This week's contestant is Richard Baum from Houston, Texas. On the positive side, I was able to get the composer style. On the other side of the coin, I had trouble with the hidden song, and I think most people will. However, I'm almost ready to give myself a win on it, or at the very least bonus points. I guessed the composer of the hidden song, and even had a strong feeling of what it's from (and was right) -- and though I couldn't think of the song's proper name, my thought was, "It sort of sounds like that song whose title is something like..." And that's what it was.
It's not a totally unknown song -- and the composer is renowned, and so is the encompassing work. But this isn't one of the better-known tunes.
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I know that Microsoft gets slammed a lot for being a cold-hearted, techno-behemoth. While some of this is true and deserving, a lot is based on simply them being so big and the not-uncommon habit of hating Corporate Big Guy. I wrote eight months ago here about an amazing experience I had with their tech department, I just went through a hellish technical issue, and the Microsoft tech support department came through again, stunningly. Making them two for two.
I won't go through any techie explanations, so not to worry. But I want to explain the personal side. I not only believe in saying nice things behind people's backs, but feel that if you are willing to call and complain about a problem, you should pass along praise when they do something above board. The issue was that my Exchange account in Microsoft Outlook (basically, my mail account) would disconnect 3-4 times a day, and the only way to resolve it was by rebooting my system each time. I sent a tech support request on the Microsoft Exchange site, and wasn't sure if I'd hear anything back. Maybe an emails. Well, 30 minutes later the phone rang, and it was a Microsoft technician. He spent an hour trying to resolve it, and clearly knew what he was doing, but to know avail. He's exhausted his limited, but said he'd pass it along to a "Tier 3" support staffer above him. The next day, I got a phone call from the guy, Darrell Singh. And he spent 2-1/2 hours on the phone with me. Trying everything, but without resolution. He said he wanted to do some research on the problem. First things first: he was amazingly diligent, patient, explained things thoughtfully and spent an inexplicably long amount of time trying to resolve the difficult problem, doing research to come up with various possible solutions, and when those wouldn’t work, researching some more. And eventually he came up with what seems to be the solutions. And when I say he spent an "inexplicably long time," I don't mean it was a long call -- I mean it took several weeks, and at least half a dozen phone calls, some of the at least two hours, all at least an hour. This is serious tech support. From anyone. And hardly the perception of Microsoft. But it's the second time out of two that I've had a response like this. Back to the show -- Darrell wrote me back an email to confirm everything. And then called the next day. And spent another two hours. But it still wasn't getting resolved. One thing that I thought might point to the problem is that Time-Warner was upgrading routers to all their customers, so maybe that was the center of the problem. It would have been SO easy for him to point the finger that way and begged off, that he'd done all he could, but he refused to and wanted to check with others at Microsoft. He'd check back in a couple days. At this point, I decided to take a few matters into my own hands and called Time-Warner myself, and also the company that made the router, Arris. Let's just say it was like diving into hell. Terrible experiences, useless, not only no answers, but not even sure about the problem I was describing. Happily, I still had Darrell to rely on. And rely on him I did. For a couple weeks and half a dozen LONG phone calls. And he kept following up with emails to check in on the status of possible solutions we were trying. At one point, he had a brain freeze and thought he'd said he'd call on a Friday, rather than the day before when he had. I almost couldn't shut him up with his apologizing. It was no big deal, he'd spent SO much time with this, that glitching up on one single day was paltry. And eventually he seems to have come up with what seems to be the solutions. It had to do with him impressively Disabling remembering that I said Time-Warner was my service provider. And in his research, he came across information about a similar-sounding problem that affected Time-Warner and one other provider. It had to do with a setting that they enable for the router, which isn't the default but can cause a conflict on their systems with the default. We disabled the setting...and there hasn't been a disconnect since. (NOTE: I don't know if this is a Microsoft issue or a Time-Warner issue or a router issue. But clearly it impacts all three, and Time-Warner and the router company, Arris, should have at least had a clue about the setting. And from what I can tell after talking to others who know much more about these things than I do, the issue is more related to Time-Warner. But it was Microsoft that found it.) So, I just wanted to pass this along with high praise. The tech support was stunning. I can't swear that everyone will have tech support like this from Microsoft. In fact, I'm sure it won't all be the same, always. I'm sure there will be problems. But I also know that the response I've gotten twice, with all the follow-ups, is because of training, so there's something structural in this. And it's not just that Microsoft did such an amazing job with this -- that could be common, or luck of the draw that it was that great. It's that the other experiences with other companies on this same problem were pathetic, literally useless. No effort and just finger-pointing. So, even if Microsoft's attempt had just been that one, initial phone call that got nowhere -- the fact that they just called back was more impressive than the others. This all would have been an impressive level of tech support under any circumstances, but all the more so since -- writing a tech review column for the Writers Guild of America for almost 20 years, which I cross publish on the Huffington Post -- deal with a LOT of tech support and therefore have a lot to compare it to. And that’s why Microsoft’s here leaped out as all the more noteworthy. I’ve happily had extremely good experiences dealing with Microsoft, including their PR firm at Waggener-Edstrom. So, it’s great to see that continue. (My sole “quibble” with Microsoft is that I have been trying for three years to review a Surface tablet, and bizarrely have yet to be sent one. For years, they’ll send me all manner of products to review when I request them – just never a Surface, for some reason even they can’t explain. Oh, well, can’t have everything…) In a rare TV interview, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is the scheduled guest tonight on The Daily Show. I suspect this is his "Farewell-to-Jon-Stewart" appearance. It airs at 11:00 PM Pacific time on Comedy Central.
Pete Rose is back in the news. More on that in a moment. It's a big deal.
As great a player as Pete Rose was, even to the point of legendary, the most hits ever by a player in the history of baseball, I've tended to side with those who have supported his lifetime ban from the sport. The argument of "he's paid his dues" never held much with me, since the penalty was "lifetime." Not "Lifetime until he's been penalized enough." And as much as Rose has tried to make the case that his penalty was worse than those convicted of drug issues, his transgression was for the #1 rule that all players know from the moment they enter professional baseball at the minor league level -- no gambling on baseball, period. Or your banned for life. This is drilled in them on a regular basis. And it's #1 because violating it calls into question the integrity and trust of the sport. Baseball almost came to ruin after the 1919 Black Sox Scandal with gambling and fixing games. It's what lead to the creation of the Commissioner's Office with its almost all-encompassing powers. Another of Pete Rose's arguments is that he "only" bet on baseball when a manager. But the bylaws don't apply only to active players. And a manager arguably has an even far greater opportunity to adjust the results of a game. Nor does his case that he said he only bet on his teams to win -- if you lose your bets and made them with "unsavory" characters, they suddenly hold sway with you. (In Mr. Rose's case, he apparently owed $400,000 to underworld figures. That's a lot of sway...) And further, especially as a manager, even if you "just" bet on your team to win, you can make a lot of adjustments in order to win that game, to win your bet, that potentially risk hurting the team in the long run, just to win your bet. Then there's the matter that Pete Rose lied to baseball and the public for a decade-and-a-half about his gambling, insisting for 15 years that he did no such thing, and would go out of his way to cram himself in baseball's face by year-after-year going to Cooperstown on Hall of Fame Weekend to sign autographs, often signing copies of the Down Report, the document that made the case for banning him. All this before finally, a few years ago in 2004, to help promote his new book, saying, "Yeah, okay, all the years I swore I never gambled on baseball, and the commissioner was screwing me...well, okay, I lied about that. I did gamble when I was a manager. Sorry." It was pretty thin. And baseball players hated him for it. Because they knew the cloud that gambling on the sport put baseball under, and knew it was the #1 Rule of what not to do. Years ago, some of the most renowned players in the Hall of Fame got together and decided that if Pete Rose was ever allowed in the Hall of Frame, they wouldn't attend. And even after finally, grudgingly admitting that he "only" bet on baseball as a manager, he still insisted as recently as just two months ago in a radio interview with Michael Kay of ESPN Radio New York that he never bet on baseball when a player. Adding emphatically that "That's a fact." Well...facts have a funny way of coming back to bite you on the posterior. Today, an Outside the Lines report on ESPN said that new documentation has been found that proves Pete Rose bet on baseball when he was a player. This is known as the "Oops" moment. It turns out that in 1989, an intermediary between Rose and the mob had had notebooks seized by the Post Office in a case having nothing to do with baseball. And those notebooks, which were just uncovered, show written evidence of Rose making bets in 1986, when he was a player. The intermediary was known to baseball at the time, and the Dowd Report mentioned its suspicions, but didn't have the documented evidence. The evidence now exists.
Rose has applied to the baseball commissioner's office for reinstatement, which would be the first step to eligibility for being on the ballot for the Hall of Fame, and new commissioner Rob Manfred has said he'll look at the case with an open mind. And from all accounts, he's been doing that.
But this can't help. This seemingly is the nail in the coffin. John Dowd, the author of that original report 26 years ago, says that this is the final proof in the case. The problem for Rose isn't just the documented fact, which of course is the core issue, but Rose's lying denial for 26 years, which is as big an argument against rehabilitation as there is. It also helps support the position I've been arguing for years, much to the consternation of some of my more lenient friends on the matter. It should also be noted that though Pete Rose has been banned from baseball, he has been hired as a commentator by Fox Sports. I'm sure they thought it was a very edgy thing to do. Swell. Way to go for your credibility. Here's the Outside the Lines report. I haven't written anything about Donald Trump's "candidacy" for the Republican nomination as president because... well, I have better things to do. Like have lunch. He's an out-of-his-depth, egocentric, megalomaniacal media whore who has no problem pandering to racists, and it's as much a joke that he's "running" for president as Ben Carson. Also, despite "announcing," I'm not convinced that Mr. Trump will actually file his papers to run -- I feel that not just because (as many have commented) he'd have to give up his lucrative job and TV visibility hosting The Celebrity Apprentice, but more so because he'd have to make his finances public, and there have been several reports over the past few years that suggest, while he's wealthy, he's not remotely as gargantually billionaire-ish wealthy as he wants people to believe. So, not only am I surprised of writing at Donald Trump's "candidacy," but even more I'm somewhat stunned that I'm posting this video from The O'Reilly Factor on Fox "News." A little stunned on the general principle of simply posting something from Bill O'Reilly's show, but more so because an actual Fox reporter keeps bluntly responding to Mr. O'Reilly in a scathing way. This comes from the Tuesday night program last week. It begins when the host asks one of his guests, Fox reporter Kirsten Powers, if she'd prefer a Hillary Clinton-type candidate or a Donald Trump-like candidate. She doesn't even reply at first, taken aback by the ludicrousness of the question and -- after starting with a "Are you kidding me???" answer -- she doesn't let up in her withering disbelief as O'Reilly keeps trying to justify the seriousness of his question. I don't know Kirsten Powers' work. But she really handled herself admirably here. Here is another uncommon song for Father's Day, this one a bit better-known than the earlier one, since at least it was from a hit Broadway show, the Tony-winning Purlie, with a score by Gary Geld and Peter Udell, though the song itself is one of the lesser-known onesl. It's sung by by the black plantation workers giving sarcastic appreciation to the "Great White Father" of the Year.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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