My husband and I have been discussing the possibility of getting a new laptop for Yule. I have to rein myself in because I started browsing to see what sort of money we’d have to save up and was getting sucked in by specials and coupons and was ready to put something on credit. We don’t need another credit line right now. I can be patient.

They have all sorts of deals going on all the time. Most of the stores ask you to input your desired ROM and RAM and video card and if you want wireless or not, and then give you a list of various options that you can have whether it be Acer or Toshiba or something else. BestBuy.com actually has a laptop I was looking at for $300 less than Gateway itself BUT we don’t need the laptop right now…well, we do, but we don’t. I can get by just waiting until we’re back home from friend’s houses to type up readings I’ve been making notes on in the mean time, and I can wait until Yule for the benefits of another laptop, especially because it seems that Vista (which is all that a new laptop would have on it) will probably not be exactly compatible with my network. A friend’s suggested a MAC, which might be workable. It’s all about doing more research.

As my husband says it would be good to have the extra computer then I could do my work anywhere, and when I’m doing the graphic design work I could have it with me at friend’s house, or take it with me to client’s places and show them live mock-ups of their sites. Anyway…patience. I’m trying to teach it to my son I should learn to have more of it myself when it comes to shiny new technology.

Part of my business involves talking to people on the phone a lot. Quite often I make use of call-forwarding if I have to run errands and send the calls from the business line to my cell phone so that I can field calls more accurately. I was very excited when last year my husband got me a Bluetooth headset because that meant I could actually answer calls safely while I was driving, instead of having to pull over or miss them, and also when I was in the store and things like that it made things a lot easier on me because it’s hard to talk on a cell phone and tend to a toddler at the same time.

Cell phone don’t hook into the crook of your head and shoulder as easily as bulkier house phones do.

Unfortunately the Bluetooth won’t hold a charge any more I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere during the time that we moved it just decided it doesn’t want to last any longer than a couple of minutes, which is very disappointing to me. I keep thinking I want to get another one but if it’s only going to last a few months then it doesn’t strike me as worth it.

My husband did get the warranty on it…but, of course, I can’t find the paperwork. It figures.

I’m intending to rearrange the store aspect of the site a bit over a few days. I’ve been debating moving the blog portion to a separate area entirely but I’ll see how this re-design goes a little bit longer before doing that. I have it backed up and ported over already, but I may just uninstall it and keep things this way for a bit longer.

I’ve also debated making the front show a static page…but I’m just not sure enough about how this will affect things and if I’ll really make things more complicated rather than simplifying as I’m trying to do.

I need to put Meebo back on (although I really haven’t been using that for the past three or four months), and I’m thinking of reinstalling Twitter as well. Some of the things I was complaining about with it before were really me feeling obligated to do things that I don’t have to do. Twitter is only as invasive as you make it.

Anyway, I’ve had a set-up to wholesale some New Age supplies for a while, but I haven’t felt up to messing around with trying to sort out how I would do that and how to get set-up, but I may give it a try. I’ll have to see. These sort of things are a lot of work and often times my health isn’t up to the hassle. I’d rather make sure I can do things completely than do them half-way and make things horrendous.

The $15 Email Special is still going, and I have a few slots left for this weekend!

Do you?
I changed my hair!

Well…actually a few weeks ago I did change my hair, but tonight I changed the layout of the site. I’m still tweaking some of the side bars and things a little bit, and I’m going to try and make things look a bit more professional over here.

We’ll see how well that goes.

I got a comment on my “Telemarket” entry from someone at Embarq, and re-reading my actual entry I realized that I jumped topics a little bit and made things unclear.

Here’s the comment quoted for those who you who are for some reason link phobic.

Hi name name is Jenny and I and with Embarq online support team. We would first like to thank you for your business and we regret that we had to lose you as a customer. We are all trying to work through the current economic crunch. I apologize that you had recieved a letter from Embarq about your yellow page ad. I am sure that this was an automatic letter that was sent for mailing before you had cancelled your account. If there is anything that i can do to assist you please let me know. You can email me anytime at **email deleted by Cat** Thank you for giving us the opportunity to help you.

Yes, we have canceled the yellow pages listing. I canceled that last month, when the rep called me to renew. I got my notification from Dex, the company who handles the yellow pages and billing for Embarq that it was canceled. That did not come with a coupon. It came with a note that I still have $23 to pay on the balance of my previous listing and then I will be done with them.

Then on June 3rd (or so) we switched our phone company to Comcast from Embarq. Their a variety for reasons for dissatisfaction with Embarq that prompted this switch. To make sure every thing is crystal clear I will list them all.

1. When we moved to our current location we could no longer do the “Big Business Bundle” through Embarq which meant that we were then paying $96/month + international fees for phone with long distance and international services alone instead of paying $96/month for phone with all those services AND DSL. Why? Because DSL in our area is exhausted. I was told that it could be 6 months to THREE YEARS before there’s more DSL in our area. So, my options were to add an additional $86/month to my phone bill and try to do wireless internet, pay a $400 install fee, and I don’t remember what a month to do satellite internet with a minimum commitment of two years or go with another provider. In fact the second Embarq rep told me that it was probably in my best financial interests to go with another provider for internet, and I thanked her for being honest rather than trying to convince me to break myself financially as the satellite rep had. We’re a small business, and much as I do use the internet for my business I would find another way to work things before paying a $400 install fee, when I just emptied most of my savings account paying the down payment to the mortgage.

2. Embarq were not open on weekends. This has been an issue several times. Where something has happened to the phone or a question has been needed to be answered after 6 p.m. on a Friday and I haven’t been able to talk to anyone until the following Monday.

3. Haphazard customer service quality…this is different from the not open on weekends thing. Customer service has been getting progressively worse, and I’m glad to get out before it really goes down the crapper. I’ve had worse service, but I’m not talking about Verizon Wireless right now.
• When we were getting the phone installed at our previous residence, I was told between 1 and 3, and the guy didn’t show up until 6, and then he didn’t do anything except say he would have to come back tomorrow because it was raining. It’s nice to be able to call up and find out that a tech is delayed and by how long he’s delayed.
• When we had an issue at our first residence the tech came out at 8 a.m. early so I was impressed. He then futzed around outside for two minutes came back in and proceeded to tell me it wasn’t their fault I needed a new phone. I humored him…brought out another phone that I keep spare and plugged it in. Phone still didn’t work.
• Since then when I called to find out why, when we moved in, that tech who I had been promised would be there by 10 a.m. still hadn’t shown up at 11:15 I was rudely told, “He’s running late.” No, really? “How late exactly?” I asked. “I can’t tell you that. He’s late. He’s gonna be late. He’ll get there.”
  Gee thanks. A week later another rep hung up on me when I called trying to find out why the call-forward from the old number hadn’t been put in. When I canceled the one number, given it’s a business number, and we were moving at Yule which is a VERY busy time of year for readings I asked them to do as they had done when we moved to the second place which was to forward it so that if someone called the number that’s listed in the yellow pages instead of them thinking I had gone out of business by getting a “this line is disconnected” message it would say, “we can forward you to the new number of xyz or you can hang up and call it yourself,” but they hadn’t done that.
  What gets me on this is I can understand her hanging up on me if I had called up and gone, “What the bleepity-bleep are you doing, my bleeping number is bleeped up!” but I called and I said, “I think there’s been a mix-up somewhere I was supposed to get XY and I haven’t. Can you fix it?” She listened to my whole explanation from that point and then hung up on me.

So, there’s a variety of the reasons why we’ve been getting more and more dissatisfied with Embarq. I’m not even getting into the brief fiasco with Embarq wireless and their lack of night and weekend minutes and the fact that they charge extra for call-forwarding service to their OWN wireless phone, that I can do for free to my Sprint phone…(oh, wait I guess I just did).

These are a variety of reasons that make me feel it’s laughable when almost a month after I cancel their service I get a card in the mail and a coupon which is telling me how great it is that I’m such a loyal customer and giving me a $10 credit provided I call a toll-free number and talk to them about my being a loyal customer.

I feel this is less of a “loyal customer” reward and more of an “OMG she jumped ship!” generated automated offer, and that if I called there would be some attempt at enticement to get me back.

But no, I’m very happy with Comcast. I’m saving at least $30 a month right now with their bundled services, compared to what I was paying with Embarq, even if their DSL wasn’t exhausted in this area, I still wouldn’t have been going with their TV bundle package because it’s satellite and there are lots of issues with satellite service in our area (my Mum’s GPS can’t even find one in our area) and several of our neighbors have switched back to Comcast from satellite so I doubt we’d hardly ever have TV nor internet if I’d gone that hideously expensive route. Plus my husband is happy because he can play his Halo3 tournaments online without the hideous lag the DSL used to have, and we can get movies on demand on nights that we’re both not working.

The phone service is excellent, even when the power went out for two hours during the storm we had last Tuesday we still had phone because there’s battery back-up on the modem. It’s clear as a bell, and it gives us a lot more information via Caller ID than I used to get. I call about a tech support issue even at 2 a.m. on a Saturday/Sunday and I get someone and they fix it right away.

That’s great. We made the right choice.

Seriously. I’m sure there’s many of you out there who don’t need me to tell you that. Two days ago something weird started happening with the main computer and I realized when I did more than just glance at the weird pop-up that it was an infestation of some sort.

Since then I’ve been trying various different tactics to get rid of it, and I’m at the point where I’m really ready for one of those luxury vacations, because after four different attacks and reducing the number of noxious items on the computer, the main problem is STILL there. Each time I reboot I see the blue screen with “SPYWARE” across the desktop and the roach and bug screensaver crawling all over my screen *twitch* I’m done, but not, because I refuse to give in. They will never take my computer! I will fight to the last man (so to speak)!

I’ve currently got Ad-Aware running, and I’m hopnig that this will crack it, even though it’s telling me it’s found 310 infections…which is more than last time, but I’m actually glad of that, because it means that all the little sneaky ones that my other programs weren’t finding and is killing them.

The $15 Celtic Cross reading is over for right now.

I have 3/9 readings done, so I’m closing it for now until I decide to open it again. Thank you to those who have participated, to those who have missed it I hope you’ll keep an eye on things because I’m sure I’ll have other specials going on for the summer.

Thanks again to all participants. I hope you’re finding your readings helpful.

My laptop has taken a dive again. I wish it was something simple like computer memory being the issue, but it’s not. I’ve replaced the power supply, or at least have an order in for one, but it seems like the monitors not working either. It’s very frustrating.

I’m locked out of quite a bit of work, and all the email I received in the past two months as well as the article for the Tarot World Magazine and a couple of stories as well. It’s very frustrating. I’ve put a new screen, and a new keyboard in already in the past two months, and replaced a battery. Now I’m going to have to replace the battery again, no doubt, because the power cord will probably have killed it, and then I might have to replace the screen again…but it’s very frustrating, I’m wondering what’s going to go next.

It might be better for me to buy another laptop for cheap, and refurbish it and start over from scratch at this point. If I keep having to replace parts on this one I may as well.

I do have the desktop PC that I can use in a pinch, as I am now, but I like the laptop because I can take it outside and do work on the patio while the munchkin builds sandcastles and I can take it in the bedroom if I’m feeling ill and things like that.