Entry 600: The Happiest Place on Earth

It was a weird juxtaposition to be at Disney World, "The Happiest Place on Earth,"* while knowing the largest war on European soil since WWII was imminent, but so it goes. I don't even know what to say about Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- so pointless, so tragic. It seems to be driven almost entirely by Putin's ego and inferiority complex. He feels personally aggrieved that Ukraine is no longer under Russia's thumb, and he can't even control them from afar (like he does Belarus). He preferred the days when the Soviet Union was feared and revered, and he's going to return to that time or get thousands of people killed trying. Will he succeed in his quest? Probably not, but who knows? The only certainty is there will be blood. Beyond that I think we just have to wait and see and hope. I don't believe anybody who says they know what will happen.   

*Technically, I think that is the moniker for Disneyland, not Disney World, but, y'know, same shit.

I do think Biden is handling it in the best way possible. There is a lot of talk about whether or not sanctions "will work," but I don't even know really what that means. Will they bring Russia to heel and force Putin to do what we say? No. Will they impose a cost on him and his friends both directly -- freezing their foreign assets -- and indirectly -- making life hard on everyday citizens. Yes. Does that mean sanctions are working? I dunno. But the broader point is, What else can be done? Unless the US is actually going to go to war with Russian in Ukraine -- something Biden (thankfully) has already said is *not* going to happen -- I don't see what else we can really do other than what we are doing now. And a lot is happening every minute. More sanctions probably got announced since I started writing this. It has been heartening to see much the world coalesce in defiance, and to see the Ukrainian people stand up for themselves, but it's early still. This shit could go on for a while.

Anyway, to segue awkwardly, Disney World was pretty fun. We went to Hollywood Studios, just for a day, which was more than enough time for me. We couldn't do everything, of course, but we did a bunch of stuff. The lines are outrageously long (close to 3 hours at a max), but every few hours you can claim a "Lightning Lane" pass, which allows you to wait in a still kinda long, but much shorter line. I think we used our passes wisely. We did Lightning Lane on an Indiana Jones stunt show and a Millennium Falcon ride, and then we waited in some shorter lines -- a different Star Wars ride, a 3-D Muppets short movie, and a Lightning McQueen thing -- and then at the very end of the day, we waited in one long line (a little over an hour) for this Mickey Mouse ride. The only thing I really liked was the Indiana Jones stunt show -- it was super cool. Everything else was either for little kids or it made me motion sick. I'm telling you, I don't have the stomach for amusement park rides anymore -- or rather I should say I don't have the head for them. I get dizzy and discombobulated and my head starts to hurt. My stomach is usually fine.

The best thing about this trip is that we did it and got it out of the way, and now we don't have to go back again for a while. Like I said, it was fun, but the crowds and hassle and the costs -- it's too much. It's hard to not get resentful and feel like they're trying to squeeze every last dime out of me to wait in an interminably long line to go on something I probably wouldn't do if I could walk right up to it for free. I mine, this stuffed Grogu, tells you all you need to know about the Disney experience. If you're having trouble reading the price tag, it says $119.95. Yes, that is really what it says.

 

[And one of the kids being entertained by Rey and Chewie as they wait to ride the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers run ride.]

Alright, it's getting late -- three bullets and I'm out.

• Is Covid over? I mean, I know it's not over over. It never will be. But is it over in the sense that it's not something vaxxed people need to totally plan their lives around anymore? We went to Disney and surrounded ourselves with troves of people, almost all of them unmasked (Florida), and it didn't feel unsafe to me. I think it's over, unless another variant arises, in which case... *shudder*.
• Of course there are still other sicknesses going around. Lil' S2 came down with a bad cough the day we left, and then he passed it on to his brother who had it the day we left. Flights with coughing kids are not fun experiences. It's not Covid -- we did rapid tests -- and we got lucky in that the one day neither of them was constantly hacking was the one day we had tickets to Disney World.
• When you have sick kids in a retirement community in which the only non-screen entertainment is a swimming pool, you end up watching a lot of movies. The kids really like King Kong and Godzilla movies (the recent ones). We watched Godzilla vs. Kong as a family one night. It was terrible.
  

Until next time...

Entry 599: Disney Bound

Short entry today as I have to prepare for our trip to Florida -- we leave tomorrow morning. We are going to visit S's parents and also taking the kids to Disneyworld for a day. I'm not not excited for it, but I'm not excited for it either. It's going to be a long day with the drive there and back (about two hours each way), and I'm already exhausted just thinking about keeping up with the kids while we're there. It doesn't help that I utterly lost my appetite for amusement park rides somewhere along the way from adolescence to middle-age-dom. They are more likely to make me nauseous than to thrill me now. But, whatever, I'm sure I'll enjoy it once we get there, and even if I don't, the kids certainly will. Plus, it's just one day. We decided not to buy multi-day passes or stay overnight in a hotel or anything like that. It makes the costs much more palatable -- you can measure them in the hundreds instead of the thousands.

In other news, we watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife as a family last night. It was pretty good. It would have been better if they didn't feel the need to go overboard on the nostalgia. I mean, they shoehorned Sigourney Weaver in by adding a short scene, with no connection to the story, after the closing credits. It's like, does everything have to be a nod to Gen-X pop culture these days? The new Star Wars movies (and TV shows) are the ultimate offenders (I mean, The Force Awakens is almost a plot-point-for-plot-point remake of A New Hope), but it goes beyond that -- Stranger Things, The Last Dance, Cobra Kai, and reboots of just about everything I watched as youngster (The Wonder Years, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Sex and the City, etc.). Even the Superbowl halftime show was old Dre and portly 50 Cent pretending like it's 20 years ago.

But everybody seems to like it -- heck, I like a lot of it -- so maybe it's just giving the people want they want. It's all good. I just didn't need to see a 71-year-old Bill Murray strap on a proton pack and sling stale one-liners at Gozer the Gozerian to make the new Ghostbusters a worthwhile viewing experience, is what I'm saying.

Until next time...

Entry 598: I Fought iFIT (No One Won)

Sometimes it sucks to be right. In a previous post, I discussed my recent purchase of a treadmill and how I was misled into signing up for a "free" month of a fitness service called iFIT (despite the name, it's not an Apple-owned product, as best I can tell). As I wrote in the post: "I canceled my iFit membership, but they keep it active until the end of the free trial period, which makes me nervous. I have a sneaking fear I'm going to be charged anyway." And so I was furious, though not surprised, when a $15.99 iFIT charge appeared on my credit card bill earlier this week. I then spent a total of one hour and 34 minutes over two calls over two days arguing with them to cancel my account and refunding my credit card, which they finally did, very begrudgingly. It was not enjoyable -- like I said in this post's title: no one won.

Let me state upfront, I made two crucial missteps that led to this situation in the first place. I take a small part of the responsibility, but as I think you will see, given the information I had at the time, they were understandable mistakes.

1. I never should have signed up for iFIT in the first place.

The guy who assembled the treadmill tried to warn me. He told me straight-up: Don't give them your credit card information. Dude said he had heard horror stories from other buyers. I wanted to listen, but I also wanted to use my treadmill, and there was a giant sticker across the panel of it that read:

THIS MACHINE IS CURRENTLY DEACTIVATED
IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE IT YOU MUST VISIT THE iFIT WEBSITE

And no matter what button I pressed, nothing worked. So, if you were in my shoes what would you think? I thought I had to go to this website and activate my treadmill like you do a credit card -- super annoying, but what else am I going to do, disassemble it and return it? So, I went there, followed through the prompts and signed up for a free month of iFIT (because I couldn't "activate" my treadmill without doing so), figuring I'd just have to do that thing where you cancel right away to avoid being charged. 

It worked, but now I could only use my treadmill through the iFIT app on my phone, which I didn't like, so I did some googling and found a video telling me that if I hold down a certain button on the treadmill for 30 seconds, it will disable the connection between the treadmill and my phone, and then I would be be able to use it like a normal treadmill, which is what I wanted all along. Great! Except I now realize I'd been duped. I never needed to "activate" my treadmill via iFIT at all. I just needed to hold down this button in the first place. Of course, I had no way to know this at the time. I suppose I could have (and wish I would have) googled how to activate my treadmill without going through iFIT, but only in retrospect is that the obviously correct path.

And it's because of that damn sticker! They know how misleading it is, and they know the vast majority of people will do what I did, and they know many of these people will either forget or be unable to cancel (see point 2) their memberships, or maybe they won't even know they can cancel them, and then iFIT can collect a bunch of money from people who never wanted their service in the first place. Here's what the sticker should say:

VISIT THE iFIT WEBSITE TO OPERATE THIS MACHINE VIA THE iFIT APP
IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO OPERATE VIA THE iFIT APP, TURN OFF iFIT SYNC (PRESS AND HOLD BUTTON FOR 30 SECONDS)

But we all know why it doesn't say that. I hate so much the corporate culture of tricking customers into paying for things they don't want. If your product can't stand on its own as part of an honest transaction, make it better.

2. I should have called to confirm my membership was actually canceled.

I could sense something was off with their website. I followed the prompts to cancel, but no matter what I did -- go through the website, go through the app -- I couldn't get my membership status to change off "FREE." I never got a confirmation email or anything like that. I thought I could safeguard things by deleting all my billing information, but clearly I only "deleted" it (it wasn't showing in my membership profile); I didn't actually delete it. It's on me for not verifying, but there was a calculation behind it. I knew I would spend a long time on hold (as it was I spent about an hour total on hold), and I did not want to do that unless I absolutely had to.

Which, ultimately, I did. I first called Tuesday morning and the woman I spoke with said she had canceled my account, but she needed a supervisor to issue the refund. She said a supervisor would call me later that day and that I'd receive an email saying my account had been canceled -- neither of those things happened. That call was "only" 23 minutes.

So, I called back again the next morning and this time the call went an hour and 11 minutes. I was on hold for about 45 minutes, and I spent the next 26 minutes arguing with the customer service rep who was not giving up that refund easily. Whenever I do stuff like this, I take on an indignant, but polite demeanor. I always make it clear that I'm not mad at the person I'm talking to and I'm sorry that they have to deal with me, and then I try to appeal to their common sense -- there are a lot of "What should have I done?"s and "What would you do in that situation?"s. I think it works, but I dunno. By the end of the conversation I had the service rep saying she was "fighting for me" with her supervisor, and that her supervisor was "mad at" her for even asking for the refund for me, but that could just be hot air. I did ultimately get my money back, so at least there's that. 

I'll close with a few excerpts of my conversation.

Her: You agreed to the terms. You don't need an iFIT account to use your treadmill.
Me: Yes, I realize that now. But I had to learn that from YouTube. If you put a giant sticker on my machine telling me I have to go to iFIT to activate, what do you expect people to do? How am I supposed to know you don't actually have to do that?
Her: Umm... well, if you had questions you could have called us.
Me: I was on hold for 45 minutes before I got connected to you. I'm supposed to do that to operate a treadmill I just purchased? You guys put those stickers on and intentionally make them misleading because you want people to sign up and forget about it and get charged. It's very dishonest.
Her: We never want to charge people who don't use our product.
Me: Great! Then give me my money back.
Her: I'll see what I can do.

Her: My supervisor said she can't give you a refund because we don't have any record of you canceling your membership.
Me: I tried. I followed the prompts and even cleared out all my billing information.
Her: I believe you, but it's policy to not give refunds in that situation.
Me: Okay, but that's your policy. It's not like it was passed down by the Supreme Court. You could change the policy anytime you want.

Me: Let me talk to your supervisor, please.
Her: Actually there is no reason to do that. She just agreed to give you a courtesy refund.
Me: Oooh, a courtesy refund. Yes, waiting on hold for an hour to argue with you over $16 -- such a courtesy! 

Actually, I didn't say that last line. But I thought it!

Well, I've spilled more than enough virtually ink on this topic. Until next time...

Update: After I wrote this, I came across a screenshot I forgot I took of a notice in my account telling me my membership would end on January 15, 2022 (a day after I canceled it). So, definitive proof that this was entirely on their end. I wish I would have remembered this during my call. I would have offered to email it to them. I have another one saying there is no billing information on file after I deleted my credit card. That they still charged me is so shady.

It's a little hard to read but it says: Your iFIT membership will end on Jan 15, 2022.

 

Entry 597: Achy Breaky Body

My body has been betraying me this week. I woke up Tuesday with a stiff back for some reason, and it's just been lingering. I've been super achy each morning -- struggling just to put my socks on -- and then I tend to loosen up by afternoon. I don't know what's causing it. I did a pretty vigorous workout on Monday, but nothing out of the ordinary. Just getting old I guess. I'll do some yoga today -- get a good stretch in. It's never clear to me when I'm feeling this way whether it's better to rest or to continue to work out. I usually opt for the latter because it seems resting somehow makes it feel worse. (My back was at its most painful when I was sitting all day, before I got a standing desk.) It's like, if you are actually injured you need to sit out and heel, but if you are just achy it's better to fight through it and inure your body to the soreness. It's a philosophy that has worked for me in the past, but again there's the age factor -- I've never been as old as I am right now. Maybe the rules change when you hit your mid-40s.

Speaking of mid-40s, RIP Tom Brady. No, he didn't die, but he did finally retire. He was the oldest player in the NFL at age 44, mere weeks older than me. He was still one of the best players in the game last season, and it is absolutely astounding how long he's maintained his athletic excellence. There has never been anybody like him in any major team sport, especially such a violent one like football. To give you some perspective, the oldest player in the league is now an offensive tackle named Andrew Whitworth, and he's four and half years younger than Brady. Here's another fun fact: Brady threw 136 touchdown passes in his 40s; the next highest such number is Drew Brees' 24. I've never been a huge Brady fan, and I was usually rooting against him (especially in Super Bowl XLIX -- aka "Worst. Game. Ever."), but credit where credit is due. Maybe that TB12 bullshit really works.

It's also possible that, in general, advances in medicine and nutrition, as well as lifestyle changes, are going to allow athletes to stay at elite levels longer than ever, and it will become routine for guys to play well into their 40s. Maybe Brady just got there first. NBA stars LeBron James and Chris Paul are both still really good "old" guys. But, then again, they are both 37-ish, not 44-ish. Will they still be doing this seven years from now? It seems unlikely. There is only one player in the four major American sports who even is that old -- the legendary hockey defenseman Zdeno Chara. He turns 45 next month, and once he retires, probably at the end of this season, he will be the last of the athletes older than me. Well, maybe there's still Albert Pujols. It's unclear how old he is exactly and whether or not he will play this year. Heck, it's unclear if any baseball player will play this year.

Anyway, let's finish with some great old guy athlete moments.

• It's unknown exactly how old Satchel Paige was, but he was likely about 47 when he had an All-Star season for the St. Louis Browns as a relief pitcher in 1953. He's probably the closest thing to a Brady-before-Brady guy we've ever seen.
• Adam Vinatieri played in the NFL last year at 49, which is impressive, but he was a kicker (no contact), and he wasn't very good, which is usually the case with old athletes.
• See, for instance, Julio Franco and Jamie Moyer both of whom were lousy MLB players at 49. (They were both once really good, though.)
• See also Brett Favre who was a literally a grandfather when he retired. He was poised to go out on top, but then this transpired, arguably the greatest schadenfreude moment in sports history. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.
• Sue Bird is still going strong in her 40s. Go Storm!
• Dara Torres won three silver medals at the 2008 Olympics in swimming at age 41, which is ancient in a sport often dominated by teenagers.
• Phil Niekro was still a pretty good pitcher in 1985 when he looked like this
  

 Until next time...