Today’s featured image is of Josh and Chamberlain patiently waiting for their checkups at the vet sometime last year. They’re currently overdue for this year’s, but I’ve been a bad dad and haven’t bothered to make an appointment for them. Possibly because I haven’t had a day that I can take them. Today, for instance, is my first actual day of vacation since I took a week off last October. I don’t have the faintest idea at this point of how many days I actually get to take off now that I’m with The X Company, but I’m supposedly earning 15 hours off per month or something like that. Not sure if I can take them before I’ve earned them.
Today, however, I’m getting a comp day because I worked on Good Friday, which apparently is a paid holiday at The X Company. Since tax season was still going strong last week, most people worked. I worked because I had no idea it was a holiday – though traffic was remarkably light!
I took today largely because the brass band is launching our “tour” this evening in Jacksonville, AL. We’ll play at Jax State U. tonight, then in Huntsville, AL, tomorrow, and will close things out in Chattanooga on Sunday. It will mark, I think, the 4th weekend in a row that I’ve had to do something. I’d planned on taking a hike in the mountains next weekend, but realized on Tuesday night that I’ve got another concert next Saturday. So…maybe the weekend after that. Unless that’s when Riley is getting hitched. Sigh. As much as I hate them, there are times when I really miss how good I had things at ATT.
Speaking of “them,” I’m coming closer to firing ATT. I got an email last week informing me that I’d paid my DirecTV bill, which – with my employee discount – had remained at $11. I knew that the discount would end eventually, and I knew that the price would probably shoot up to $50-$60.
I was not at all prepared for it to shoot to $211, and I cancelled the service that night.
To replace it, I invested in an HD antenna and a Tablo 4-stream DVR device. Using those, plus a 3-TB external hard drive and the Roku boxes that Mary and I already had, I’m able to get and record about 30 local channels, plus 42 other Roku “channels,” such as Netflix and Amazon Prime (for which I pay a whopping $150 a year or so – for both) and other free channels that may or may not include commercials – though not nearly as many as regular TV included when I had it.
It is, to put it mildly, fantastic. News, sports, movies, soap operas, sitcoms….you name it, I get it. For (basically) free.
I looked into changing my phone service from ATT to Verizon, but the Verizon dude ticked me off – and I’m not sure that they can support my phone – so I’m still with the big T for that. My internet service, though….shopping around for that one. I’ve got a pretty good deal with ATT still, but I’m not sure if/when that’s going to get jacked up (I’m sure that they’re discounting it because I had DTV and phone). When it goes up – or even if it doesn’t – I’ll find somebody like Comcast, who can give me higher speeds even if it costs more. Basically, I’m still really pissed off at ATT (as is most of the rapidly-growing pool of ex-Digital Life employees), and I don’t want to give them a dime if I can avoid it.
Work has gotten incredibly boring since the end of tax season, and “meeting the metrics” (8 hours on the phone, 7 hours of billable time, 10 tickets closed) each day is nearly impossible. I’ve been having some text conversations with the area manager of the call center that I supported – his last day is today, I believe – and we’re trying to put together some sort of business plan to be our own bosses and work together. Top of the list right now are starting a courier company or a home inspection company. I’m also still trying to learn a bit more about the inner workings of WordPress (which this blog runs on), as part of a vague idea about creating/maintaining websites for people. A friend of mine from Canada has been doing this for years, and I think it’s something I’d really enjoy (and, hopefully, be pretty good at).
Must get packed for this tour, so I’ll stop here.