I’m supposed to be taking the course the first Sat/Sun of August.  Now I just need to get my helmet and all that stuff then after the class I can finally go get a bike and enjoy riding it around.

(for those of you that do not know, I’ve wanted a motorcycle for many years now, ever since riding dirt bikes as a kid)

[see here for previous chain of posts for what this is about]

I’m not entirely sure why I’ve become so infatuated with saving money in every way possible, but I have, and one of the ways to do that is to go towards pay-as-you-go type services where it makes sense. Skype appears that it will cost me roughly $6/mo + $.02/minute. That’s really not too bad. If I get to where I’m spending over $2.95/mo in phone calls, I can sign up for a subscription for unlimited domestic calling. That means $9/mo for unlimited calling which isn’t too shabby.

After reading some reviews and whatnot I settled on the phone pictured, it’s the Netgear SPH200D. I was able to pick it up on-sale at Best Buy. It’s not a full-on WiFi VOIP phone, as it uses a base station (excluding it from being mobile), but it does perform well from my very limited testing so far. I’ll have to update if I think about it later after having had more of a chance to use the phone. So far I called my cell phone so that I could hear for myself the sound quality and I called my mom (she always gets to be the guinea pig for my new devices). The voicemail was clear. I called the phones directly and took turns holding one to my ear while speaking into the other. I could hear no abnormal hesitation between my speaking into one and being heard in the other. My testing partner (aka: Mom) said I sounded clear and she wasn’t hearing any hesitation between us conversing.

Of course there are downsides to using Skype, but I find them acceptable. For instance, I can’t dial 911 from it, or if the power goes out I can’t use it, or obviously if my internet service goes down, I can’t use it either. Actually, if I had a landline, the particular phone I chose can connect to that as well, and whenever you place a call, you can choose whether you want it to go out over your landline or over SkypeOut. I also have a cell phone to cover 911. Not perfect as, to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t display an address with Enhanced 911, but considering all the years I’ve gone with pretty much only a cell phone as my phone, I think that’s ok.

You might be asking why I’m even trying to have a landline if I’ve made the jump to solely using a cell phone for so long. Well, in my previous residence, I had a lot of trouble getting a signal on my cell phone, largely because of where my apartment was in the building. I was hoping that issue would be resolved once I moved, but that’s unfortunately not the case. I’m typically riding one signal bar on my iPhone with AT&T at home. It’s become quite frustrating really. But I’m finding ways to work around it. My family all calls me on my GrandCentral number now, and my friends are finally starting to switch over (you change your phonebook yet Jeremy? Hmm!? That’s right, I’m calling you out). This allows me to pick up on whatever phone happens to work best at the moment, whether that’s my office line, cell, or now my Skype line.

Anyhow, if you don’t have my GrandCentral number (the one that rings all my phones), get in touch with me so I can give it to you. The iPhone may be going away one day, meaning that number won’t be available anymore.

I decided to go ahead and respond to the email address that was provided in that comment, and within 15 minutes or so I had received a reply asking for more information about what could keep me as a customer.  I replied back, sharing my stories of things gone wrong throughout the life of my account with them.  That was yesterday.  Last night when I got home, I realized I had some voicemails on my home phone but didn’t get to check them.  Today, I received a phone call from a customer service supervisor with Comcast.  She said that she was contacting me regarding my corporate complaint and wanted to see if I had received her voicemails from the previous day, along with asking whether there was anything further she could do to resolve the issue.  It turns out the voicemails from the previous night were hers.  She had left me her office number, along with the office and cell phone number of a Network Engineer supervisor with Comcast.  She apologized for the experiences I’d had, and asked if there was anything further she could do in terms of help or compensation.  I told her I’d been told I would be receiving a one month credit to my service, so I was content in that regard.  Despite my distaste with the company, I’m not trying to “pull one over” on anyone.  I believe in being honest in regards to these things, so to me that means in terms of further compensation, it would be unfair.  Maybe I’m too nice, but I need to stick to my ideals.

It was definitely interesting.  On one side, it’s great that I somehow got the attention of such high level support (although I haven’t used it, but based on their eagerness to get the information to me, I’d say it’s likely not a joke).  On the other side, it’s too bad that a residential user of their service had to be bumped up to what seems to be a corporate/executive level of support.

So as the title states, I’m left wondering, is this too late, or have they changed my mind…

I had originally hired Starving Students to do the move for me. I had scheduled the move with them in March. The local office was supposed to call me about two weeks before the move in order to get the specifics, confirm the date & time, etc. Well, about 1 week before the move, I still hadn’t heard from them so I called the local office. They said I was in the system but had been canceled for some reason. “Luckily” they still had room for me on the day I had planned to move, so he went ahead and uncanceled me and proceeded to go over the pricing. Most of it was what I’d already been told. It would have a 2 hour minimum, 1 hour on top of that, $75/hr, and then he told me there’d also be a 9.5% charge on top of the total cost for fuel. The fuel charge really didn’t make sense to me. I just don’t understand why a percentage on the total move would be added for fuel. Makes no sense in my opinion.

Luckily, I had talked to a neighbor a night or so before and he told me about a company he was using, Kid Gloves Moving & Storage. He said they’d treated him well and worked really fast. I called them and scheduled my move. That was one, of few good decisions I made through-out the process I later learned. They were great. They had told me to be ready to let them start moving me by 8am. They arrived at 7:50am, took a quick look around the apartment and started taking action. It was 3 guys, and none of them stopped moving until everything was packed. They followed me over to the new place, took a quick look at the inside, and then they started moving me in. They were finished moving me by 9:45am. That’s just shy of 2 hours for a cross-town move. No walls were touched, no items were broken, they were extremely professional.

The only hitch in the actual move itself was that the box spring for my bed couldn’t fit upstairs. So for the past week I’ve been trying different remedies. For the first couple of nights I just put the mattress on the floor. Then I had some slats cut for the bed, but they were constantly falling out (which can be quite loud on a hardwood floor). Then finally I found a bed store close by that was able to sell me a split-queen box spring. So tonight, basically a week after moving, I will finally be sleeping in a real bed. I’m pretty excited about that.

Until Friday (2 days ago), I was unable to get WiFi up in my new home. I’ve determined that Comcast is perfect example of how evil corporations can become in this country. When the technician came out to my house to do the “install” he was rushing everything. He also had obviously not been told anything about why he was at my home. I had all of my equipment, it was just a transfer of service. I even had everything hooked up, all he should have really needed to do is “flip the switch” that gave my home service, and then verify that everything worked. Well, in his impatience, he decided to swap my cable modem, because the one I already had was taking too long to sync up (he gave it all of about 1 minute max). Well, he swapped it out, we finally got it to sync, and plugged it into my Macbook, and with a little playing around, it was able to surf the web. Shortly after he left. I figured it would be no problem to then get it working with my wireless router. After all, I’m a pretty resourceful guy when it comes to “computer stuff” and all that. Well, my router couldn’t pull an IP off the cable modem. So for the past week I have had to take my laptop over to my cable modem and plug it in directly whenever I wanted on the internet for something (pretty much all the time). I tried all sorts of things, powering everything down, bringing it up one device at a time, making sure things were powered off for the “10 count”, all the typical trouble shooting stuff including making sure my router was cloning my Macbook’s MAC address.

Well, Friday night, I’d had enough. Thursday before I went to bed I had unplugged and powered off every device. When I came home Friday, I slowly turned on each device, giving each device some time to “boot” before bringing the next item on. It still wouldn’t pull an IP. So I called customer service. Ugh, I’m still so flustered from the experience that I don’t think I can explain it all here. Basically, I ended up having to call in 6 times before I finally was able to talk to a supervisor. No one was able to help me. While on the phone all night with them, it magically started working somehow. I have no idea what finally allowed it to happen

Basically, I’ve asked them to credit my account for 1 months worth of service (roughly $200) and I intend to seek out services to replace all things I’m currently paying Comcast for. I’ve had nothing but poor experiences with them for the past year, and I pay them way too much money each month to put up with it. I imagine I’ll just be outright canceling my home phone service, and I’m going to see if I can get DSL to replace the cable modem. As for television, FiOS isn’t offered in my area yet, so I may try to check out some of the Dish Network-ish type providers and see if I can replace them there as well. I just see no need to be paying so much money per month for what can’t even be called sub-standard customer support. It disgusts me.

Anyhow, I probably won’t be reachable by email and whatnot over the next day or two until I get setup in the new place. So if you need me, or want to talk or whatever, give me a call or send me a txt.

I’ve also improved with my SVN knowledge recently, and have even been investigating git, which I must say, has some neat features.  I’m just not sure that it’s the route I want to go at the moment. Actually, a repository of some sort is the only thing I’m really lacking at the moment. Where I’m hosting my website runs a SVN server, so I can setup repositories there. But, I’ve sort of become a trac junkie, and they don’t have that installed and hooked up to SVN. I know of a decently priced service that makes the whole SVN/Trac thing so easy, but I don’t really have enough going on at the moment to make it worth spending money on for personal stuff.

I could always go for github, which is an option, but I really enjoy having trac.

Anyhow, sadly I have pretty much zero freelance work at the moment (I’ve been turning it down for the most part, except for some really small projects), and I don’t have any ideas for things I’d like to make. So I suppose now that I have this all setup and figured out … all I really need is an idea. /sigh

I’ve been considering trying to get into the WP community, but I guess I’m somewhat nervous about the idea to be honest. I’ve never really contributed to an open source project, certainly not one as massive as WP has become. I’m not even sure where I’d begin, heh. It would be cool to solve a bug or something and have it committed. There’d be a feeling of accomplishment there.

Talking is a strain. I have to work very hard to be sure I’m not mumbling, and this seems to strain other muscles in my face, causing fatigue and soreness in them. The muscles in the numb region seem to be going haywire, like they don’t quite know what to do. They’re not doing contortions on my face or anything, but they’re very tight it seems. If I move my jaw in certain ways, I can feel them tugging on other parts of my face/jaw.

As best as we (read: my oral surgeon) can tell, the nerve was most likely touched when she was administering the local anasthesia. She said when removing my lower teeth, she didn’t see the nerve (which is usually a good sign), so she doesn’t believe the actual extraction caused the problem.

Two days ago I went in for a unscheduled check-up since I was still experiencing numbness. She did some tests on the area, basically to get a sense of how much of my sensory abilities were inhibited. I could in general tell the difference between a sharp touch or a dull touch in all areas she tested I believe. She did another test where she touched two places on the area and asked me to tell her whether she was touching two points or one, and she moved it around. I believe she was just moving the points closer together, in all except one area I think I got those correct (another good sign). Then she did a temperature test. Basically touching something warm or something cold to different areas, and asking which it was. For the most part I could tell the difference in all except one area. I could tell she was touching me because of the pressure, but I couldn’t tell if it was warm or cold. She said temperature is usually one of the last things to return. All things considered, I guess this is good news. She said I had a good prognosis for regaining all my sensation.

I go in again today for another appointment (my original check-up after the extraction). Hopefully I’ll get a chance to ask her some more questions I have and get answers. She measured the area that was altered, so we could gauge improvement over time, but I don’t expect to see any change in the course of two days. I’m not sure she’ll even bother to measure again today.

Anyhow, maybe I’m just whining, but I’ve been real surprised how much this has affected me. You don’t realize how much you rely on that region of your face I guess, heh.

:(