Atomictumor

When we bought our house, AT’s dad the Biscuit recommended Tennessee Farm Bureau. They’d done him right for several years, and after we went around getting some quotes, we found they were the cheapest by far.
Well, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Our policy was cancelled today through some serious ineptitude.
Our insurance go-to guy, Chance Boffing (name changed to protect our asses), has been trying for some time to get us to switch our auto insurance from our current company to TFB. When we got a letter from TFB a few weeks ago saying something to the effect that he would like to discuss if and how our policy would need to be modified, we assumed this was another attempt to get us on his side.
A few days later, I received a post-card type mailing that asked if I would like to do a survey on TFB’s performance. Since it didn’t say it was mandatory, I opted to do better things with my time. Besides, up until now, we’ve not had to deal with TFB other than paying our yearly membership dues, so I didn’t have much to say.
Then shortly after the survey, we received a letter saying our policy would be cancelled effective May 18th because TFB couldn’t confirm we still lived here. Apparently the letter about modifications was some sort of secret-society test to see if we were worthy of being policy holders for another year. If the letter had said “Hey, fool, if you don’t call me or write me back, we’re cancelling your policy”, I daresay I would have contacted them immediately. Also, card-carrying Mensa member Chance Boffing himself supposedly drove by our house to try to confirm residency and couldn’t tell by the new paint job, art on the front window, toys in the yard and curtains in the window that we do, in fact, still live here.

When we got the notice that our insurance would be cancelled, AT immediately got on the ol’ horn to straighten the situation out.
No answer at the office and no answering machine. What self-respecting company doesn’t have voice mail or an answering machine in 2006? A company that doesn’t want my business, that’s who. Not only that, but they rarely pick up the phone during normal business hours. AT’s tried to call at various hours of the day and has come to the conclusion that Chance must do his best work sans office. In fact, his secretary told us the other day that he’d be out for over a week, so no, there wasn’t anything she could do to help. Yeah, Chance is the only agent at this branch.
The last time AT talked to anyone at the office, they assured us that the matter would be taken care of, we would not lose our policy and they are very sorry about the mix-up. That’s all well and good, but when he called this morning, he was informed that our policy was in fact cancelled today, and we’re shit out of luck until the escrow company decided to cough up a check. Or something. It’s really all beyond me.
So, if you want to set our house on fire, or steal all of our shit, please wait a couple weeks. K? Thanks.

I haven’t talked much about the whole NSA wiretapping fiasco, because I think anybody who’ll say that theres justification in the .gov randomly listening in on conversations of private citizens is either a moron or a facist.  Liberty doesn’t have exceptions.

However, CNET today writes that legislation backed by A.G. Gonzalez is being introduced to Congress that will require ISPs to keep logs of internet usage by subscribers for “a reasonable period of time”.   The legislation is being introduced by Wisconsin’s Rep F. James Sensenbrenner, submitter of such past hits as the Patriot Act, the Real ID act, and who is supposed to lead the fight against those damn copyright infringers and fair use activsts with the upcoming Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006.  On top of being a whopping Bush admin tool, he’s also the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, threw a hissy during renewal talks for the Patriot Act after those darn democrats mentioned Guantanamo Bay too many times, and is the top ranking House member in terms of privately paid travel costs from 2001-2005.

But enough on F. Jim, lets talk about the act.  Under it, all browsing history, chat logs, downloads, uploads, games played, and transactions made will be logged by ISPs at their expense.  Executives who don’t comply with the act can be fined, and thrown in jail for up to one year.  Unfortunately, as AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth don’t seem to mind hooking up the NSA (OK, Bellsouth disputes it, but they suck, so I’m ignoring it), you can bet they’ll line right up to hook up the DoJ.

Want more?  Heres some more.  Theres also a provision under the law that blogs, search engines, email providers, and whoever else that has “reason to believe” it facilitates access to child pornography–through hyperlinks or a discussion forum, for instance, is up against a federal felony.  Now, theres nothing worse than child predators, but poorly written laws are almost as bad.  Under the word of this law, whats keeping me from making an anonymous account and putting a comment on Slashdot with some kiddie porn URL long enough for Google to cache it, and the man to put the federal felony hammer down.  I think it would certainly suck, and I don’t like it.

Of course, keep in mind that the man behind this internet legislation recently said:

“At the most basic level, the Internet is used as a tool for sending and receiving large amounts of child pornography on a relatively anonymous basis,”