Using What's Available!

My mother-in-law entertained quite a bit in her hey-day. What we didn't realize until she passed was what happened to all those leftover plates, cups, and napkins she purchased for her entertaining! She might have used half of each package and then bought new ones for the next soiree! When my wife had to remove everything from her apartment the magnitude of what was there was well, overwhelming! We had those items stored in tubs on the shelves in the garage for years!

Leftover paper plates save a lot of water!

One day after a party where my wife used some of these items, she had a few plates left over. I realized that why not use these leftover paper plates for my painting?  There aren't enough for another meeting so, get some use of them before throwing them away. You squeeze a shot of paint here and there. You can blend on the nice flat surface. Rather than the plastic plate with places for paint I had that took forever to clean wasting water, a real no-no in California, I hit upon those plates! Because I use acrylic paints, sometimes I can use the same space twice as the original paint had dried. Be careful though. You might get some interesting colors as there may still be wet paint under the skin that you didn't notice.

If you don't want to be wasteful here is a wonderful solution. Don't have any left over dinner or desert plates? There is always The Dollar Store or Costco where you can buy 100's at a time that cost you pennies each. I don't know about you but its bad enough keeping your water trays and brushes clean without scrubbing divots in a plastic plate (the bottom item in photo). It is not easy or fun. I do not feel quilty about the plates. The processes that made them are already done and when I am done using one it goes in the trash with little or no water giving me a new clean surface for the next session.

Give it a try the next time you paint. You might find, like I did, its the perfect solution for use and cleanup.

I have a store, KrugsStudio so if you are interested in a variety of birdhouses or crafts,  photography or one of a kind paintings, please be sure to check out that store as well. KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Be sure to tell your friends, artists or not about this blog and my store!

Thank you for visiting.

How American Civil Servants Have Failed The Public

Back during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, he instituted the civil service system that protected employees from capricious firings, layoffs or payoffs. Each applicant had to take a competency test and the highest scorers were hired. The "design" to protect government workers was a wonderful idea that eventually got corrupted.

Fast forward to the 21st century; the joke among many "civil" servants is that you get a position at the city, county, state, school, water districts or federal districts and you can retire for life! Examples of this abound. Just in my own area of Pasadena, San Gabriel or Arcadia, CA projects that should have taken no more than two years have taken 3-4-5 and more years. Its almost seen as a job for life! You see 8 people standing around (I've counted) and one may actually be working.

The real proof came when after the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, the La Cienega overpass collapsed  on the I-10 freeway. CalTrans, the California Hwy. department, a union protected affiliate of the state,  predicted it would take two years to fix. Since this was on I-10, one of the busiest freeways in the world, the city was frantic. They opened bids to one and all. The winner won with a 90 DAY bid for the repairs. Los Angeles, which was losing millions a day in delays on this freeway, said that they would pay a bonus of $1 million for every day they were done before 90 days. It was done in 61 days and met all state and federal standards.

This has been on the curb since before Christmas.

Its the little things though that irritates the citizens. Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles is beginning to see that cracked sidewalks, water pipes that burst, failure to repair huge holes in the cities streets and highways, untrimmed trees could be his undoing. We are tired of excuses. Trim the personnel and make those left actually work! There's a novel idea.

I am the Neighborhood Watch captain on my street of well over 100 houses and have been relentless in keeping graffiti off walls, streets and sidewalks. There is no graffiti or for that matter trash left around the sidewalks!

However, we are pretty much a neighborhood of immigrants whose standards are not quite the same as ours. The case in point is an old CRT TV left on the curb across the street from my house. After a few weeks I went over to them and said they had to dispose of it themselves. "No understand English," even the kids in public school. Finally on Jan. 19th I emailed the Rosemead liaison about this problem:

As you can see, reading from bottom up, lots of excuses. Have someone from the yard drive over and pick it up. Give them a warning or tickets if necessary. No wonder it takes so long to get anything done these days.

Then I got not one but TWO emails saying they were going to do something. Nothing happened.

Now you have to understand that not one of these links work. I have a Mac using Safari as my browser and they are using Chrome which sees nothing. Easy to ignore the resident I guess.

This was my email today and I might add, the TV is still there...going on six weeks now.

Dear Alan,

Your request # 37872 has been resolved with the resolution:
Inspected property and observed broken TV set on lawn.  Case opened, warning letter issued.

This is in reference to the Problem on Illegal Dumping you submitted on 01/20/2015  10:02 AM
Location: 9141 De Adalena St
Description: Homeowners  of 9141 De Adalena throw junks on sidewalk. Neighbor is requesting that a Code Officer speak to 9171 De Adalena homeowners of dumping. They speak Asian Lanaguage therefore neighbor can not communicate with the,

We are committed to providing you the best service we can.  We would 
appreciate you filling out an online survey on how this request was 
handled.  You can fill out the online survey by going to:
<http://user.GovOutreach.com/rosemead/survey.php?cid=2029847&access=3063326664643266>

This is their reply. Pretty sad I would say. If this is the "best service" can you imagine the worst?

You may reply to this email to send a response or you can view this 

request online at:
<http://user.GovOutreach.com/rosemead/case.php?id=2029847&access=3063326664643266>

I think its about time City Manager Jeff Allred rides around, like an undercover boss, and sees just what goes on in his city. As far as I am concerned he isn't earning his salary and is a pretty weak leader of others at city hall as well. Rosemead has 55,000 people and while there are many different ethnic groups, there is no excuse for not taking care of business in a land area of less than 6 miles. I too can write emails and not have to face the public. Maybe the time has come for new faces at city hall don't you think?

Comments can be sent to krugsstudio@gmail.com.

Preparing An Expressionist Portrait

After completing several "Expressionist" portraits I hit upon the idea of creating 4...one each for the kids and my wife and using those four for this years holiday card. Little did I know that illness would get in the way. I only had mine done, the others just had to wait.

Sad to say, I didn't have the energy or inclination to get back into the groove until a few weeks ago. The better I feel the more energy I have. I am not saying anything new but when something like that hits you rather than having "all the time in the world" you are sleeping all the time in the world.

When I was in home isolation for a week, no one could visit nor could I go anywhere, I realized when it was over that other than a little TV (no cable or wi-fi yet) I slept or read. In fact caught up on my reading!

Step 1

My daughter was next on the list. It was not easy as it seemed that I had to learn the kind of daring I used on the first two. First off I didn't want to mimic what I had already done yet I wanted the feeling of her to come through. The rough sketch was very rough.

I have gotten in the habit of dividing the canvas into 4ths and figured I had better keep that style, at least for this series. Bright discordant colors form the background and then frame the face itself.

Step 2

My daughter has wonderful natural curly hair and I wanted that to come through. However, it is not easy to create without it looking too realistic. I wanted the feeling of waviness cascading down with other colored highlights.

Moving on, the background became stronger and the colors on the face more pronounced. I was not happy with the color but wasn't sure what to do...colors to add or subtract. The idea was to give some hint on who it was.

I added more colors, actually washes of darker colors that went with the background. I didn't want it too bright to take away from the face. Those layers were built up as was the blouse. I didn't want stark white.

Step 3

The mouth was the other problem. It couldn't be too perfect but not like this either. I fussed with this over and over. The great blessing with acrylics is that once dry you can paint over any mistakes! This was the area I had plenty! Lips, teeth, color, it was a daily battle to see what I wanted to do.

Meanwhile I continued to play with the background. The white dots seemed a wonderful way to break up a colorful but dull background. It is not too much nor too little. It acts as a nice counterpoint to white used in other areas of the painting but without being intrusive.

Portrait Completed

I continued to work on the blouse giving it more depth. I softened the mouth and teeth and made the lips smaller. The balance was better and more honest. I wasn't trying to create a monster but a feeling of a person.

Here is the final portrait, not quite as yellow as shown here.. The lips are redder though and there is much more charing on the blouse. I think if I was to do this again.

Is there room for such "art?" Do we need to have Gainsborough type portraits in the days of countless "selfies?" While selfies may or may not go away, and you get a perfect image of yourself a hundred times over, art historically is an artists attempt to express what he sees or feels.

These are a challenge to do yet fun as well. You are forced to stretch your limits, truly look at a person and paint what you feel not necessarily what you see. I urge all artists to give it a try!

I have a store, KrugsStudio so if you are interested in a variety of birdhouses or crafts and photography one of a kind paintings, please be sure to check out that store as well. KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Be sure to tell your friends, artists or not about this blog and my store!

Thank you for visiting.

The Trouble With Getting Old

Alan Krug of KrugsStudio

Since I have been home from the hospital several things have happened that at the age of 69 I am not so sure about.

I've already written about Charter Cable, who believe it or not, actually wrote us a check for $29. Now hopefully the dunning letters (oh yes, we were billed for February with a threat to disconnect our service) will stop. I don't believe this was my fault to begin with. Its finally done.

I have had nothing but problems with my iMac, especially after I upgraded to 10.10 Yosemite. I lost the use of all my Adobe products, Safari decided to stop working which for me was a crippling blow. It was the only way I could get into my surviving Etsy store (no, Etsy never contacted me about my fine art store. Guess they are too busy working on their IPO. There's a stock I will never buy) or even write here on my blog. Chrome wouldn't let me in and it appears that Firefox is the home of Yahoo now. Yesterday, suddenly, Safari worked again.

I spent days last week trying to downgrade my system. Hours on the phone with Apple and more hours erasing not once but twice my iMac hard drive and then doing a restore from my Time Machine backup. It took on average 8 ½ hours to complete each backup. I am back to 10.9.5 Mavericks and my Adobe software is working again. However, through all this I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it all was. Thank God I have an iPad!  It can't do anything but it can do a great deal.

Next came a message from Amazon saying I owed them money and they were freezing my account until it was settled. Settled how? After my stay in the hospital I discovered someone had hacked my card and was purchasing things. When I asked the dates of the charges I started laughing. They were not amused but neither was I. EVERY date charges were made was when I was in the hospital and the largest charge, a printer they stupidly sent here, was ordered as I was being operated on. They had no answer for that and wiped out all the charges. So what is Amazon's beef? For the piddly amount they say I owe, I would say they must have bigger fish to fry. Lets say a few hundred million on a smart phone that isn't very smart unless you want to buy on Amazon, $450 million losses on phone, pay wallets and a whole bunch of other wild goose projects last quarter. In one quarter they lost $450 million and haven't shown a profit in years. Understandably their board of directors is getting antsy. Bezos wouldn't be the first CEO that was thrown out. While I am NOT an advocate for watching the bottom line every quarter, in 12 years I would be. He needs to concentrate on what is making money, try one or two new tangents but make some money and prove he can. Dollars for 50 cents will sell like hot cakes. So far, he has been found wanting.

Try as I might, I can't find a number to call and get this straightened out. Let them cut me off. I have already started to find other sites with prices better than theirs and even better pricing in a brick and mortar stores. The "best" price frequently equals less service. As you get older you appreciate this. What's a few bucks to have it work correctly the first time?

While I moan and groan about Etsy, their lack of client response I realized awhile back its a circle. With very few exceptions store owners are looking at other store owners and favoring things they like. Do they buy? My feeling is that they don't. So its a circle. You are spying on the competition, searching for trends but not buying. We are preaching to the choir. Getting outside that universe is hard. I have posted on Twitter (probably the worst), Pinterest, second worse and recently added Tumblr. Its a race to see which IS worse. I've known that to get more views and potential customers would be to have my own web site.

In the past I did a few web sites for clients and hated it. I quickly realized that if desktop publishing was so crude we might still be setting publications with hot type! The newest web design program I have is Dreamweaver 5.5 and it is even more daunting than earlier versions. I need a kid to do the design work and show me how to update, add new items, use the blog, etc.

I have been told that WordPress is the best venue. You can write, web design and once you have it sorted out, one of the best programs out there. I have a web design candidate by my illnesses slowed that process down. As I get better and stronger I think the time has come. We will meet, I will tell him what I want and see what he comes up with. This will give me time to do what I can do and it is not web design!

I have a store, KrugsStudio so if you are interested in a variety of birdhouses or crafts and photography one of a kind paintings, please be sure to check out that store as well. KrugsStudio.etsy.com.

Being A Creative

One of the wonders for any creative type (paint, writing, music, etc.), and with the start of each project, is how creative types seem to create out of thin air. A blank sheet of music becomes Beethoven's 9th Symphony, words on blank sheets of paper become TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, a painter with a blank canvas becomes Van Gogh's STARRY STARRY NIGHT. The material is the base, the starting point in any creation yet look what different results they achieve!

The raw unfinished cedar birdhouse

I found a birdhouse maker on Etsy from Mississippi who at that time was making thick, ½" cedar birdhouses out of recycled fences. He only charged $7 each, they were a little crude but nothing diligent sanding couldn't cure. The problem was they were so big and heavy it cost another $7 to get them to California! Considering this I asked if the rate would be cheaper if I bought more, say 5, at a time. He looked into it and said yes, I could save $1 a birdhouse. I placed my order.

I loved them. Each one had its own story and I was able to create two lovely Rosemaling painted birdhouses soon after. The beauty was they could go outdoors without fear and would last for years, if not decades. I was also told to use oil based Varathane as it was far more weather resistant and would not fail as quickly as acrylic finishes. "Tell clients that when they see dullness on the finish it was time for another coat" he added. I'm using sponge brushes and when finished coating them three times I throw the brushes away. You waste far more water and nasty solvents if you try to save a brush. Shop around. I've gotten sponge brushes for a little as 10¢ each! Since all of my designs are acrylic, you CAN use oil finishes on top. In fact all of my oil paintings are painted on top of an acrylic underpainting.

Putting on the "Crazy Quilt" colors

Since my (literal) near death experience, I wanted to make a real statement announcing that I am back and despite all that has happened as creative as ever! I chose a blank cedar birdhouse like the one shown here and went to town!

The "Crazy Quilt" series I created is one of the most satisfying yet grueling things I paint. The amount of time creating them is almost overwhelming! I spend far more time in their creation than even (so far) my most difficult paintings. In fact, at a recent board meeting of a gallery I recently joined, they were looking for themes. I suggested one month showing crafts and crafters. The leader looked at me and said, "What you create are not crafts. They are works of art!" It stopped me cold.

Every side of a birdhouse, tray, box, whatever you work with is more than two dimensional. In fact there are times all six sides must be painted. That happened here. I did paint 4 sides with "painted fabrics" but then finished off the birdhouse back, bottom and inside with red paint, something I have never done before.

Painted inside and out!

Next comes the "fabric." Yes, every background color has a pattern on top and everywhere you see that color, that pattern has to be repeated. Trust me, by the time that color is done, I am too! I don't want to be repetitive but since its going outside I didn't feel details were quite as important as a birdhouse sitting on the table next to the sofa! Why do us humans have all the fun. Will the birds appreciate the patterns and colors? Who knows but I know the owner will have fun looking outside at the splash of color mounted outside. The beauty of this design is that you push the "front" door open and can clean out the debris from last season. Tidy up so to speak.

Completed Cardinal Quilted Birdhouse

I think that its the process of creating and being able to add or subtract to a project that creates the biggest challenge. Is this the birdhouse I originally envisioned? No. I realized that it was about twice the size of the others I had done before. Fabric colors have to be bigger. To avoid the problem of fabric color I had to increase the number of colors. Not a happy moment.

Then I woke up several days ago and in my dream had added a hand carved bird I purchased at convention. Only I couldn't find it. Bummer! Yesterday I looked in one more place and there it was. A Cardinal ... perfect for the very red coloring of the birdhouse. I got that painted and well, what do you think? Was this the perfect addition?

If I learned anything here it was these things:
• Start somewhere. A sketch helps
• Never be afraid of making a change. If it doesn't work out, try something else
• For me, at least, color is everything. I learned during the recent LACMA exhibit on Expressionism that Saxons (my Dad was born near Dresden) love color. That is the only place though Berlin is closing in. No one I know would ever doubt that I love color!
• Embrace change. IF it doesn't work go in another direction.
• Dreams are good things. Follow them or at least give them a chance
• Have fun.
• Do WHAT you like. Success may or may not come. That has been the hardest lesson for me. Fun and personal growth are more important I've come to realize. Nearly dying makes you look at your life a lot more closely.
• Try to do something everyday. Try something new is even better.

Finally, at long last I am getting back in the groove. Hopefully someone will think I am worth purchasing but finally it will not be the driving force it was. Its fun for me to create and hopefully others will enjoy what I've created as well.

I have a store, KrugsStudio so if you are interested in a variety of birdhouses or crafts and photography one of a kind paintings, please be sure to check out that store as well. KrugsStudio.etsy.com.

Creating Norwegian Woods

Norwegian Wood Birdhouse

As scatterbrained as I usually am, believe it or not, I usually sketch out each project I do, a holdover, I guess, from my graphic design days. I can work out the design, what gets painted and where, what gets added on, even color schemes. The classes of Dr. Allen in Journalism School live on in the 21st century! However, as we all know, things change A LOT but it gives me a roadmap.

NORWEGIAN WOOD was originally going to have smaller birdhouses glued on but after playing around with crackle finish, I decided to use them on another project. They morphed into my BIRDHOUSE NEIGHBORHOOD. I discovered that drilling each one at the base for dowels, painting front and backs with different Pennsylvania Dutch designs over slightly different crackled finish, finding a platform, legs, that I had another original craft item! This was a more original and fun to create item. Each birdhouse can be moved about both in the three base holes and front to back.

The addition of a fence hides many sins!

The tree on the roof breaks up a huge space

The original birdhouse, painted black, was designed for layers of crackle paint. I kept using lighter and lighter green paint over the crackle medium adding houses and farms I saw in Norway when they had dried. It is an amazing effect, almost like adding a layer of paint with a palette knife! In fact this entire birdhouse was an experiment that I had to cover and start over several times. 

Beware YouTube! In learning how to use the crackle finish, something DecoArt is not too good about explaining, I discovered that some people use plain old Elmer's White Glue for the same affect! Well, they might but my attempt was a disaster causing me to paint the base of the birdhouse several times. By using a fence up front, a country scene on most sides but with with mountains and water over the crackled finish, I was able to recreate a form of painted scenery (and hide a multitude of sins)! I added large trees to the roof to break up the dead space. It was a challenge as I painted making up a unique birdhouse that became a blend of art and crafted birdhouse.

What I created here was a Nordic four sided landscape birdhouse. Not everyone has to have Pennsylvania Dutch, Rosemaling or other kinds or designs. Some birdhouses can be exciting as a kind of three dimensional art that sits on a tabletop!

I have a store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com, so if you are interested in a variety of birdhouses or crafts and photography plus one of a kind fine art paintings, please be sure to check out that store as well. KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Thank you for visiting!

The Death of An Etsy Store

You may see them but good luck in getting to your store!

After the fiasco of my various illnesses, the loss of Charter as my Internet provider, I had to wait two weeks to have my TV, phone and wi-fi installed by AT&T. As you can imagine that didn't go very smoothly either. As it turned out, my TV would show the stations that I usually watched anyway. With an antennae who knows what we might have gotten... for free.

Well, as you all know when you change providers all of your passwords change and I was no different. I have two Etsy stores, one, KrugsStudio.etsy.com where I have put mostly craft items though I was just told my items are not crafts. I spend most of my time there adding new items and yes, I have started doing just that again, and AlanKrugFineArt.etsy.com where my fine art paintings are.

The fine art site, for whatever reason, has problems. I can see it and even though I have name and password written down (things do get foggy around age 70) I am unable to get into it. If I try it takes me back to KrugsStudio even though the passwords are different.

I wrote inquiries to my teams asking what to do. Well, Etsy took the postings down. The few answers I got were so smug and condescending I was embarrassed to be an Etsysonian. Truly. I could not find what few comments said I should do and tried emails to Etsy asking for help. I even gave my cell phone number, several email addresses pleading for help. There has been no response of any kind in nearly two weeks.

I am left with only one choice, let that store die. I have no way to get into it, renew expired items and frankly I may do the same with KrugsStudio as well. I am not inclined to add 50 items back to KrugsStudio after moving them last year.

Friends have been after me to put up my own web site, and without the hindrances of Etsy to promote myself beyond the Etsy sphere. People still give me a blank look when I say where my store is and I have yet in 15 years surveying the Internet ever seen an Etsy ad. Craftstar, and several others ARE there. If this is the way they treat their sellers, they like every other business will die. Don't think it can happen? Look at Kodak, Polaroid trying to come back on their names...it certainly won't be on reputation, It was pretty bad at the end. Just about every steel company is gone. You don't innovate and you die. They are even saying Facebook has a high chance of losing 80% of their members by  2018 doing things their users dislike so intensely. Even Google is beginning to struggle. If anyone ever came up with a better search algorithm, they would be history as well.

Etsy was a good place to start and for small people like me, it was a good learning experience! My treatment, or lack thereof, by them has finally made me get off my butt and see what options are out there. If you have had a similar experience AND know what to do I would love to hear from you!!!

Please visit my craft store at KrugsStudio.etsy.com and my fine art store at AlanKrugFineArt.etsy.com. Thank you for stopping by and reading! Be sure to check out the after Christmas Sale. All items over $10 each are on sale at a 25% discount. The sales is good now through Jan. 22, 2015. Collect a hand painted or give a unique hand painted gift! Shop early for the best selection.

Charter Cable: The Saga Continues

 

Part 2

As I left off with the Charter Cable Saga, they cut me off from their services the day I got home from the hospital Dec. 6th. I'm sure it was just one of those things but it still rankled. I was going to be in home isolation for a week with no Internet or cable.

She spent two hours removing, pulling lines, literally cleaning up years of AT&T, Charter, the original DirecTV cabling from our home and every bit of equipment should could find. It looked like the back room of some small server farm when she was done. I am sure we pulled far too much but we were tired of all this. Later that day we went up to the AT&T store and ordered whatever they had. It was cheaper but would take two weeks to get installed. We later learned after more huffing and puffing that we were getting Uverse finally where the peons lived. It was not a smooth installation. This was Sunday, starting at 6 am she started calling and said, "You promised Friday and you are going to be install today if I have to go up and grab a tech herself!"

My wonderful wife took up the case and I handed her all the documents we had regarding this payment they say we missed...Charter bills, notes on when and who we talked to, reference numbers that said we were paid up and had no balances, the charge card payments, literally everything.

To make a miserable long story short, 2 ½ hours later I heard my wife say,"You are the person that can make this right? Can get this finally cleared?" "Yes but I won't," he replied. Well, he might as well waved a red flag at a bull because she said, "You have already cut us off. I will pay the December bill though you owe us 25 days of service. Remove us as a customer. You can get your equipment tomorrow. No, we will NOT take it to your office. Your trucks go up and down our street each and every day. It will be ready Monday (this was Sunday) and since my husband can't go anywhere any time is fine. If you don't pick it up Monday, Tuesday it will be on the curb for trash day. "Tomorrow between 9-5? Yes, someone will be here. Bring your receipt book too!"

I discovered that our wonderful 2007 LCD Panasonic TV on its own would get TV stations. Not all without an antennae but most of the ones I watched...PBS, CBS, NBC and quite a few others. If I had an antennae who knows what we would have seen. I was happy with the TV but not so with no wi-fi. Well, we had Internet on our cell phones but you can't manage much or at least I couldn't. I could read mail, check out my store on Etsy but gave up trying to do much with it. This is the only time I wished I had bought an iPhone 6+. The problem with that was that I could barely hold it my hands are so small. Besides, I had an iPad. Who every dreamed you would be cut off so thoroughly?

Later my wife went up to the Charter office in Alhambra, CA papers in hand. We were afraid it would affect our credit rating so wanted our name cleared. Besides, they were holding the phone number I had had for over 40 years hostage. Thinking about ALL the damn solicitors that call us, maybe another number might be better! Anyway she returned later with a paper that said "Zero" balance. The next day we received a letter from Charter that said the same thing. That had to be the quickest response from a company in history! Here is the bill dated Dec. 19, 2014:

Two days later we received a billing from Charter saying they were going to cut us off January 6, 2015 if we didn't pay our bill. Then a day after that we got the regular monthly bill with the same amount we had been contesting for months. Remember now, we are NOT using any of their equipment and will never again. Here is that bill:

It goes on and on!
With the two documents that say we owe no balance and the balance is "zero" and the continuing billing from Charter, friends are saying that we need to file a lawsuit for harrassment. As my health improves I may. No one I know likes Charter and while all have had their turns dealing with them, no one has ever heard of what we have been and are going through.

I told the Charter guy getting our gear that he better start looking for another profession. With CBS, HBO, ESPN and others jumping to the Internet soon, we will finally have what we watch untethered and pay for what we want not 150 channels we would never watch. They can merge all they want but in 5 years cable may well not exist. Monopoly deals that cities had for 50 years will dry up and they will really have a credit crunch!

Am I happy with AT&T? Pretty much. We found they over commit. The DirecTV portion was here on time and all the TV's are up and running. The Charter boxes never worked and the minute the tech was gone they were gone too. The wi-fi at least works steadily. I haven't had to reboot yet! It isn't as fast but I am not hacking Sony or Home Depot so its good enough for my needs.

Time will tell. However, I try to keep up with tech and at 69 at least know what's happening even if I can't do it anymore. Many apps are beyond my understanding and I am always complaining about upgrades. It worked fine before. Now? There are going to be big changes in the next few years that will make what we see and do as different as day and night. I just hope and pray these tech companies understand Boomers and their now varying degrees of competence.

Meanwhile, if you have a cable provider choice, Charter is not the one!

Please visit my craft store at KrugsStudio.etsy.com and my fine art store at AlanKrugFineArt.etsy.com. Thank you for stopping by and reading!