Month: October 2010

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Air Card Usage Disagreement

Last month, I logged into the Telus website to check my airtime usage and noticed an incredible anomaly: nearly two GB of transfer on a day when I was on the road. It wasn’t possible! I don’t get those kinds of speeds, I know better than to do huge downloads or streaming or whatever, especially since I knew that I was only halfway through my billing cycle and already at 4GB.

I called Telus immediately and was told there was nothing that could be done until I got my bill. It came today and it was for twice what it should have been. After a half hour on the phone with them, including requesting that I be transferred to the original tech person’s supervisor, I managed to get the overage for this month waived, but was warned that they will never do that again.

I could not get them to acknowledge that that day of excessive transfer was an obvious anomaly, however it happened. I pointed out that when I went over a couple of months ago, I paid it. I also made note of the fact that my biggest day of data transfer in six months was half a gig, a long way from two gigs!

My billing cycle has reset, so I’m going to be even more vigilant in watching it as I go back to using my aircard. There’s another concern: roaming. Being on a border town, there is a chance of my aircard catching a US tower. Telus says there is absolutely nothing they can do to keep me from roaming (not sure I believe that). So, I’m not really motivated to use my aircard here, even though the service is great, since roaming fees would be even worse than excess bandwidth fees. Augh!

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A Wenatchee Detour

Donna, another friend, and I headed into Washington state today. The purpose of the trip was so that Donna could have her defective Verizon phone replaced while it was still on warranty, something which was going to expire in a couple of days. Verizon had told her that Omak had the nearest store. We figured we’d pop in at the Princes grocery store in Oroville then go to Omak, do the Verizon store, grab some Mexican food at Tequila’s, and finish the day at Walmart. I drove because my car was quicker to empty than was Donna’s truck. 🙂

Slight change of plan at the Verizon store, which is located in the Ace Hardware. They are just a distributor and it was necessary to go to a proper Verizon store. The nearest ones were Spokane or Wenatchee. I’d seen a road sign for the latter, so I confirmed that it was just a hundred miles away. We’d already come this far, it made no sense to let the warranty on Donna’s phone expire! So, we came out of the store and told our other friend that she could either spend the afternoon at Walmart or join us on an impromptu road trip. The decision was easy to make!

Unfortunately, Tequila’s was closed, so we decided to push on and stop at the first promising location for lunch.

The drive to Wenatchee was just gorgeous and easy. Our stomachs were a rumbling trio when we got to Pateros, so we pulled into the strip mall and decided to try out the little bakery there. We had nice turkey and cranberry sandwiches (Thanksgiving, remember!).

Coming into Wenatchee was a bit stressful because we didn’t really have directions and I’d left the GPS behind. We got off the highway, crossed a bridge, and headed into downtown, which made the whole day worthwhile. Downtown Wenatchee is stuck in the 1950s! Nearly all the store signs are those old signs they had back then. It was a most amazing time warp! The road through downtown led to the shopping district where we recognized the landmarks we were told to look for. We’d gone a little out of our way, but not actually done a detour. I definitely want to go back and do a photo tour of town!

It was late afternoon when Donna’s phone issues were satisfactorily resolved, so we agreed to shoot straight back to Omak, do Walmart, then grab dinner at the Mexican place in Oroville if it was open. We stopped again in Pateros for gas and then pushed on. It was getting late, so we didn’t dally at Walmart, but I will be going back there with fabric samples ASAP since I found there something for the rig I’ve been looking for since I started planning the decorating phase….

Thankfully, the restaurant in Oroville, Trino‘s, was open! Between the chips with cold slaw, the gigantic burritos, and the deep fried tortilla cheese cake bites with ice cream (not my idea!), we pretty much rolled out of there! I may not have to eat for a week. 🙂

Getting back into Canada was reasonably painless and then it was a hop, skip, and a jump to home. What a great day!

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Something Unexpected

It’s a holiday Monday, I’m off on a road trip in about a half hour, and when I get back, I’m going to be behind on the list of projects I need to put out by Friday. It doesn’t rain, but it pours!

Right now, I’m just keeping the wolves at bay and scraping by, but one project is from a repeat client I only just picked up, so I’m optimistic that this upwards trend will continue now that I have refined my my method for finding and bidding on contracts.

Soon as I have a moment to breathe, I will update my post about work from home resources.

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Holidays are Better With Friends

Tonight, Donna, Ken, and a couple we met back in Oliver gathered together for a bit of an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. Such fun! I forgot how nice it is to bundle up a dish of food, a plate, and utensils, and trundle over to a neighbour’s place for a communal meal. Thankfully, the Ark is plenty big enough for a gathering!

We did Thanksgiving tonight since tomorrow we gals are going on a road trip!

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Timing

Today, I landed a small contract with a short turn around time, so I’ve been busy transcribing and translating. It’s been a long day and I still have a couple of hours to do on it tomorrow, but this addition to my portfolio is most welcome.

I was perhaps half-way through the job when I heard the distinct sound of a heavy duty truck pulling into the site next to me. I didn’t even need the red kayaks for confirmation: the roving acres had arrived a day early! We settled for a quick catch up, knowing that we’ll have plenty of time together in the weeks to come.

Finally, I’m moving forward with that thing I still won’t write about and I think that an announcement will be forthcoming very soon!