to make this work.  At the same time, I have sold two large pieces of furniture to people who have driven in from Indiana, so distance isn’t always a factor if you price it right.

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Summer of 99: When It all went to Hell

This time of year always brings me back to the Summer of 1999 when I experienced a terrible Series of Unfortunate Events.  I lost my job.  I broke my toe.  My roommate and I were not getting along.  I got mugged.  And I let someone special get away.

Hat tip to Nina Vallone of YouKnowKeen.  She inspired me to write this based on this post.  

It always works out in the end; if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end

Back in the day, before the Marathon Era of my life, I ate, slept and breathed Volleyball. I wasn’t tournament level good but I was decent enough. We use to play volleyball on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Lincoln Park.  We would play until the sun went down, then head to the bar. It was usually very late nights but I still managed to get home just before midnight and get enough sleep to make it through my mindbogglingly boring job as a paralegal the next day. At the start of summer the sun would still be out while we were finishing up the last games. But about this time next week or two, it would start getting a little darker as we finished our games.
Those were fun times but I don’t think I really ever appreciated them for what they were. I should have really just appreciated the fact that I was enjoying all the city had to offer.

“My life was a mess. I was breaking down who I had become. Knowing all too well, I was existing for the moment, living my life, hurried and worried.”

And it all came to a head on the Friday of July 19, 1999.  This was the day I got fired from my dead end job as a paralegal at Big Bucks Law Firm 1.0.  That morning started out on the wrong foot.  I was running late and as I entered the lobby, I ran into a former co-worker.  We hugged and did that thing were you try unsuccessfully to catch up on two years in 30 seconds.

Seeing her was a foreshadowing of things to come.

I don’t want to relive the dirty details of all the Unfortunate Events.  The broken toe meant I couldn’t  defend myself well against the muggers; the getting fired made me too embarrassed to call her back.    I was in G-school but couldn’t get a job in technology because I had neither a degree or experienced.  The irony of that is I wasn’t any smarter the day I got my diploma than the day before but we value that piece of paper, or at least we use to.

At the time, I felt like I was at the end of my rope.  And then I had my epiphany.  And then my Year of Hell, taking on student loans and 3 course per quarter so I could graduation within a year.  And a crappy job at a DotCom.  Things didn’t get better until they did.  And there were other special someones until there was The Special Someone.  And I learned not to be afraid of the Dark.

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Why I hate financial services online sites

Financial Services Technical Support….how may we piss you off today?

Like many people, I have two retirement accounts: the one at work because of matching funds and the one that is the culmination of past jobs’ 401K accounts that got transferred once the job terminated.

About once a quarter I attempt to log into my retirement online accounts to see how they are doing. I say attempt because I always lock myself out of my account because I have so many Fucking userids and passwords to remember.

Unlike normal online accounts, you only get 1-2 chances with Financial Services websites for some reason. Fat-finger a password and they lock you out.  And once you reset your password you can never use a previous one again in this lifetime.  I’m pretty sure if reincarnation is a thing, they won’t let you use the same one in the next lifetime either.

Incorrect information was entered in an attempt to log into your account. To protect your account, we have disabled online access to your account.
You can restore your online access by following the instructions the next time you access Benefits OnLine®. Or you can call at your plan’s toll-free number and authorize a representative to restore your access. We take your online security seriously and will notify you of any changes to your login information.

They sing the “for your security” song but it’s really to protect their ass from liability mitigate risk.  I’m sure there is some Federal Regulation that mandates this. To which I say have your fucking lobbyist make their congressional whores change it.

Sadly, there isn’t anything the average consumer can do about it. I have to continue using the work one for the matching contributions and they all are gonna be the same movie. So I’ll call customer support and reset my password to something I won’t remember next week, let alone next time the friendly email reminder about quarterly earnings comes in.  But I can refuse to buy any of their other expensive add-on services like Financial Planning or Wealth Management.

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Hey Alderman: Let the teenager sell me alcohol already!

Scene:  Me in a long line at Jewel.  My Super Power is the ability to always choose the slowest moving line.  If there are three registers open, no matter which one I pick, it will grind to a halt.

Finally it’s my turn and the young checkout clerk (what do they call them these days?) processes my order.  He gets to my booze and has to get someone who is 21 to push a button.

Yes that’s right, the checkout clerk is not empowered to push the button because he might do this for his underage friends who might want to buy alcohol while he’s working.  Like teenagers don’t have a million other ways to get alcohol and other gateway drugs.

We have to wait for eternity (usually a minute or two but that ONE time it was upwards of 5 minutes) for the one 21 year old dude on staff for such an occasion to walk over and press a button.  Sometimes its a older lady who I imagine ponders the exact sequence of events that lead to her working at a grocery store in her golden years.

I’m not one to shout the Nanny State Warcry, but still, it’s a little much.  We have soda taxes and plastic bag taxes and technically we card everybody even if it is obvious they served in World War I.

Maybe we could just program the registers to scan my driver’s license so we can avoid the 2-5 minute wait.  Or maybe we could just trust the kid.  I’ve heard that giving teenagers a little responsibility is a good thing.

 

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Groupon Customer Support Fail

The other day my wife sent me an email with a link to a Groupon Deal.  This deal was only available for customers who receive the promotional email directly from Groupon.  However, after purchasing the deal, Groupon prompted my wife to share the deal via email with her friends, hence her forwarding it to me.

I tried to access the deal and got the message about it only being for the chosen people, not the unwashed masses like myself.  But I thought I’d reach out to Customer Support just to check.   I explained what had happened as described above.

A few hours later I got the “but sir, you cannot purchase this deal unless God Groupon emails it directly to you.”  So I asked why they asked people to share the deal after they purchased it instead of disabling this feature.

A few days later I got this response:

Hi Michael,

Sorry for the trouble. This deal is only available for customers who receive the promotional email directly from Groupon. If you are trying to purchase the deal using a different account you will not be able to do so. If you did receive the promotional email, please be sure to use that same email address when making the purchase. Our apologies for any confusion.

If you have any further questions regarding this deal, please let me know! To expedite your request, please include or forward the original email you received.

Regards,
[name redacted by me]
Groupon Customer Support.

And then to add insult to cluelessness, they sent me a follow up “How would you rate the support you received”email.  I’ll give you three guesses how I filled it out and the first two don’t count!

At first glance it looks like a failure to communicate.  They are not understanding that my use case is different from the one their explanation applies.  But what’s really happening is Groupon likely gets so many support issues that they cannot take the time to parse through each one.  So they have some program that is probably picking up on keywords and spiting out scripted responses.

Either that or they have outsourced their support to someone who doesn’t quite understand English whose only job is to follow rules, stick to the script and leverage the experience and expertise that are embedded in the system.

Here’s the thing.  I can live without $10 off already cheap pizza, but I cut my teeth in Tech Support and cannot stand crappy customer service.  DO BETTER GROUPON!

 

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Who cares if Cursive Writing becomes Extinct?

 

I have always hated my manual writing.  Both my cursive and my printing suck (my writing sucks in many ways, but it is especially noticeable on the visual level).  I do take pen to paper now and again when taking notes or writing up the first draft of some writing opus.  But I usually very quickly switch to electronic writing whenever possible.  Cursive Penmanship makes me curse…But not as much as those who have to read my handwriting.

In school, I’m sure it often dinged me a few points on any written assignment.  I suspect my hatred of handwriting came about because I was one of those people who should write with their Left hand but was prematurely converted to a Righty.

But therein lies the problem with handwriting:    No two people do it the same way.  Some people have lovely penmanship, their todo lists belong in the Smithsonian.  Others have crappy writing as if they are on an Optometrist’s payroll.  Then there are people whose writing cannot be discerned at all, see doctors.

Luckily I was born in the Era of Word Processors with computers putting typewriters out of a job.  In college, I was able to type out many of the letters I wrote to friends in the computer lab.  I still had to print them and snail mail like a caveman but it was a start.  I was actually too ahead of my time as friends lamented that I used the same template for all my letters.

Cursive Writing had its function once upon a time.  Being able to write legibly and clearly so that other people could easily read your handwriting was a necessary skill, at for those who could read and write.  But that time has passed.  cursive writing came about because in the early history of our species we didn’t have iPhones!  No one writes in hieroglyphics or Sanskrit anymore and humankind seems to be muddling along okay.

People lament that penmanship and calligraphy are becoming lost arts.  So the fuck what?  We have machines to do this stuff for us now.

In researching this post I read all the internet about cursive writing so you don’t have to and the arguments for it can be summed up as:

1.  Good penmanship helps to teach kids discipline and develop the fine motor skills needed for other tasks in life;
2. Being able to sign important documents with a unique signature to prove it was YOU that signed them;
3. How are we going to be able to read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence?

I’m sure we can find other ways to teach kids motor skills and it certainly doesn’t seem like anyone is reading The Constitution lately amirite?  And when it comes to my signature, not only is it never the same way twice but I usually half-ass it and write a squiggle for most of it.

 

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9 things that annoyed me this week

While I wish I could lead a more easy-going, zen lifestyle, I’m just not wired that way.  I often get annoyed at the most trivial things and even if I ignore them to the best of my ability, they seem to become cumulative.  I miss a turn light  I could totally have made had it not been for the first guy staring at his phone and letting precious seconds of our too short traffic signal waste away.  I miss my train because someone couldn’t walk on the single row escalator at the El platform.  Or I do make the train but had to settle for the crowded last car filled with everyone else who had to walk behind someone who had all the time in the world to catch his train so he watched his phone instead.

Maybe the answer for me is simply blowing off steam and venting my spleen.  Here are 9 things that pissed me off just this last week:

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Three valuable Friendship Lessons

Stop me if I’ve written about this before…or just read anyway.  Recently a friend reached out to me about Mutual_Friend who was being a twatcycle to them.  I listened for about 20 seconds before interrupting:  “oh sorry to hear, I’m sure it will work itself out.”

If you don’t know me, that’s not that kind of thing I usually say.  I’m usually a good listener when friends want to vent.  That’s a 100% US Grade A Choice blow off remark.  But I had to use it and I think my friend got the point, though they probably have no idea why I used it.

The thing is, some time ago, Mutual_Friend was being a twatcycle to me.  And Friend wasn’t exactly sympathetic to my situation.  I guess it didn’t occur to them that if Mutual_Friend was being a twatcycle to me, Mutual_Friend could do the same to them.

Lesson:  you don’t necessarily have to take a side when a friend vents about a mutual friend, but you do have to listen and offer some empathy.

They say You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them.—from The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm

Another friend reached out to me because he is trying to rent his condo in the West Loop.  He asked me to forward his link to the apartment.  In the days before Facebook that would have been a blast email to my address book.  Today that is either cutting and pasting a link or hitting the share button.

Any of these are help I can provide from the comfort of my couch yet I’m not compelled to do any of them.  Because when I was trying to sell my condo, this friend was not among the 6 people who shared the listing.

To be sure, I have no illusion that forwarding a link to a reality listing on FB is going to yield a buyer.  But what it does is show your friend that you care enough about them to generate the warm fuzzies by doing something that won’t benefit you in the slightest but earns you potential brownie points in the future.

People will post cat videos and share stupid statuses that are so fake, Snopes sheds a tear every time someone searches for it, but they won’t do something like sharing your news unless it benefits them in some direct way.

Lesson:  pay it forward, especially if the level of effort is so minimal you can literally do it from the comfort of your couch.

Finally, I have been skipping some social events and using Moose and Squirrel as an excuse.  Most of these are hard to make but there are a few that I could have sucked it up and made it to.  But with most of the hosts, I have over a decade of history where they skipped my dog’s birthday party but insisted I come to their cat’s wedding.  years of last-minute cancellations or not wanting to travel to my far off where the brown line goes to die neck of the woods.

Lesson: If you want people to care about your “cat’s wedding” you have to care about their “dog’s birthday party.”

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When History repeats itself, it’s an opportunity to take the other path

Like most people, I periodically clean out the friends list on the ole Book of Faces, removing people who don’t interact with me,  log in very often or not make one of the Bucket Criteria.  In general I’m unfriending people that don’t fit one of the criteria for being a friend/connection on FB.  I discovered doing that breaks the FB algorithms and I see more of my active friends stuff.

I guess I was caught by surprise that anyone would reach out to me to confirm if I unfriended them.    Sidenote: is it unfriend or defriend?  hypen or no?  Discuss in the comments.

It probably seemed arbitrary to TGC that I un-friended them.  So why would I unfriend TGC but keep TG or FG who I know from the same circle?  Well FG and I have a common thing now as we are both parents of twin toddlers.  That is a connection.  Plus he was one of the few attorneys at BigName Law Firm 1.0,  that treated me like a human being.  TG was always a decent person to me and even came to one of my house parties back in the day.

TGC on the other hand didn’t always treat me like an equal.  In 2000 or 2001 or so, while working for the No-Name Software Company, I was a training class around the corner from where we use to work.  I emailed to see if TGC was free for lunch and if it was no trouble to meet.  TGC accepted my invitation but asked if SM could join because SM only worked part time at that point and would also be in the office that day.

Being the naive inclusive person I was, I said sure.  But that was a mistake becuase after 5 minutes of catching up on my latest and greatest life unlocking achievements, TGC and SM started talking about things that didn’t’ include me and made no effort to bring me into their conversations.  And the thing is, it’s not like TGC and SM didn’t hang out already.  They probably could have had this same conversation over drinks that evening or the next day that SM was working downtown or  they could have been less rude and brought me into the conversation somehow.  It was truly a case of why the fuck did we bother?

After that I never emailed TGC again and I only connected on FB because that’s what everyone was doing back in 2008.

After I explained to TGC my motivation for culling my friends list, they wrote back “That’s too bad. I enjoyed seeing pics of your kids and cute family. Take care.”

Talk about not getting it.  Let me translate:  “That’s too bad.  I enjoyed putting no effort into maintaining our relationship or acknowledging any of your Life Event Unlocking Moments, but when the fancy struck me I enjoyed being able to jump on FB and see your kids.”

News Flash: I already that with my Friends That Really Matter.  In other words, you’re not offering me anything I already don’t have but are expecting something from me.  Seriously?  Even a dog expects to be fed.  You don’t have to wish me happy birthday or High Five me for unlocking every Life Achievement, but over the course of a year, I’d expect some acknowledgement that I exist and have value.

About that History Repeating Itself Thing:

A similar thing happened recently at an event that reunited me with many from the No-Name Software Company.  Someone else I thought was a friend decided that it was better to spend the company dime on catching up with a friend they just spent the last weekend with and will likely spend some time with in the near future instead of sucking it up and talking to me for 30 minutes during the dinner portion of the event — even after promising that we would do so and I burned one of my rare hall passes to be out instead of home putting my kids to bed.  Yes technically it was my decision to stay out but it was influence by a promise someone apparently never intended to fulfill.

I did not wait 8 years to unfriend that one.

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