IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

Just briefly!

Irishman For Hire is taking a week off. I had a fantastic (albeit crazy) extended weekend in Boston last week and this week, I am celebrating my fourteenth wedding anniversary with my beautiful bride, Mrs. Irishman! Happy Anniversary, Steph! I love you!

I also want to wish a Happy Belated Birthday to my cousin, Brett!

I do have a new feature to share with you; a new page called “Leabhar Mór-éilimh” … Click on the link to check it out and provide feedback!

Have a wonderful week! I should be back next week with a new article!

It was a hot, sticky Wednesday afternoon when I dropped everything and drove to the AT & T store. It was June 23, 2010 and after a couple of days of unpacking, Stephanie and I decided it was time to order our internet service and to plug back into the world again. After placing many calls to various stores and companies, I felt like the store in Apex offered me the best bang for my buck.

I walked up to the counter and when the representative asked me if he could help me with anything, I declined. I had spoken with a knowledgeable sales associate on the phone and realizing that most sales associates work on commission, I decided to wait for the person I had established a business relationship with prior to my visit. So I walked around the store and looked at some of the phones they had on display in their showroom.

I was finally called up to the counter. As I placed my order, the price for my DSL service increased by five dollars per month. When I inquired as to the price difference, it was explained to me that I was only ordering DSL service and not a phone as well. I had stated that I was only interested in DSL service when I initially called and the prices had been explained in detail. The sales associate apologized for the misunderstanding but since I didn’t need phone service and I was getting a “dry loop” DSL plan, the rates were a little bit higher.

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Happy New Year!!! Happy New Decade!!! (although, not technically. But for me, it counts!) I wish you all the best for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2010!!!

Today is also the second anniversary of Irishman For Hire!! And with all of your support, Irishman For Hire has become a bigger success than I ever could have imagined. To those who have been following Irishman For Hire from day one and to all of my new friends, thank you so much. It has been an absolute joy to share these articles with you and more importantly, your kind feedback and emails of support have touched me in such a positive way. I am humbled and blessed. Thank You!!

Irishman For Hire had a great year in 2009! I had four readers on January 1, 2008. And not too many more over the first couple of weeks. Luckily for me, I went into a bank one day and was shown the truth about banks and fees and I wrote my article FEE MADNESS and Irishman For Hire exploded. Thousands of readers have visited Irishman For Hire ever since that article was posted and I am honored that you have spent another the year with me as I have shared my personal perceptions of the world with you. Thank you!!!

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We circled the block a few times trying to find a parking space. The wind whipped through the New York City buildings and a light snow fell as my nerves started to get the best of me. Could I do this? What if we got caught? Was this really how I wanted to spend my Christmas Eve? And if I found the answers I was looking for; what if I didn’t like what I had found?

A car pulled out from a parking space up in front of me. My heart was pounding through the outer wall of my chest as I waited for the vehicle to drive away. Then I parked my car in the space that had been vacated.

Stephanie got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk waiting for me. I sat there for a moment as I contemplated my options for the last time. Then I took the key out of the ignition, took a deep breath, got out of the car and joined Stephanie on the sidewalk.

“Ready?” she asked.

The wind tore across our faces like the prickly fingers of the Wicked Witch of the West, warning us against going any further. The gray, drab, dreary day was a perfect backdrop against the frozen city and as we both shivered from the cold, I looked deep into her eyes and said, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

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It had been a little more than a year since I had found my birth name and I was personally frustrated with myself at the progress I had made. Life changing events had consumed a lot of my free time, so my opportunities to continue my inquiry had been put on the back burner. I had gotten married, started a new job, moved to a new state and started a new life. Stephanie and I were newlyweds and we had a lot on our plate. So as my twenty-eighth birthday approached, my mind started to wander back to my search for my biological parents.

I hadn’t completely stopped looking for them. I had flirted around with some new search techniques during the course of the year. My neighbor, Will, was a computer programmer and he introduced me to the capabilities of the internet and how I might be able to find information more easily. The internet (in many respects) was still in its infancy twelve years ago. The abundance of information that is at our fingertips today didn’t exist on the web over a decade ago. And that lack of readily available information made it difficult for me to navigate my search through an ever changing cyberworld.

I had my birth name which gave me some clues as to who I was looking for and I now had a last name that allowed me to narrow the scope of my search. I had a birth location which became known as ground zero and the basic non-identifying information that the adoption agency had given to me when I started looking for my birth parents. And most of all, I had my creativity, my imagination, my ingenuity and an uncanny knack for asking questions in unique ways that allowed me to gain access to useful information. But even then, my quest for the truth seemed more like a constant lessen in futility because I ran into more roadblocks then I ever thought would have existed.

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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to finally get caught up on some personal business. The previous year had been a tough year for our family and over the last four months of 2008, we had a lot going on every day. So taking care of some of stuff that could take care of itself was the furthest thing from my mind.

I decided to open the banks statement from a couple of ancillary accounts that I have and balance those accounts. I knew that there hadn’t been any transactions on one particular account over the past year because I hadn’t used it at all. Therefore, when the statements came in over the past few months, I just set them aside to be dealt with at a later date.

As I expected, I opened up the first statement and everything seemed to be okay; nothing was out of the ordinary. It was a checking account and since it wasn’t an interest bearing account, the balance always remained constant from month to month. I opened up the second statement and once again, everything seemed to be alright. I opened the third statement and just stared at the page for a moment.

“What the…” I said rather loudly, “What the heck is this?!”

“What’s wrong?” Stephanie asked as she quickly came into the room.

“My bank account has been wiped out. It’s empty, nothing there, kaput!”

“What do you mean it’s been wiped out?” she asked as she looked at the statement.

“It’s just gone. I have nothing left.”

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Happy New Year!!! May 2009 find you all healthy, happy and prosperous.

It may be hard to believe but today is the one year anniversary of Irishman For Hire. I launched the site on January 1, 2008 and for the past year, I have had the pleasure of sharing these articles with you and God willing, I hope to share many, many more stories with you in 2009!!!

I want to thank you all so much for all of your support over the past year. You are the reason 2008 was so successful and why 2009 will be a great year for Irishman For Hire. From the four visitors I had last New Year’s Day to the thousands who have visited Irishman For Hire over the past year, I am humbled and honored that you have spent the year with me as I have shared my personal perceptions of the world with you. Thank you!!!

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The current business climate of charging a fee for every single transaction I have made has started to get a little irritating. Every time I have used a foreign ATM, I have paid a fee. If I don’t carry a minimum monthly balance in my checking or savings account, the bank has charged me a fee. When I have used my credit card at different stores, I was charged a fee for the convenience of being able to purchase the item with that piece of plastic.

I wish I could have only blamed the banking institutions of the world for the implementation of the current fee epidemic, but I can’t. Ticket Master has charged an exorbitant fee for every single ticket I have purchased from them. They even charged me a fee for postage and handling when I opted to pick my tickets up at the “will call” window but the most irritating fee from Ticket Master was when I choose to have my tickets emailed to me. I was still charged for the postage and then I was charged another fee for the convenience of having the tickets emailed to me and saving them the cost of the printing as well as the cost for the actual postage and handling in the first place.

The electric company has now joined in the fracas as well. When I looked at the itemized list on my electric bill, I realized that they have been charging me a monthly fee. My town government charged a flat fee for garbage pick-up, which struck me as more of a tax than a fee, but they call it a fee nonetheless. When I placed an air conditioner in with my weekly garbage, the town charged me an extra fee which I believe they referred to as an “environmental recovery fee” in order to take the old air conditioning unit away. The phone company charged me for a “universal line fee” and then, literally, two lines down the bill, there was a “federal line fee.” I guess “universal” doesn’t cover as much territory universally as it once had in the past.

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Welcome to the Irishman for Hire.

In the days, weeks and months to come, these pages will be filled with the stories of life that will be shared for your enjoyment. There will be no rhyme or reason for any of the stories, poems, thoughts or ideas that are shared in this forum. Irishman for Hire will be a place where a good story comes first (even if rational thought is sometimes tossed out the window) and the obscure ramblings of the mundane world will be examined, but not for any other particular reason then it is there to be observed and scrutinized.

A good way to understand the philosophy of this site is to recall the following quote from the preface to the book THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN written by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens).

NOTICE

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

We can claim that the narrative won’t contain motive or moral, but any message you take from the pages to come will be from your own personal connection to the piece in its simplest form; a good story.

So as we welcome in the year 2008, I wish you and your family a Happy New Year. I also welcome you to Irishman for Hire. I invite you back every few days to enjoy the content that will appear in the pages to come but most importantly, I welcome your feedback and thoughts about any and all of the stories that will be shared with you here.

Cead mile failte romhat!