Threaded Thursday
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Thursday, June 19, 2008
All right: Multi-tasking Thursday. I was trying to be alliterative, you know?
Things have been hoppin' at the Manor. Yesterday was bowling day, of course. Spent all my free time working on a database app. Got the most difficult bits finished before I went to bed last night, or so I thought. Got up this morning to find a problem report. I'd forgotten to move a modified file out to the web server. Oops. At least that was an easy fix. I also found a couple of other minor items, which pretty much occupied my time until it was time to go meet Paul at the Sprint Store.
Sprint, you say, as you mutter to yourself and prepare for an onslaught of outrage. This time the experience was good, though it took a while. Paul had an invitation to go check out the new Instinct today - a day in advance of public release. It's billed as an "iPhone killer," though I wouldn't go quite that far. It's still a very cool phone and does a few things that even the new iPhone doesn't. Now, if it has a multi-touch screen, it might live up to all of the hype. As it is, it does live up to most of it. It's a very cool phone. We decided to get one as two of the phones on our plan just went out of contract.
Of course, it's never that easy. We decided to drop my old phone number. (It was less expensive to add a new line of service with the Mogul and keep my old number for almost a year. Go figure.) We were told the only way we could do that was to call it in because the number was out of contract. I'll wait on that until tomorrow or Monday. The Instict requires one of the new "everything" plans. We could put it on a separate plan or go with one of the new family "almost everything" plans. We did the math, and by the time we drop the old line, the new plan will cost about the same amount, plus we get unlimted data and text messages.
Only one problem: My mom's phone didn't work with the plan. We had to get her a new phone, split it off on a different plan, or get another phone. The guy put her number on Paul's old phone, which saved us buying her a new phone. Her contract is up after the first of the year and then we can get her an even better phone at a substantial discount. Paul's old phone does much more than hers did, so it's a good deal for her. She won't use most of the features or surf the web, but she can take pictures and send them to us (or we can send them to her), which is something she'll enjoy. The whole swap meant the rep had to make a couple of calls to their helpline, which was experiencing heavy traffic.
So why am I waiting to drop the old line? Customer service reps are gonna be swamped for a few days. This isn't as big as an iPhone launch, but there has been a lot of buzz about the phone and Sprint has done heavy advertising. Tomorrow is the release day; today was by invitation to folks who had signed up earlier to get notice of the release. That was kind of cool. The wait was short, but it was pretty clear that the folks at corporate were very busy. I can wait a few days for things to die down before I drop the line. Besides, sometimes it takes a day or two for a contract change to get populated all across their network. Surprisingly, our new plan and phone changes are there when I logged in to the Sprint site.
So all in all, it was a good experience, even though it took some time. I'm going to see if I can pry the Instinct out of his hands tonight for long enough to take pictures. If not tonight, then sometime over the weekend.
Back home and back to the web application. As a background task I'm trying once again to breathe some new life into an old laptop. The SQL server at the host is slow, so this gives me something to do while I wait.
Oops. Another bug report. Must run.
Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Life" rel="tag">Life</a>
Filed under: Life
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