personal

someone asked me if i could help them move Saturday before work. i said sure.

but then my Aunt invited me to our family reunion -- i havent been to it in YEARS... probably close to a decade. i use to go to it all the time when i was younger.

so i told my friend i would help them move in the evening, as i really wanted to go to my family reunion in the morning...

but then i checked my work schedule, and saw that i worked from 11AM to 9PM. i was supposed to go to the reunion at 10AM. it was an hour drive, so there would be no way I could make it.

so now i sent my Aunt an e-mail saying i wont be able to make it there...

talked to a few people, met some chick and talked to her too. found out she's married ... :/

with two companies, i felt i made a good impression. with one - i felt like i *really* impressed the guy. it was a PC repair type place. i gave them a run down of all my experience, and the unfortunate fact that i didnt have any diplomas, degrees, or certificates yet. he said the diploma stuff wasnt too important as long as i had enough experience. i then mentioned to him how their web server was misconfigured (i had looked up their company site before talking to him, and i noticed that a different page would display depending on if you put the "www." in front of their domain name or not). i think that really surprised the guy. he had been talking to a bunch of people for an hour that all had their own experiences and reasons why they should work there - but it was only me that seemed to actually take the time to look up the company, notice flaws in their current system, and then point them out along with how i would fix them. so i know i made more of an impression than the others. the guy seemed impressed. i didnt even get to bring up that i had tested out of several courses at the school, or that some of my work was shown in 2600 magazine.

with another guy, along with giving him a copy of my resume (i had 15 copies of my resume, and my Linux instructor went over them with me to make sure they looked nice), i was told to also go ahead and e-mail the company with my Resume attached.

i got to dress all fancy. nice shirt, tie, etc.

...and just having it makes me feel like an idiot...

i got this phone here:
K7 Rave
from Virgin Mobile. it's one of those pre-paid phones. because of the cost of my home phone line and DSL, i rather not pay another $30-$50 a month for another phone that i might use almost as little as my home line. so pre-paid made a lot of sense to me. TracFone is the most popular pre-paid phone that i know of in my area, mostly because it is the oldest in the area. Virgin Mobile is relatively new here, and i've heard a few people recommend it over other services like TracFone.

so i get the phone, and read that i can get a $5 credit by registering my credit card and adding money to the account. so i add my card, and add $20 to the account. well, $20 shows up, and not $25 like i was expecting. i call tech support, and they mentioned something about me registering the card and adding funds in the wrong order or some shit. i dont know how i did something like that, but obviously computers dont lie. they said the $5 would be added the next time i add funds.
next, i go to set up my voice mail, and end up spending $1.50 on the phone call before finding out that i can set up my voice mail from another phone.

while using some features on the phone, i find that my web site selection is a bit restrictive. it even charges me $0.10 to access some features on the phone. i heard that i could read news on the phone, so i pay the dime to get to the News section... i could find only Music related news...it turns out that is the ONLY thing you can get on the Virgin Mobile phones. its basically a push technology for MTV and VH1. PointCast was the originator of "Push" technology. that company is long dead now, because that kind of crap just didn't catch on - and i find out my phone does push for MTV and VH1 - two media outlets i care LITTLE for. i dont care about the latest news regarding the latest flavor of the day bullshit top 40 "artist" or anything else in the music industry. during a call to tech support, i was told that the web browser in the phone was crippled to ONLY work with the MTV and VH1 sites.

while poking around in the Ringtone section, i wanted to view information on one ringtone, and was welcomed with a screen thanking me for my $2 purchase...! sure enough, my account balance dropped $2.00. so where was the ringtone? it wasnt on my phone, so i went back to the ringtone section and tried to view info on the ringtone again to see if it told me how to download it. so what happens? it thanks me again for another $2 purchase of the same ringtone...!

so with the $4 worth of ringtones i never wanted, $5 of credit that never showed up, and a $1.50 phone call i didn't need to make (but was told to by the manual) - i'm out $10.50 that could of been used for REAL phone calls. i also realize that half the features on my phone will never be of any use to me, so that makes me question the higher up-front price i paid for the phone compared to the phones offered by other services (AT&T's pre paid service was highly recommended as well).

basically, i never felt more like an idiot with such simple technology that i did with this phone.