Thursday, March 3, 2011

Multiply 365 Day 62 - Under the covers almost

 

Care to join me in bed? That is where I am blogging from, at least this evening. It is all part of a test. You may remember a while back I had mentioned a phone scam that was trying to be pulled on me, one in which a company tried to get me to change my long distance carrier by spewing forth some lies on the phone. The result of that ended up being me reporting them to Verizon, my current carrier, and explaining what happened. During that phone call it was also determined that I was overpaying for my service by about $10 a month, but that if I wanted to opt into a plan I could keep my phone service the way it is, and get faster DSL service, provided I was going to keep it for 2 years. To me it was a no brainer, so I took the deal and as part of it Verizon shipped me free of charge a new modem.


Well time slipped by, I did get the new modem but when I went to install it I would get an error message. Rather than fight the good fight and work my way through all of those problems, I just plugged the old modem back in. I would get some lag, or application hang or whatever lingo it is that is used in such a situation, but for the most part it worked well enough. My guess was that the modem couldn't handle the upgrade in speed and would at times choke, but that is just a guess on my part. The problem was never bad enough that I couldn't use the computer, it was more of an annoyance than an actual problem.


Yesterday I had another one of those application hangs and I decided that enough was enough, so I unplugged the old modem and once again tried reinstalling the new one. And once again I had the same issue as previously, it would start to install then I would get an error message. It would say that the administrator password had been changed and I would have to put the new one in to continue. Since I had never changed the password, that was a problem. But the screen also had a number on it to call tech support, which unlike previous instances when I just would opt to go back to the old modem, this time I pressed on. I went ahead and made the call, figuring I would be shipped off to a call center in India or some god forsaken (or is that Vishnu forsaken) place where understanding the conversation would be difficult. Rest assured, on this point I was not disappointed.


After being connected to someone from India, we started talking about the issue and thankfully his accent was the hardest part of the conversation, everything he told me to do was fairly simple and after about 5 minutes we had the modem up and running and all was well. Then he asked me if he could take control of my desktop for a few minutes. Usually in such instances if I am speaking to a tech professional, I will grant them access without much arm twisting, but since the modem seemed to be working okay I was curious as to why he would want access to something that seemed to be fixed. That was when I was told that he wanted to set up my wireless network. Apparently the new modem that Verizon shipped has wireless capability built right into it. To which I said, “knock yourself out” and in another 5 minutes I allegedly had wireless access from my modem as well, though I did not know if that was actually the case. That is until now, when I busted out my laptop and am sitting on my bed typing away and from what I have noticed, I do have internet access. It is another good day to be me.


So I am on here while I run a virus scan on my desktop computer, it is nice to have access when that is going on. Otherwise I would be stuck here reading a book or something. Instead I am checking my email and what not between spots of typing. And it is a good thing I did, my most recent $5 gift card from Amazon arrived, which I have since applied to my account, bringing my account balance to just over $36. Plus I am a mere 18 swagbucks from claiming another one. Not that I am in need of any reading material right now, I am only about half way through my first book of the last order, the 700 page tome on the Bill Clinton impeachment saga. It is good reading, just very long. I am just past the point where Clinton gave his deposition in the Paula Jones case. So there are plenty of fun moments ahead. But for all of the b.s. We went through back in the day over Clinton's extra marital dalliances, who wouldn't want a guy who could balance a budget right about now?


Today was the first day Ed was back in the store since he left for Florida. It is a temporary thing, he is just back for a couple of weeks and then back to Florida for a bit before retaining semi permanent residence in Pennsylvania during our warmer months. That being said I managed to not get yelled at on the first day, which is good. He actually liked the Pepsi section I built, proof that I sometimes know just what the hell it is that I am doing. He was more skeptical about the Prometheus water that we are carrying, but he was surprised that I was getting it for free and selling it at 2.19 a bottle and still pushing a case of it a week. Those types of margins on profit are hard to argue with.


Of course on my way out the door I noticed that we sold out of a couple of candy bars in the last day or so, I have replacements coming in in the morning, but that doesn't mean I will not get nailed for not having them today. We will see come manana. But for me, just getting out of today unscathed was good enough. Between two orders that constituted over 220 cases, vendors from Wise and RJ Reynolds, placing two cigarette orders for people that order through us, placing grocery orders for two different stores,checking in a third order, breaking down a pair of invoices and making one bank run, it was just a very full day. Full enough that I am going to call it a night. I still have some things I would like to do this evening, eating being one of them that I am going to call it a night.

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