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My friend !Evil Phil1 and I have a long-standing running joke.2 I am, often without any conscious action on my part to precipitate it, able to, as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
craftsman would so colorfully put it, "fuck up an anvil."3 I've had computer problems that persist for weeks or months, and then !Evil Phil comes over and lays his hand on the computer and it works. Until he leaves, at which point the computer reverts to being possessed by whatever evil spirit it had been inhabited by until he laid hands upon it. The last such occurrence involved getting my Internet router to link up and be friends with my phone router. My problem is so persistent and pervasive and perfectly perplexing that I decided it had to be one of my superpowers (as you'll read if you follow that link).
Before I left work last night, I was trying to think of ways to further reduce the amount of my hard-earned filthy lucre that never sees the insides of my bank account. It dawned on me that, although I have and need my cell phone, I am paying $44/month for a plan that gives me more minutes than I have ever or will ever use. To give you some clue, I had4 nearly 80 hours of roll-over time. I talk on the cell phone for maybe 15 minutes per month, and that's usually calling my mother to say I'm on my way home or am halfway there or whatever. Paying $44/month for this is...well, "clinically insane" is the only phrase that leapt to mind.
I dropped by my friendly neighborhood AT&T store last night and had my account switched to the Go-Phone. I signed up for the $0.25/minute plan with no contract and no other features. Just a straight $0.25/minute no matter what. The lowest amount you can put on the account per "refill" is $15, so that should give me approximately 60 minutes of cell-phone use per 30 days. That should be more than adequate. The other plan is $.10/minute with free mobile-to-mobile and a $1/day connection fee. In other words, if I make 1 call per day, I can't even talk for 15 minutes over that same 30-day period. The math (is hard!) worked out to favor the $0.25/minute thing when I worked it out. I figured I could switch if it became too problematic.
I got home shortly thereafter with the printout in my hands that clearly shows the flat-rate plan I signed up for.
I logged in. I went to my account. It showed the other plan. The $0.10/minute + $1/day plan. The one I specifically didn't want to try.
So I went through the lengthy process of calling the number and going through the extremely annoying voice-recognition thing to change it. And it said it was changed.
Only...when I checked online again, it wasn't. So I called and did it again. And again. And again.
After the fourth time, I realized this was my superpower at work. I needed a dose of hero power.
This "morning"5 I called GoPhone and had them look at it. She was very confident that I had just not followed directions. I could hear it in her (smug) voice. Until...it didn't work for her. Twice.
So it was she that called in the Big Guns™. I got transferred to GoPhone's Technical Support Department. <insert Hero theme here> What he basically had to do was delete my account and add it back.
Yes, my superpower had so fucked up my account that there was no way to salvage it.
Grant was also one of the funniest Tech Support people I've ever talked to because he kept up a constant narration about what he was doing and the results of his actions. "Okay, now I put '1' and then...no, that's not right, it should be a '2'...and then this...and now that...and...Okay, that didn't work, so we'll try this other screen...." :)
The upshot is: I have the service I signed up for. I have the same cell phone and number that I had, for those of you who have it, so there's no need to reprogram anything. Believe me, you don't want to. We have proof now that my superpower can affect things at a great distance from me connected by only the most tenuous of threads. Don't blame me if your cell phone suddenly goes haywire when you try to call mine.
Well, uh, yeah. Okay, you probably can blame me. Or my superpower. KaZot. But just remember that I have no actual control over KaZot, so I'm not doing it on purpose. :)
<mumbling> Note to self: I should really learn some way to control KaZot for the good of Humanity....
craftsman would so colorfully put it, "fuck up an anvil."3 I've had computer problems that persist for weeks or months, and then !Evil Phil comes over and lays his hand on the computer and it works. Until he leaves, at which point the computer reverts to being possessed by whatever evil spirit it had been inhabited by until he laid hands upon it. The last such occurrence involved getting my Internet router to link up and be friends with my phone router. My problem is so persistent and pervasive and perfectly perplexing that I decided it had to be one of my superpowers (as you'll read if you follow that link).Before I left work last night, I was trying to think of ways to further reduce the amount of my hard-earned filthy lucre that never sees the insides of my bank account. It dawned on me that, although I have and need my cell phone, I am paying $44/month for a plan that gives me more minutes than I have ever or will ever use. To give you some clue, I had4 nearly 80 hours of roll-over time. I talk on the cell phone for maybe 15 minutes per month, and that's usually calling my mother to say I'm on my way home or am halfway there or whatever. Paying $44/month for this is...well, "clinically insane" is the only phrase that leapt to mind.
I dropped by my friendly neighborhood AT&T store last night and had my account switched to the Go-Phone. I signed up for the $0.25/minute plan with no contract and no other features. Just a straight $0.25/minute no matter what. The lowest amount you can put on the account per "refill" is $15, so that should give me approximately 60 minutes of cell-phone use per 30 days. That should be more than adequate. The other plan is $.10/minute with free mobile-to-mobile and a $1/day connection fee. In other words, if I make 1 call per day, I can't even talk for 15 minutes over that same 30-day period. The math (is hard!) worked out to favor the $0.25/minute thing when I worked it out. I figured I could switch if it became too problematic.
I got home shortly thereafter with the printout in my hands that clearly shows the flat-rate plan I signed up for.
I logged in. I went to my account. It showed the other plan. The $0.10/minute + $1/day plan. The one I specifically didn't want to try.
So I went through the lengthy process of calling the number and going through the extremely annoying voice-recognition thing to change it. And it said it was changed.
Only...when I checked online again, it wasn't. So I called and did it again. And again. And again.
After the fourth time, I realized this was my superpower at work. I needed a dose of hero power.
This "morning"5 I called GoPhone and had them look at it. She was very confident that I had just not followed directions. I could hear it in her (smug) voice. Until...it didn't work for her. Twice.
So it was she that called in the Big Guns™. I got transferred to GoPhone's Technical Support Department. <insert Hero theme here> What he basically had to do was delete my account and add it back.
Yes, my superpower had so fucked up my account that there was no way to salvage it.
Grant was also one of the funniest Tech Support people I've ever talked to because he kept up a constant narration about what he was doing and the results of his actions. "Okay, now I put '1' and then...no, that's not right, it should be a '2'...and then this...and now that...and...Okay, that didn't work, so we'll try this other screen...." :)
The upshot is: I have the service I signed up for. I have the same cell phone and number that I had, for those of you who have it, so there's no need to reprogram anything. Believe me, you don't want to. We have proof now that my superpower can affect things at a great distance from me connected by only the most tenuous of threads. Don't blame me if your cell phone suddenly goes haywire when you try to call mine.
Well, uh, yeah. Okay, you probably can blame me. Or my superpower. KaZot. But just remember that I have no actual control over KaZot, so I'm not doing it on purpose. :)
<mumbling> Note to self: I should really learn some way to control KaZot for the good of Humanity....
- The exclamation means "not" in some flavors of programming language, for those of you not in on that particular loop. Heh, "loop." Get it? "Loop"! Oh, I slay me!
- How can it be standing and running at the same time? English is weird.
- Think about it.
- Keep reading....
- Any time I get up is technically morning. So what if the sun had risen a good 8 hours earlier?
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