Umm, the trip to Walmart this morning for a case for my new laptop came up with nothing. They only had them big enough to carry up to 16 inches, mine is 17.3 inches. I did buy a large pack of 40S&W practice ammo, though, for Sunday's adventure to Shooter's World and doing some target practice. Like 100 rounds worth.
The place wasn't empty, but the good deals were basically gone. Which I expected, especially those 42 inch TV's that you probably won't find at that kind of price - ever again, but who knows. I didn't buy one last night, I have enough TV's and I have other things I need to do such as finishing the trailer and the $300 it's going to cost to have it moved up north. Though I can say the most expensive part of the trailer is paid for, albeit I don't have the parts yet: those needed to fix the AC unit on the roof. Well anyway, Walmart this morning was basically as full as it normally would be.
Fry's Electronics. I went back there for the carrying case. I can't not have one for a brand new laptop and I wasn't going to wait. They had a whole row of the things, found one at a price I liked and............happened to walk past the Verizon Wireless display. I was looking and wondering, hmmmm, should I go ahead and do this now? I hardly use the Cricket phone at all, that can go bye-bye and that monthly money go to mobile broadband. Of course, handy-dandy broadband man shows up immediately and asks if he could help me Well, yes you can. What is the cost? Same as advertised everywhere: 5 g's for $50 monthly. Is there a contract? Yes. Why? For the service. That doesn't really help me, I can pay for service on other companies without any contracts. If it's just the service, then there is no motivation to do anything. Oh, but you get this nice router.
$299 listed price. Of course, that price is h ighly inflated of this I have no doubts. But it is a remarkable little thing. It's slightly larger than a credit card and maybe half a dime thick if that. It picks up the signal and sends it to your laptop - and anyone else around you that you are willing to "give" it to - but it has a built in password, which is a good thing. No-one can just steal the signal. In other words, this little contraption can serve internet access to multiple devices.
How much if I go over 5 g's in one month? $10 per g. Same as everywhere, just wanted to be sure I wasn't going to get slapped with some higher fee. What about credit? Are you going to run a credit check? Yes, but it's a "soft" hit and won't affect your credit score. I'm thinking, my credit isn't all that great. Well what kind of deposit am I going to have to give if my credit isn't good enough? Anywhere from $50 to $300. Well, this isn't a phone and I am not about to slap down $300 for a deposit, but I came to the conclusion that I was willing to try and see what happens.
Well, my credit apparently has risen up even higher than I had remembered the last time I looked because it "passed" and I didn't have to put anything down. It's a done deal. When the Cricket service runs out, it will not be renewed - but I will call them and cancel it anyway to make sure they aren't going to try and hit me with surprise charges.
Done with that, I came home and was about to go take a nap. Caleb comes out and asks if I can drop the car insurance for him. I'm not surprised - work isn't giving him much hours. Plus having to put fuel in the car, I imagine if I went and checked that car right now, it would be on empty. I had half a mind yesterday to go fill it up for him knowing his predicament, but I got busy with other stuff and spaced it out. Short interlude, went up and filled the car up. Also decided to let it go on the rest of the insurance he owes for this month. He's thinking he will be able to buy a bicycle and get around like that. All well and fine, but I have news for him and anyone else that thinks that living in the sprawling expanse that is known as the Phoenix Metro area: good luck.
I'm going to have to re-think my stance on this issue with the car and who is going to make the insurance payments on it. I'm a parent who wants his kid around as much as possible. He's my only kid. I think it would be good for him to go look for a new job. He's been working for over a year now and he has good references, I'm thinking maybe another grocery chain might give him more hours if he can get his foot through the door. That's my thinking, not necessarily his. But if he's going off to college and attempting to work and doing his Muay Thai thing, he's going to need wheels to get around and bicycle wheels are all well and fine, but the distances are too far and the time consumed is also going to be too much. I don't think he's quite figured that out yet. He's trying to lose weight, definitely riding a bike is an excellent way to do that, perhaps he could consider riding a bicycle and mixing in the car with it to be able to get to places he needs to be on time.
It is also the first time I have driven the car in quite a while and it is purring like a kitten. It should be, I have dumped enough money into the thing. But, I think I will get him a bike for Christmas - he hasn't asked me for one but I am going to offer to get him one anyway - and then we'll sit down and discuss finances. It's hard to make a budget when your hours are being jacked around like his is. 30 something hours one week, 6 the next. I don't get that grocery chain doing that to their employees. It goes back and forth like that. He's got 6 hours this week, then off 9 days for this trip to Florida. I have my thoughts about that, but I'll keep that to myself at this point.
So another interlude. Decided to go out and play in the dirt, doing more of the landscaping project and getting more of that done. Huge construction project going on just down the street. A very large, vacant lot that has never been developed? Is now being developed. No idea what they are building there. It's facing a major street so no biggies - but I am not a fan of the constant beeping noise of heavy machinery when it is put into reverse. Or in the case of many trackhoes/excavators, the beeping goes off no matter what direction it is going in.
Whatever. Unexpected 4-day weekend about half over. Monday? Allegedly working out of the main branch - but the semi is at my branch and is partially loaded. Lol. Whatever the case, it will be an interesting week at work. Which is nice that - it's over 2 days away from now, lol.
G'nite.
ben
11 comments:
So, DID you sign a contract with Verizon wireless? If so, for how long?
Did they make any claims as to the download speeds you will expect in Phoenix or the mountains?
Yes, I did sign a contract as well as seeing the statement that they can charge you up to $175 to get out of it. They did not make particular claims, only that either 4 or 3G would be available. I will be getting 19% off the monthly bill through my work. I might have thought twice about signing the contract if I had read your statements first, but it's too late and I can only hope that I don't have the problems that you are talking about!
Do you have their mobile broadband service or are you trying to tether your cellphone to get broadband through it?
It is a card that slips into the USB port of my laptop and gets me onto the internet, usually.
I now use it ONLY when traveling or when (very rare) something happens to the internet that comes thru my ethernet out of the wall up north, or off BGs modem down in dixie.
Again, my usual speeds are in the 750 kbps range with the card, which we DID use in the red car all the way from NY to Texas, finding meals and rooms without stopping, making and paying for them as we drove, picking non-smoking rooms etc.
Quite a jump from the old AAA trip ticks and tourbooks. You can do a lot of useful things with that connect speed, but videos and any movie downloads are (a) not going to work smoothly and (b) get you up to five gigs quicker than you might expect.
Thanks for the info. I am wading into uncharted territory here. I think the 10G plan is $80 per month - though for that much money I think it should be unlimited. I guess I'll find out as I go along here.
They have a funny definition of "unlimited".
To me, it means without limits (DUH).
To them, it means 5 gigs followed by slow dialup speed---32 to 65 kbps, which would take several minutes to load JUST your blog page, and another minute or longer to get to the comments.
Hmmm, doesn't seem to take quite dial up speed time to get something like Facebook or Craigslist to come up, though it definitely takes longer than my home wifi setup. But I agree unlimited should be as much as you want - and for those prices I would hardly feel like I was ripping anyone off.
From the way in which Verizon Wireless reacted to the involvement of my state Attorney General, I suspect they may have some real internal doubts about their own advertising honesty.
Not that they are in any hurry to change it, mind.
I'm getting that you are not a big fan of Verizon. I can only say that I haven't really had great experiences with any of them. Cricket's customer service is non-existent. It's the worst in the industry, bar-none. Qwest - or used to - basically were nothing but thieves. I have had a Verizon phone through my company for 6 years - but since I don't have to pay for it I don't really know what billing or other related issues might be involved. I do know that it has great coverage - much better than any of the rest of them. My house is a great place to compare cell phone providers because of the tower issue. Most carriers don't work here or if it does, not very well. My Verizon phone rarely has problems here. On the other hand, I have read quite a lot of complaining about people who want both the phone service and the mobile broadband service and how the company should offer both for the same money. I really don't disagree with their complaint, but as long as they can get away with it, they are going to do it. I did not purchase anything but the broadband service, no phone service through them, I would rather stick with Cricket if I'm going to do that. Cricket internet actually had service up on my mother's property - but it was pretty weak. I don't know if Verizon is going to be any better. If it isn't, then I will be calling the company and discussing outing the service, but from you are saying, that would be a long road to hoe. So, I am just hopeful it will work up there. I was in various places around town today and had great reception and download speed was adequate, though admittedly I didn't use a speed test to find out how much, I will do that and then report what I am getting.
I got different results with different tests. Speedtest gave it just short of 3 Mbps. MegaPath gave it 4.56 Mbps. Umm, well Speedtest at a different location gave it 4.72. Others were also in that range. My internet speed at home is guaranteed 7. Unfortunately, I can't get a higher speed through the carrier I have right now - which was Qwest just turned some other company. I would have to switch to Cox Cable and buy another expensive modem/router to get higher speeds, but the test shows a bit over 6 when I do the test on my in-house wifi through my home router. I'm not saying 5 Mpbs is great, but it isn't bad, either. The thing can run my online game that I play which is quite intensive on it's usage of bandwidth, I do believe.
They have quite obviously made some huge improvements in the performance over mine.
Hope it works as well in the mountains.
Sorry you are losing your house sitters as well.
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