Sunrise / Sunset / Moon

It is 3:46 AM on December 30th, 2017. I woke up at 1:30 AM but couldn’t go back to sleep. I really didn’t want to get up so early and tried to go back to sleep but it wasn’t happening. I then picked up my cell phone, opened the usual apps and got to searching for a discount on GoDaddy.

The search eventually got me to get out of bed as I found a code which I thought might work. It didn’t. I’m not happy with the crazy price increases from GoDaddy and would like to switch but it is a pain. It is such a hassle that this is exactly what GoDaddy banks on in raising their prices to extremes: customers won’t leave, will pay and GoDaddy’s stock can keep increasing.

My issue with them is with the e-mail plans. I started out many years ago having ten e-mail boxes for around $50 for two year. Then, in 2015 I was forced to consolidate to 5 e-mail boxes for twice the price! This year I still get the five e-mail boxes but the price has doubled again and they want $220 for two years. To add insult to injury there used to be codes that really gave good discounts on renewals. This morning I’ve found there are still some codes out there that *work*. By work I mean the GoDaddy website accepts them, it says something along the lines of “Good work, nice discount applied!” Yet the price remains exactly the same as without the code.

I’ve still got a week or so, have turned off all auto-renewals and am shopping around. If it were just me I’d jump ship immediately but I’d also have to give my mom instructions on how to set up the new e-mail on three different devices: Mac, iPad and iPhone. This I really do not want to do. And so, I’m hoping that by turning off the auto-renewal, sending a feedback message that the cost is too high, and combined with the new year there might be some sort of discount sent to me by e-mail or available online. We’ll see. Most likely nothing will be offered and so I’ll just buy one additional year instead of two and plan way in advance on making the switch. A lot can happen to pricing plans / companies in a year. The only silver lining to this is I own some GoDaddy stock.

This really got me thinking about if our entire economy is due for another crash. I see so much price gouging, everything always going up by large amounts but pay increases remaining absolutely flat that eventually something has to give. Every single bill I have has gone up quite a lot over the last couple of years but as everyone in corporate America knows your basic salary only increases about 3% (if you’re lucky) year over year. Bonuses are tied to performance but these bonuses are also cut, trimmed, reduced, downsized, however HR wants to package it, as well year over year. Even the trip for the top performers has been completely eviscerated in my company. A few years ago it was a total party for everyone over a certain threshold and there were so many in attendance! Then it was halved and even spouses had to pay their own way. This year I think only one or two from my division will go and so the trip has gone from perhaps 500 people down to what, 25?

Going back to the economy I think we’re all in for a big shock in the next five/ten years or so (Trump being President aside). I look at my home state of Ohio and it is so very sad to see how bad cities like Cleveland have gotten and entire sections of even Columbus have lost so much and are looking very bad. I went to high school on the west side of Columbus and it was a decent middle class neighborhood. I hear that now it looks like a ghetto and one sees things that “are simply not ok,” going on there. I hear about the drug infestations all over the midwest and that the jobs are not coming back. But the prices keep rising for everything including the basics.

Anyway, on to a different topic.

I’m shocked that the holiday season is already coming to an end. Christmas is over and we are just starting the three day New Year long weekend. For me, I never take off for Christmas and New Year because things are very slow anyway. Unfortunately there are always those few companies that are still working, a few “go-getter” employees that want to look good by working during the holiday and thus create work for me. So, even though things are still slow things that come up cause more stress than normal because many in my company are off and those that are not are completely swamped! And so it is very hard for me to get ahold of anyone at this time to get things fixed. So, no, I do not have to do much but the problem is I still cannot relax and am much more stressed than usual when I see that red blinking light on my cell signaling an e-mail has arrived in my in-box. And remember those cuts I spoke about above, well, simple problems are now harder to solve due to said cuts. More stress for everyone!

So, this past week was not relaxing, not peaceful and I hope that in the future I’ll be in a situation where I can shut work off completely and maybe even take a trip! Today is the first day of three days where I really don’t need to look at my phone, although I certainly will.

When the first working day of January hits I always cringe because I know issues will have happened throughout the holiday and they’ll come my way that first work week. Everyone will still be swamped by all the companies who did have time off coming back to work and it will still be hard for me to get things resolved quickly. Add to this that the holidays are over and major depression sets in for a significant portion of the population.

As you can see, Christmas is the end of the holiday season for me, not New Year’s Eve. We won’t do much for New Year’s Eve anyway. I think we’ll ring in the new year at 8:00 PM with an on-demand special for the kids then hit the sack as usual. On New Year’s Day we’ll have traditional Japanese food and maybe go for a hike by the ocean.

Then 2018 will start and time will continue going by.

Time to shut down as I only have 13% power left. I’ll end this post with a picture I took of the moon this morning at 4:13 AM.