Thoughts, Comments and Detritus of an Old Bear

I sadly note the passing of Country Joe McDonald.  Anothing happy musical anarchist gone.  Here's to you Joe.

Amazingly we still have Wavy Gravy, one of my heros.  

Turns out that my sister @susandennis, mentioned being offered a pay gig just shortly after I was offered one. Hers was customer service, mine consulting. Hers, likely many customers. Mine is only one.

My friendly bookkeeper with whom I network monthly and who I've known for 15 years or so is making some changes and wants to see if she can streamline with AI. So she asked me to help and wants to pay me. I had no idea what she wants to pay but she seemed to think that I was not going to ask for enough. So I went through ChatGPT and had a discussion and my value is around $150/hour so I'm going with a version of that. At least for the first part of the set up. Block of a project with a $2k flat rate. It will likely involve more than the 13 hours but it will be fun for me and likely a one off. And they are good people to work with.

But if the first project is successful it may grow into much more. I suspect that if I can wrap my mind around the processes I can save them a lot more than they are paying me. All the time having fun.

The way it should be.

Other than that things are fine and dandy. I've got an open day that I've turned into a bit of consulting study and getting my car inspected so I can register it.

And today is Toby's 9th birthday:



We celebrated by taking him to the vet for annual shots. He was not amused.

Meet Gruyere one of the five "cheese" puppies new at the shelter.

"a preplanned and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state."

Hmmmmm  ..  who could that be?

 I feel sorry for The Onion trying every day to find something ironic.  They have to compete with all the other papers.

We save about $450/year moving from T-Mobile to Mint.  Exact same network but none of the perks I don't use.  Last year it was a little worth it since T-Mobile paid for a the MLS season on Apple TV.  But not this year.  So I had no reason to stay.  Turned out that it is a little more painful to move over than I thought and I assumed it would be painful.

It took 24 hours, two very long tech support calls one of which was a three way with T-Mobile and Mint tech, and an hour long chat.  And still things are not really right.  But my phone is moved over.  I'm waiting for Dana to take a nap or something so I can have her phone.  Now I have a better idea of what I'm doing hers should be a lot easier.  Maybe not problem free but easier.

The biggest part of the problem is poor documentation and poor parsing of terms.  T-Mobile has no incentive to be overly helpful and for some reason Mint does not really know where to look on their system to release the number so it can be transferred.  Turns out there are two different locks.  One for the Sim, one for the number itself.  My Sim was unlocked but that was not what I needed to do.  I needed to release the porting transfer lock service in the T-Mobile list of services.  No where did anyone, either T-mobile or Mint, say that.  The fix was easy, just not documented.  So that took most of yesterday.  Once we solved that problem it took me much of this morning to activate my eSim with Mint.  They were unable to send me a QR code.  For some reason after last night they can no longer send anything to any email address I give them.  And, of course, they don't acknowledge that the problem is difficult with my account.  Something is screwed up with the account and it will take someone at Mint to believe that before it gets fixed.  

In ten or so years I've had T-Mobile I have not needed to have any interaction with them other than 'send us your money' kind of thing.  I anticipate the same with Mint.  The money thing only happens once a year and I can always automate that so once we get over the hump I could care less if they can send me email.  They can always text.  

Interning the transfer code is kind of a PIA.  Took me twice to do it but now I know how.

So many years in tech support coming back to me.  I love it when someone says for the third time 'did you check your spam?'  or 'is your email full?' or some such nonsense.  Long ago I thought that there should be some way to indicate the level of my knowledge in the phone call.  When I ran Friendly Connections it was always a huge annoyance to start with the level 1 tech on every call dealing with someone who knew less about whatever system we were discussing than I did.  But no way around it.  Once I get Dana's phone fixed I may explore the limits of AI to troubleshoot Mint's problem with my email address.