Back and Forth | The Incoherent Ramblings of Designer and Musician Justin Winslow

My Comments to Elephant Moving Regarding Their “Piano Moving” Services

After my experience I feel it would be best if you remove piano moving from your list of services. I don’t think the guys that came had ever even seen a piano before, much less moved one.

An appropriate piano moving dolly wasn’t used, they moved the piano from the house to the truck without any sort of protection for the piano and nearly dropped the instrument off the lift on the back of the truck because they didn’t have a secure handle on it.

I’m concerned that non-trivial stresses or damage may surface in the near future as a result of this move and I will have no recourse in the matter. I cannot blame the actual truck crew because they should have never been sent out by Elephant in the first place.

I hope this matter is taken seriously and addressed so that someone with more to lose doesn’t find themselves in the same position as I am now.

-Justin

www.elephantmovingandstorage.com

UPDATE 7/6/2012
A representative was kind enough to reach out to me:

What an absurd suggestion. Of course they have seen a piano. One of the men who moved your piano is one of our certified piano technicians, who disassembles and moves half a dozen grand and baby grand pianos each week, as well as many upright pianos of all sizes. There’s no such thing as a special piano dolly for upright pianos. We use padded 4 wheeled dollies to move upright pianos, and piano boards to move baby grand pianos. Our crews are professional movers and are experienced with moving all sizes and shapes of items.

My response:

This is how a piano should be moved: pianoMoving.jpg

Don’t tell me my suggestion is absurd when the internet can prove me correct in 15 seconds.

Randy Newman – Losing You

It’s hard to believe that I’ve never posted any Randy Newman stuff but I can’t imagine a better way to start than Losing You, live with nothing but Randy and a piano – plus a foreword about the inception of the song.

Sentience and Suicide

I believe all forms of life from the infinitely complex to profoundly simple should be viewed with the same respect as any other. After all, in the end the primary role of any life form is to live and proliferate one’s species. Any notion that any one form of life is superior to another in anything other a superficial way is egotistical and can likely be proven accurate for any number of reasons (this my subtle bash at the human race’s self imposed exceptionalism).

One thing, however, that evolution has bestowed us humans to help us survive (and proliferate) is the idea of sentience, which has seemingly been absent from other forms of life. Granting that I know very little on the subject, it always seemed to me that a key indicator of this advanced mental development was the forethought to take one’s own life. Where the animal kingdom, as it were, lives and functions more with reflexes and pre-programmed actions to survive at any cost, the human mind accepts the notion of self destruction as way to circumvent misery.

This brings us to the topic at hand – a bear in China, living in deplorable circumstances, reportedly killed her child and herself to end the suffering their imprisonment was causing and would likely continue to cause until their natural demise (source). The article is not safe for overtly emotional types as it is really quite a tragic story.

But, the point of it is my notion of sentience is, at the very least, shaken and that this should be a reminder to everyone with any sort of power to impact another creatures quality of life to use that power for good, even if that means allowing the pig to live in the lap of luxury before its inevitable transformation to bacon.

Fuck You AT&T

Got an email outlining changes to my Terms of Service agreement. These provisions were included:

Service Availability: We have added language to clarify that service is not available in all areas, and may not be available at certain speeds (or at all) at some locations.

Service/Site Changes: We have added language stating that AT&T may need to modify or discontinue your service, either temporarily or permanently.

Conversion from DSL to U-verse High Speed Internet: We have added language to this agreement that will allow us to convert customers from our DSL network to the AT&T U-verse High Speed network, where available.

I may be over-estimating the impact, but it sounds to me that AT&T is going to start phasing out DSL and forcing the more expensive U-Verse on customers. I don’t watch TV so I really don’t feel compelled to pay for it as part of a U-Verse package.

It astounds me that even though there is competition for internet service providers and cable television that they are still able to make up the rules and prices as they go. Sounds like I may be participating in another internet black out.