Ingredients...

...for a good time. (for starters)

Text Spam

I got a new cellphone for the massage business. The idea was to provide a separate number that would provide clean boundaries between my personal life, my engineering life and this new massage business, while also providing a separate voicemail where I could provide more business information than I would on my own cellphone.

And so far, I've received 2 voicemails in some slavic language (I think it's Russian, but I'm not entirely too sure), 1 voicemail that was a recording selling loans, 1 voicemail from a live person trying to sell ads for the WeeklyDig. And today, I got a text message for some loan website.

Up until the last one has just been an annoyance. I try to check the voicemail on a regular basis, and actually spending the time to listen to a junk message just wastes my time. The text message however, costs me money, since I don't pay the flat rate to send or receive them. (I find that the flat rate has so far always exceeded the expense of paying on a message by message basis.) Sure, it's only 10 cents a message, but it's 10 cents I never should have had to pay in the first place.

I called Verizon Wireless about it, and basically there's nothing they can do. It's some "Premium Message" that apparently originates off the internet that they have no control over. (I really hope that means that it costs them money.) The customer service rep told me I could reply with a message to unsubscribe, but I'm a bit confused since I never subscribed to any messages in the first place. I don't even really use this phone.

The concern, of course, is that if I don't unsubscribe, I'll get more messages. But if I do unsubscribe, that unsubscribe message is also going to cost me money. And worse, I wonder if, as with Spam, you respond to one of these spam messages, they then know the line is "live" and they'll put me on a list that that will receive more messages from different addresses from the same unscrupulous spamming "marketing" company or sold to other spammers.

Fuck. I swear, the assholes make it really hard to have a kind and compassionate attitude towards the world sometimes.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Wedding Present from the MBTA

We thought it was bad enough when we discovered that the MBTA had closed the Arlington Station Entrance and exits for renovations through 2008. It happens to be the station closest to our wedding venue. Thankfully people can still use the Berkeley entrances, but it's a slightly longer walk, and doesn't open up right at the public garden. But at least people will still be able to use the station.

Today, JBar forwarded this gem published on the Globe's local news site:

Summer repairs on Green Line will halt D branch trains
"The shutdown will commence on June 23, 2007*."

Great, thanks guys.

At least there are supposed to be bus shuttles and extra express buses. And the notice says something about "distributing materials and making other preparations for the major production work activity." Hopefully that means the lines will still actually be running. But who knows?

We'll cross our fingers and hope that peeps will still be able to take public transportation and get to the ceremony on time.

UPDATE: just called the MBTA and it's confirmed -- they're shutting down the D line from Riverside to Reservoir starting on the 23rd. Yeah, thanks Boston, we love you, too.

* For those that didn't pick up on it, that's the day we're getting married.