For want of a better title…

Vicki’s tropical fish tank has been set up for years, and I hadn’t realized how run-down it was getting until we started working on it a few months back. Adding some new angel fish was a bad idea; we introduced a disease that killed off all but one of our clown loaches and all but one of the new angel fish. Either that or the water quality problems that we already had were borderline-dangerous, and adding the new fish pushed it beyond livable.

Whatever the reason, we’ve cleaned up the tank nicely, added a vastly better light with a clear glass top – that’s when I realized just how gloomy it had become – cleaned the sides, and started adding more fish.

We’ve always liked the clown loaches more than any of the other fish we’ve had, because they have such interesting behaviors. I would say that they have personalities, if ascribing a personality to a cold water creature with barely a brain wasn’t such a stretch. They school, they find the strangest places to hide, they can sleep – or at least, be inactive – in odd positions. So it was a big disappointment to lose two of the three after having them for so many years.

The final loach hid behind his rock, and we rarely saw him. After I added the light, he started following the angel fish around occasionally – not exactly schooling, but usually being in the same part of the tank.

Then, when we added plants and several other fish, he spent all of his time out in the open. He nibbled on the plants and swam around with the brightly colored neon tetras. Vicki was especially happy to see him out and about all the time, and we plan to add more clown loaches.

But… apparently our water quaility problems aren’t over, or at least we have some issue still that affects tetras. All of the red tetras we added died very quickly. The neons took a little longer, but they started to succumb. I know that tetras are sensitive to some kinds of water conditions; you can’t make the water slightly brackish, which helps keep most fish healthy, because salt is toxic to tetras. I don’t think we have any salt in the water, but Texas hard water may have other problems, and I need to look at what might be going on before I try adding more tetras.

Everything else is fine. The catfish, the gouramis, the one angel fish that we still had, and the loach, all seem healthy. The plants are doing fine. But for a couple of days I was flushing tetras when I found them (and there are several I haven’t accounted for).

Then, yesterday morning, I saw what must be the oddest thing I’ve ever encountered in years of keeping tropical fish. The clown loach was swimming around with a dead neon tetra in its mouth.

It wasn’t eating it. It was just carring it around the tank. It looked as if – and, of course, this is even more ridiculous than claiming that a fish has a personality – it looked as if the loach had found one of the fish it had been schooling with, and wasn’t willing to let it go.

Yeah, it’s ridiculous – but since yesterday morning, the loach has gone back to his old hiding place. He doesn’t come out from behind his rock.

I’m sure that there are good reasons for the events, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that I saw the end of a tiny tragedy.

I was paying last month’s cellphone bill this week and found a charge I didn’t recognize on Simon’s phone. He’s 11, and shouldn’t be incurring extra charges. He did have a couple of games that Vicki told him he could download, but this wasn’t one of them.

AT&T couldn’t tell me anything about the charge. That seems odd; they apparently have the right to put something on my bill without giving me any justification. The operator did tell me how to find out who’d originated it (“google SJA Mobile”). So I did, and found SJA Mobile’s website. Interestingly absent is any useful information, like what they do, or what I could be paying for. Though they do offer a “no questions asked” refund.

Googling further becomes more interesting. There are dozens of blogs that claim that SJA Mobile provides a useful service, but none of them say what it is. Paid advertising? Dunno, it seems to me that without identifying the service you’re not going to sell much. Yet, for the same reason, they’re unlikely to be unsolicited testimonials.

The only site I found that gave me anything of interest was Skydeck’s blog, here and here. The text and comments make it pretty clear that SJA Mobile is or is involved in scamming. SJA initiated billing the blog writer after sending him the text message ”… “, with no action on his part. It seems that SJA Mobile is perpetrating cramming.

In my case, though, there was a reason behind the cramming. I was reluctant to follow SJA Mobile’s procedure to get my “no questions asked” refund, because I felt it would be implicitly legitimizing their charge. On the other hand, I didn’t really want to ask AT&T to remove the charge as disputed, when there was any possibility that it might be legitimate. So I did follow the SJA procedure, requested a refund, and texted STOP to the SJA number.

In response to the STOP, I got a text message from “ultimate-game-cheats.net” saying I was unsubscribed. I asked Simon, and he said yes, he’d given them his cell number to get help with a computer game. (Aside: never use a paid service for a computer game when GameFaqs.org has everything you’d ever need.) He said he’d been unable to get off the list, and didn’t know that it was costing us money.

Ultimate-game-cheats is not obfuscating the fact that signing up is $10/month. Not much, anyway. Certainly the “enter your cell # for the site password” is in much bigger and brighter text than the fine print, but the fine print is quite readable, It even mentions the subscription fee in two places.

Does that make the site and the charges legitimate? Well, that’s the reason I’m posting this. I don’t think so, and I think there’s a nasty near-scam going on here, abetted by AT&T and the other carriers who allow SJA Mobile billing rights.

I readily acknowledge that the charge was initiated by Simon’s providing the cell #, even though the site says that there will be a recurring $9.99 charge, that you must be 14 years or older, and that you must have your parents’ permission.

However, the company (ultimate-game-cheats) takes no steps to verify age. Yeah, it’s not an easy thing to do, but here it’s non-existent. Some sites (“adult” sites) require credit cards partly as an age verification mechanism. A cell # doesn’t even begin to imply adulthood or financial responsibility. Plenty of kids have cellphones. I’m fairly sure that a Texas court wouldn’t hold that an 11-year-old kid clicking on a link (even one that says don’t click unless you’re 14) would satisfy the legal requirement for establishing a contract.

I see no indication on the page that this is a real service. I see nowhere to enter the password that the company claims it will send. Perhaps the text message includes other access instructions – or perhaps it is entirely a scam.

Even if not, the site targets kids, encourages them to sign up, committing their parents to paying. If this isn’t exactly a scam, it’s at least misleading.

SJA Mobile has a duty to ensure that the charges that they bill to AT&T on behalf of Ultimate-game-cheats is legitimate. Clearly they do not do that.

AT&T apparently is willing to charge a customer based on zero justification for the charge from SJA Mobile. I’m sure that their contact with SJA Mobile requires that SJA authenticates its charges, but I’m not a party to that agreement, SJA doesn’t authenticate, and AT&T doesn’t police. So I’m left financially responsible for a specious charge.

Two aspects of this system particularly disturb me. First, that I don’t have a way to opt out. AT&T has no provision for me to say “don’t add third-party charges to my bill.” They’re free to add whatever they want, and I have to either pay or challenge it. My cell # has been turned into a payment ID, like a credit card, but unlike a credit card, I can’t cut it up and throw it away. I’m part of a new monetary system that I didn’t sign up for, and don’t want.

The second is a corollary to the first. Since a cell # has become a source of credit funding, any kid with a cell phone now has access to their parents’ funds. Subject to reading the bill’s details (how many parents know to do that? Or are likely to wade through every line? My bill was twelve pages) parents could well be funding all kinds of illicit activities. Possibly canceling text messaging would solve the problem – if the end provider was responsible enough to require receipt of a text message. (The “…” text would argue against that always being the case.) But texting is a given for kids these days.

Until the phone companies install a rational opt-in system for third-party charges, I have no option but to scrutinize and challenge every bill, and to warn others to do the same. Maybe I’m becoming increasingly a Luddite, but this is a payment system that I don’t want to be a part of.

Update:

The link to ultimate-game-cheats.net has changed today. Instead of the signup page that was present two days ago, there’s a page that says “new registrations are temporarily unavailable due to routine maintenance.” There is a login page, with a password, which does imply that the game cheats service may be real.

The con was worthwhile. I brought home a couple of useful pieces of knowledge.

• Always read a story aloud; to someone else if possible, but to yourself if not. You can hear clunky phrases more clearly. If you stumble over a sentence it might be awkwardly written, and if you run out of breath, it’s too long.

I discovered when I did this that it’s also good for focusing on details like inconsistent spacing and word / sound repetition, so it helped me make a few last-minute tweaks to the story.

• To succeed as a Speculative Fiction writer (according to Selina Rosen, and backed up by the rest of the panel) you need to be an extroverted self-promoter, visiting all the cons and selling yourself.

That’s a Bad Thing for me. I’ll never be able to speak in front of others, and I’ll never be an extrovert.

That isn’t going to stop me submitting the story, though. It should start on its rounds tomorrow. (Update: nope, it’s in the mail today.)

One question that came up several times was “How do I find a beta reader?” A beta reader being someone who’ll read and critique a piece before you send it out. I get great feedback from the critique group, but it strikes me it might be interesting to create a session on how to be a beta reader, and introduce con-goers to each other so that they can trade readings. I wouldn’t mind additional independent help on a story, and would like the chance to offer feedback. I’ll have to suggest that to the con folks for next year.

Pooks: no filk.