When Technology Breaks Down: eMessages
Hi Readers! This post is a bit different than others, and the subject above tells why!
Premise
In the last few days of April 2024, we received a notice on our tablets that issues had arisen from an update Securus an Aventiv company, had performed on the 13th of April. The issues, of course, were noticable for a week prior to receiving their notice that something is very wrong.
From time to time, I spend $5.99 to get 30 days' access to the Newsstand app, powered by the Associated Press. I had done that on the 25th of April to catch up on news. Five days later, on the 30th, my Newsstand app starts complaining,
NETWORK ERROR
This feature requires a network connection.
Please reconnect and try again.
[OK]
502's a Bad Gateway, and several of our apps confirm this. My upstairs neighbour grouses as he paid for an episode of The Simpsons in our store, but suddenly can't stream it. That's $2.14 (one honeybun), lost! I'm out seven peanut butters on news, too!
Whenever there are network issues, we know Securus takes a hellishly long time to fix them. This one grates for a special, extra reason;
H.Y.C.Y.MB?
The Florida Department of Corrections have banned physical mail from being sent to us. It all must be sent to Tampa, FL., for processing - the letter is digitized, destroyed, and the scan is forwarded to we incarcerated many to read on our tablets or the kiosk.
You might recall an earlier post where I point out there are 96 of us in a dorm module, with 2 kiosks and a 15-minute session limit. We're the lucky ones! One of the dorms here has only 75 people per module... and ONE kiosk per module! If everyone takes the full 15 minute session, each kiosk can move about 3.65 people per hour, not 4: the kiosk takes a minute to clear the previous person's session, and needs up to a minute to log the next person in.
Factor in that kiosks are offline until 8am, that many of us in the Programs dorms like this one are away at our Programming for the bulk of the day, that counts do occur multiple times during the day (blocking kios access for hours, I add), and it leaves little to wonder about when residents try to root their tablets.
A rasher of bac Logic
Given that human contacty is incredibly important, you would hope or expect that some alacrity, some expedience, is employed to give a fix to broken services.
Instead, because we wear blue, are fed 💩, and kept in the dark like 🍄, people start rumors like "Oh, Securus went bankrupt."
... No. If that were the case, it would be Aventiv was doing the Tesas Two-Step, using an unpopular banner to cut off debts, while keeping the juciest parts alive.
Failing to meet a contractual obligation to provide postmaster-level services in a timely manner is bad in that case.
So, what was different about this post?
Our collective costs!
Nominally, I pay 39¢ for ≈6,000 characters. Some posts take two messages to convey, 78¢ to send. My lovely editor, Mel, then copies and pastes my markdown-formatted text in the correct message order into this place to share my blatherings-upon-the-web.
This post, however, was hand-written, which required lined paper ($2.71), a pen (24¢), and color pencils ($12.71), plus envelopes (15¢) and postage (66¢).
I buy lined paper reasonably often, keep pens on hand, and have an old box of color pencils (before the 50% price hike), and try to never drop below ten envelopes and ten postal stamps. To mail this post by itself costs me:
0.66+(0.01806x4)+0.15+0.24 ≈ $1.12
Now, my lovely assistant has to pore over a scan of my atrocious handwriting to transcribe it for posting here in an accessible manner.
It might be possible to OCR some of the work (It wasn't ~Mel), but I'm sorry, my writing is bad, even with practice.
Of course, as I get near the end, our digital mail system is restored due to a power outage that rebooted all of the affected systems. I'm still mailing this post, because the work is done and other stuff needs to ride the USPS pipe, but imagine a time when you needed to communicate, and that ability disappeared for over ten days at a stretch.
So odd, but can we even?
Yes, we can! People, we must actually, actively engage in the art of conversation, writing to the powers that control to beseech them:
Engage in Right Action - work for truth in name. iI live in a correctional facility, not a meat warehouse. Offer meaningful programs that aid in my rehabilitation, to help those like me who will return to the free world a better chance at avoiding a negative contribution to the recidivism statistic.
Let's do the right thing, shall we?