Cam I Am

I decided to try something different yesterday..  I thought I’d try the “customer retention/relations game”..  One of my friends seems to do this periododically and it usually works out for him..

I have had a cell phone with Rogers for about 8 years straight, but 15 years on and off.  In that time, I’ve paid my bills on time and have not even really complained about the service..

A few years ago, I switched my service to Fido, and gave my wife the Rogers cell phone plan, while retaining the number and the billing in my name.  She doesn’t use it much (something around 250-300 (mostly daytime) minutes a month), so we’ve tried to find a plan that works..  Back in January, I tried to find the most optimal plan that works with her usage, and was offered by Rogers a plan that should work.  

So we watched the next 3 months of bills come in. That plan worked out to be about $75 a month.  I looked over at my unlimited City Fido plan, with the bells and whistles that I have added on..  $85 a month for 1500-2000 minutes a month..

There is hardly a comparison there!

Now, I know that my “I Will Die With This Cell Phone Plan” with City Fido was an amazing offer that will probably not be repeated ever again, but $75 for 300 minutes with Rogers?   That just doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. 

I don’t usually complain about things to companies.  I usually put up with far more than I should..  So the phone call that I made to Rogers yesterday was certainly out of character for me.  I called to see what other plans that they had.  The (rude) woman on the phone said that was “the best that she could do”, so I said that I wanted to cancel.  She advised me of the contract termination fee of $240 to which I said, ‘That’s fine.  I’ll make it up with the plan that I can get at Telus.  She said that she would start to cancel the line.

This isn’t going quite according to my plan, at this point.   If I did switch to (evil) Telus, I wanted the same number that I have had all this time.  I advised the lady that I wanted to port it so my next call would be to Telus. 

This is when she said that she put me through to “Customer Relations”. 

Ahh!  This is what I was looking for! 

I get a very happy sounding employee who, in the end, was able to give me a better plan, including voicemail and call display, with 250 minutes, free weekends and evenings for…..$39…

Much better!  I can live with that! 

So, I signed for another 3 years, which wasn’t so bad since I was already one year into a three year contract anyways.  Maybe it wasn’t the best possible deal out there, but it is one that I could live with..

Now I have the taste for this little game.  Now who else can I try it on?!  I can’t with my cable/internet/home phone and I think I do pretty good with Fido already…

Maybe I should threaten the Gas or Hydro company! 

For the past 3-4 days, my wife and I have been on a quest.  Not a noble one, but a quest nonetheless..

We’ve been trying to find a roll of Lifesavers.  Actually, seventy of them.

An easy task you would think.  We spent days going to Safeway, Save-On-Foods and even Superstore.  We tried Zellers…and dollar stores.  We tried 7-11’s..

Nothing..

Well, not exactly nothing..  We found Lifesavers “individually wrapped” in bags, but not in rolls..  And then we tried looking for rolls of Certs, on any other rolled type of candy and wouldn’t be expensive..

Now, I’m sure at this point, you must be asking “Why the hell is he making a big deal to find a roll of Lifesavers?  Why not just take the bag?  And why does he need 70 of them?”

A good question.  My wife is working on a project at work.  To make this story as short as possible, she needs them to make a specific party favour for something at work. 

So, yesterday, we gave up looking.  We found something in a dollar store that was longer than what she wanted, but it would just have to do the job.  So she bought them.  Afterwards, we were talking with each other about how ridculous the whole thing was, especially about how easy it should have been to find a candy that we knew so well while going up.

Today, I went out on a couple errands.  I went to the bank, the grocery store, bought a coffee and then went to the gas station for same propane.  I went into the store to pay when I noticed a roll of Certs..  I thought to myself that it was too bad that we didn’t see them before when lurking on the right..

LIFESAVERS!   ROLLS OF LIFESAVERS!

We never thought about checking gas stations..  Of course, she was on a budget and probably wouldn’t have been able to buy 70 at a reasonable price, but why doesn’t anyone else have them?

I know two people who are going to get extreme pleasure from reading this.

It seems that over the years I’ve changed my preferences on a couple things..

First, it seems that I prefer to drink Coke more than Pepsi.  Yes, Mark, I know what you are going to say:  I told you so.  It all started with me deciding that Coke tasted really good with sushi, instead of Pepsi.  Then, partially because of the choice we have from the vending machine at work, it seems that when I am presented with a choice, I’ll usually choose Coke.  I’m not proud, but there..  that’s off my chest.

Secondly, I seem to be much more accepting of country music.  Yes, Colleen, it’s true.  I remember years ago, when I still lived lived with my parents, our neighbours would have it cranked up most summer days. I would retailate with whatever I had going, and eventually played Weird Al’s “Don’t Play That Song”, and they eventually learned to keep their music to themselves.  These days, I listen to some now.  I’m now not in denial that Shania Twain and others are actually country.  

I’ve been saving this post for almost four months..  I dread the comments to come..

I’m just going to cover a bunch of things in this post..  Little things that don’t warrant a post of there own.

1)  It snowed today..  In parts of Vancouver..  In April…   What that hell is with that?  Snow and cherry blossoms don’t usually go together..

2)  It seems that Global TV has finally gotten with the program (pun intended!), and is finally going HD.  The channel line-up change on Shaw is happening this coming week, and it will be a nice addition to the line-up.  It’s very unfortunate that this is happening at the expense of several jobs that were cut a few months ago.

3)  How the hell can three kids make such a big mess in so little time.  Every time that we clean up the house, our three daughters find a way to destroy it in less than 5 minutes.

4)  I’ve noticed over the last few days since I severely reinjured my back, that I don’t seem to care about some things so much.  I usually am a fairly avid coffee drinker, but this morning is my second cup in about a week an a half.  Also, I play Scrabble on Facebook a lot, but again, today is finally the day I’ve decided to catch up on them..

That’s about it..  I’m sure that everything will correct itself within our household.  I’ve decided to try to return to work sometime next week (if my doctor allows) and I’ll do work in the office until after my surgery: I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I’ll be allowed to return to work by all parties involved.

In the last couple days, I’ve received some news that I’ve been expecting and dreading.

First, I finally had my appointment with the neurosurgeon (that I’ve waited for 7 months) to determine that I do need back surgery, and that it should happen within the next couple months.  This is welcome news and not.  I need my back to heal, and clearly other methods have not worked.  There are risks involved, but the outcome could be very good.  I don’t have an exact date yet, but I should have that within a few days.

Second, I saw my doctor..   I’m off work again, probably for another 4-5 months.  This poses all sorts of problems such as money and plans that my wife and I have made.  I had only been back to work for 3 months after being off for six months because of my back.  The other problem is that my wife and I were planning to go on a vacation (without the kids) to Chicago.  We haven’t been on a vacation in over 10 years, so anyone could imagine our disappointment.

Other than that, I’m managing.  I’m glad that I’m off of the serious painkillers, but I haven’t found a reasonable substitute.  I’m hoping to see my doctor next week again to find something.

Please accept my apologies in advance for any poor typing or things that just don’t make sense!

I’ve had an interesting weekend, starting early Thursday morning.  I drove into Vancouver for my afternoon shift, in extreme pain because of my back.  I believe that I was swearing out loud to myself to try to relieve some of the pain I was experiencing.

When I got to work, it was very clear to everyone that I was in no shape to attempt a regular route of work, so  I was offered the easiest field task I could have possibly been offered, but after 5 minutes of driving there, I was in so much pain, I returned to the office in tears.  A couple of the supervisors lay me down and offered to call an ambulance for me, but I told them that my wife was coming.  At this point, I could barely walk, sit or stand.  I had to be helped info lying down face first.

After my wife arrived and loaded me into the car, we drove off to Burnaby General Hospital, because we were familiar with it.  After waiting 2 hours, I got a morphine shot and some tablets and was sent home.

They did virtually nothing for the pain.

So, the next morning, we went to our local hospital.  We were taken in right away, the doctor accessed me and figured that since I’m seeing the neurosurgeon for my back on Tuesday (today), that he’d prescribe my stronger pain killers, and introduce them to my through IV.

So..  now that I’m on Percocet, the pain is gone, and to a degree, my preception of time is too..

I was just reading the news online when I came across something.

The cell phone is 35 years old today!  That’s right.  Thirty-five years ago, Motorola unveiled the DynaTac 8000x.  For $4,000 you could get this!

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After several months of seeing the message “WordPress is out of date” in my admin panel for my blog, I decided to upgrade.   The last time I did it, the message didn’t disappear, so I left it.

A couple days ago, I thought that I’d try upgrading again.  I read on a friends blog that he had trouble upgrading and warned not to use the “Maintanence Mode” function.  So armed with this information, I carefully backed my blog up.  In the instructions, Wordpress advises to be carefully how you do it, and suggests that you replace the contents of the directories, rather than the whole directory.

I didn’t take this approach.

I just replaced everything.  And it seemed to work!  As far as I can tell (with the help of a friend), the site appears to look the same as it did before to anyone who visits it, and the admin panel has been updated to a more user friendly interface.

So, maybe it was luck.  But everything seems to have worked out fine. 

So why all the warnings?  The last time I tried to upgrade I had nothing but problems when I followed WP’s instructions.  Yet, when I tried it my way, it works fine.

I’ve spent yesterday and today home from work.  Unfortunately, it’s not because I took some vacation time.  It’s not even because I’m sick.  My back is acting up again… 

I’m not entirely sure of what happened on the weekend.  I know that there was about a day and a half over the weekend that I didn’t have anymore of those wonderful little yellow pills that I’ve been taking.  I managed to get to the doctor to get a refill, but since then, I’ve been in a lot of pain. 

It usually takes a fair bit for me to phone in sick.  I don’t like missing work, even when I am sick.  I can only imagine what my supervisor is going to say when I go back (hopefully tomorrow).  I’m not going to be impressed if they put me on light-duties to “help me out”.. 

I see the neurosurgeon on the 15th..  it’s been a long 7 months waiting just for the consult with them.  Hopefully they have a real solution for my disc.  Everything up to now hasn’t worked.

That aside, we’re doing alright..  We are trying to look forward to the future, even though it’s uncertain about what’s going actually happen in the next 3-6 months..  I’ll know more in a couple weeks..