FiOS … Finally!!!

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I don’t know what it is about me and FiOS installations, but remember a few months ago when I blogged about taking 5 hours to get everything setup?!

Well, Verizon just finished transferring everything to my new house, and this time it took over 6.

😯   😕   😯   😕   😯

To be honest, the whole ordeal actually started last week when I had to call up and fight with them about transferring my package to my new address. You see, even though they emphasize that you have to sign into a 2-year agreement to “lock in your rates” (early termination fees and all), apparently that agreement is only on one side of the table because Verizon’s policy when you move is to create a brand new plan, ending your previous one at the old address … that means any promotional pricing you may have had also goes out the window.

To say the least, when I was told that my new price would be $15/month more because they “didn’t offer” my package anymore, I was pretty pissed.

It wasn’t until threatening to cancel that the rep transferred me to someone else who verified that it would actually only be $5/month more, and for that $5 my Internet speed would be doubling from 25/25 Mbps to 50/25 Mbps. I still wasn’t thrilled because I was pretty satisfied with my previous package, and I had only been with Verizon since May, but at the same time I really didn’t want to go back to cable, either.

To anyone at Verizon who reads this – your policy for moving accounts is stupid and needs to be changed. I moved 4 different times when I was with Bright House over the last 9 years and never had to change my package as a result of changing my address, and they didn’t lock me into a contract to boot. If Verizon Wireless can figure out how to grandfather customers into their older plans when they roll new ones out, so can you.

Anyways…

The install itself was … tedious. Cleo was being really aggressive and wouldn’t stop barking at the tech when he showed up because she doesn’t like strangers in her house – especially men. This became problematic because he seemed really uneasy about her even with her on her leash, so I ended up having to sit with her in the other room for several hours while he worked. I wasn’t particularly comfortable about this because the last time we left someone alone to work in our house, he ended up robbing us, but there was nobody else really to watch her so I didn’t have much of a choice…

More and more time passed, and more and more trips were made out to the truck, before eventually I overheard the imminent call for help because he had pretty much replaced just about everything that he could and it still wasn’t working. Apparently us bringing our old boxes from the old house complicated things, but by then even swapping out the whole lot didn’t seem to work. Guy #2 made his appearance sometime in the early afternoon and they both tinkered about for another couple of hours, finally sorting out that the whole thing had been a software problem in the router that Guy #1 just had forgotten to release and re-initialize DHCP or something.

I didn’t follow all of it … possibly just because most of the time I wasn’t even in the same room … but I did get the distinct impression this time that the first installer didn’t so much know what everything he did was doing as know what order the steps were supposed to be in. I’ve been a computer geek for quite a while now – troubleshooting is more than just following an official process – it’s experimenting and knowing which signs mean that you’re on the right track… I don’t know, I guess there was just a lot of uncertainty that made me really wish I had been around when he was first doing things on my computer and whatnot.  😕

Anywho, after arriving right around 9:00am, I finally got the all-clear just after 3:00pm and was finally up and running once again.

At least the new speed test results are something to be happy about!

All in all, it was quite the ordeal, though, and while I may be able to look forward to not having to go through this again until I buy another new house, admittedly I am still a little nervous to see what my next bill looks like and if I’m going to have to call back to fight my way through customer support hell again to get a monthly bill that’s closer to what I originally agreed to when I first switched to FiOS way back in May 2012.

TL;DR – Dear Verizon … moving FiOS from one address to another 10 miles away shouldn’t be this difficult.

Moving Day Summary Post

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What. A. Day.

The Movers … A+ Once Again
Last year when we moved, I said that I’d never move again without paying people to do all of the heavy lifting for us. This year we did the same once again and despite hauling a ton of stuff myself because of a fear of not fitting it all in the truck, it was still nice to just have somebody who’s not me to man-handle all of the furniture and other ridiculously heavy stuff that maybe wouldn’t be quite as daunting if I were 10 years younger and in a little better shape!

Tip of the hat to Upscale Movers of Brandon, FL – made my life on Saturday a lot easier… 🙂

Goodbye, Couch
One of the nice unexpected things that came out of hiring movers is that they even helped me haul my old couch to the dump on the way to our new house. I had planned on just trying to do it myself before they showed up that afternoon, but they ended up being early and things ran quicker than expected anyways, so instead of me making a special trip with just the couch, we ended up cramming it on the back with everything else and they followed me to the dump to help me unload the beast!

Probably a lot easier than me having to shove it off the end of the truck all by myself, I would think!

Mind you, it was a little sad to see her go – this was my bachelor couch that I bought back in 2003 just after I moved here and I spent many a night up late watching movies and playing video games in her warmth … but then again, Sara thought that it was getting pretty disgusting and Cleo had managed to chew away about 1/3 of the cushions, so maybe it was finally time for it to go to a better place…

…buried deep within the Earth in a pile of other disgusting garbage just like it…  😮

Hello, TWiT!
On the upside, while traveling back and forth I’ve spent a lot of time revisiting an old favorite podcast, This Week in Tech, that had kind of fallen off my radar for some time. I typically don’t have as much time to listen to these as I used to, so when I did pull up TWiT I’d usually just skim the archives until I found a panel filled with people who I like and just grab that one to tide me over … but in this case, being in far too much of a rush to cherry pick (and needing a lot more content to listen to!), I ended up just grabbing the last dozen or so episodes and have been listening to them back to back as I travel and scrub and so on and so forth.

Good times … maybe I need to find a way to get TWiT back into some sort of normal rotation when I’m out walking the dog or something, whenever that finally gets back to normal again!

Stupid Cop Area
I honestly didn’t even realize that this existed until I had to start making loops back and forth hauling stuff up from the new house, but apparently there’s about a half a mile stretch of road near our old house where the speed limit drops from 45 – 30 mph super fast because of a school there, and I’ve been witnessing cops pulling people over there in a speed trap all hours of the day and night.

A) school isn’t even in session for another week!

B) they were still nailing people there at 12:30am last night

I guess this is the same place where Sara actually got a warning a few months back … I don’t as much mind them cracking down during school hours, but during a weekend in the middle of the night seems a bit excessive when we have actual drunk drivers that could be dealt with elsewhere in the community. I’m pretty sure that strip of land in front of the middle school will be just fine…

Free Dinner!
Quite possibly the highlight of the day, we got a surprise in the mail from our real estate agent – a nice thank you card for being awesome buyers along with a gift card to Applebee’s to grab some dinner! And while I’m not the biggest fan of Applebee’s by far, at that point pretty much  sustenance was the only requirement for dinner after exhausting damn near every takeout joint in the area, but it was certainly appreciated very much nonetheless!

Whew…
Needless to say, yesterday ended up being a ridiculously long day, culminating with me finally starting to get my office put together here at the new house right around 2:00am. Our plan today is simply one of rest – we’ve still got tons to do in both locations, but I’ve also got a lot of writing and other stuff to catch up on and obviously we’ve also got scads of unpacking to do around here, so we thought it best to take a bit of a break today in preparation for even more work to come in the future before we can finally say that we’re DONE with the old house and can officially get settled into this one.

Did I miss anything?!?!?!   😆

The Big Moving Day – a checklist of sorts

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  1. Haul (at least) two more loads of stuff via car over to the new house
  2. Straighten up the kitchen so people can at least walk through it
  3. Go pick up the u-haul at 1pm
  4. Haul junk to the dump before movers get here (finally pitching the couch I bought when I first moved to Florida … Sara’s disturbingly happy about this)
  5. Meet with movers to load furniture and bulky stuff onto truck (house should be nearly empty after this)
  6. Unload said furniture and bulky stuff at new house … or at least watch while guys younger and stronger than myself do so…
  7. Return u-haul
  8. Probably make another run or two for odds & ends, as well as breaking down this computer in my office that I’m typing on right now
  9. Assemble desk and computer in my new office at the new house
  10. Collapse in a fit of utter exhaustion, hopefully in a made bed if Sara manages to get sheets put on the thing before then
In the timeless words of Peter Pan, “Here we go!”  😉

A Busier Day of Non-Stop Cleaning…

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…and hauling, and so on and so forth…

Chaos has officially found its place in the Sevener residence as we both scrambled to prepare for the big day tomorrow, which has now been compounded by a surprise open house that the landlord decided he wants to hold the same day to meet prospective new tenants. We’re trying to cooperate as best we can because we know that he wants to get someone back in the place as soon as possible … I just worry that it doesn’t really look very presentable right now because as we’ve uprooted everything to pack and haul and even start cleaning, I think it might actually look worse than it did before we started!  😯

After a healthy bout of late night sweeping and scrubbing around the pool area, we finally decided to call it quits early so that we’ll (I’ll) actually be able to wake up on time when people start arriving in the morning. Some parts look decent, and some I’d prefer to just close behind a door until we’re able to revisit with a more dedicated cleaning effort next week, but that’s probably not an option so I suppose we’ll just have to roll with the punches at this point.

Is it over yet??? I wanna go live and relax at my own house now!!!

A Busy Day of Non-Stop Hauling…

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Today was a busy day.

While Sara painted walls at the new house, I pretty much spent the entire day running back and forth hauling stuff from the old to the new with her car. We’re technically renting a truck on Saturday, but I’m morbidly afraid of not being able to fit everything and leaving out something that can’t be transported in her car later. Plus, I’d just prefer to move anything even remotely fragile myself anyways … that way I have no one but myself to blame if my Lego Stegosaurus loses a leg or something in transit.

By the way, the wife drives a Honda Insight, which Honda tells me has roughly 32 cubic feet of storage space with the seat down in the back … probably a bit more because we also reclined her passenger seat all the way back and filled that entire area, too! Would you believe that I was able to fit an 8-foot ladder in that thing AND still have room for umpteen gallons of paint, a ceiling fan, and a bunch of other crap that Lowe’s was more than happy to sell me earlier this week?!

I sure wouldn’t have until I both measured it and subsequently watched myself do it!

Anyways, here’s a quick summary of today’s take. I’m very tired and very sore and I have even more to do tomorrow in preparation for Big Move Saturday, so with this I fondly bid ye all goodnight…  8)

  1. Office Stuff & Fish Tank #1
  2. Christmas Stuff
  3. Books That We Never Read Anymore, But Don’t Dare Throw Away
  4. Patio Stuff
  5. Clothes, Part 1
  6. Clothes, Part 2 & Nightstand #1
  7. Electronics
  8. Clothes, Part 3 & Entertainment Center & Food, Part 1

Dream Journal : Network Intruder

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I’m pretty sure that this one somehow ties into the big tech story about Mat Honan getting his accounts hacked the other day…

I knew that something was wrong, but no one wanted to believe me.

We had just moved into our new house and there were a bunch of people over to visit – more people than we actually know in real life. They were all sitting around the kitchen and living room using computers and tablets and whatnot, and at one point I was looking over a girl’s shoulder and noticed something strange on her screen … it had a slight flicker to it, almost like watching a camera go off over and over again. I also saw an icon of a red light in her system tray, but shook it off and moved on…

A short while later, I was looking at something on my wife’s laptop and noticed the same icon, and then quickly glancing around the room, I saw that it was pretty much on everybody’s desktop.

I went into my office and saw that it wasn’t on my own desktop, however when I tried to run some software to analyze traffic on our home network, a text box popped up with a warning. I don’t recall what the warning said, but I immediately ran back into the other room and told everyone to turn off their computers, much like one would announce that there’s a shark in the pool or something!

A few people didn’t listen to me, and when I came back into my office, there were more threats flashing on my computer saying that I was going to pay for interfering.

That’s when I reached over, unplugged the cable modem from the wall, and it all ended.

A few years ago I discovered that my desktop PC at the time had been somehow infected by a hacker … apparently a trojan had found its way onto my system and was randomly sending out SPAM in the middle of the night. I first started to get suspicious when I would occasionally get online notices from my ISP to check for viruses because they’d gotten a complaint about my IP … I mostly just brushed them off and clicked ok until one night I downloaded a trace program that kept track of all of the URLs requested by a machine and left it running overnight. In the morning I awoke to find dozens of entries for mail.yahoo.com and mail.aol.com and so on, and admittedly it was a little creepy to think that somebody was running something on my machine without my permission.

It took me finally wiping the thing altogether to get rid of it, and I always wondered in the back of my head just how “smart” the thing was … whether it simply downloaded lists of addresses and then shot a predetermined spam message out to as many as it could, or if it also did other things like monitoring my activities online or fishing for credit card numbers or something, too.

Prioritizing My Mind

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I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to put some other things on hold in order to get through the rest of this month in one piece.

I’m very much not happy about it, but the truth of the matter is I’ve just got way too much on my plate right now and nothing is getting done while I sit around and stress about not having enough time to spread around.

I’ve got a project that was supposed to be done a week ago, and another that I wanted to relaunch soon.

I’m way behind on my writing in all sorts of different capacities.

And oh yeah, I’ve also got this house that I just bought that I’m trying to move into!

P.S. Also, diet & exercise.

It’s just too much, so I’m picking a couple of things at a time and as I make my way through those, then I’ll get back to work on something else. It’s probably going to mean more stress later trying to tie up loose ends come year’s end, but right now it’s really all that I can do.

Moving & Overdue Project #1 – you’re up, with writing catch-up and diet & exercise on deck after them…  😐

Becoming a handyman, whether I like it or not…

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And I don’t say this just because in the course of the last 24 hours, I think I’ve been to damn near every Lowe’s Home Improvement Center within 30 miles of my house!  😯

…though that probably isn’t helping the situation…

I’ve never really cared much about fixing things around the house myself, although I suppose part of that could’ve been always that when you’re renting, it’s usually easier to defer to landlord for anything that’s likely to take more than 10 minutes of your time (unless you broke it, anyways…), but in recent years it seems like more often than not I’ve ended up being spared from having to do anything more than change light bulbs or hang pictures on the walls.

I have a feeling that’s going to change here in the new house because:

 A) it’s our money now going to pay those handymen otherwise!

B) it’s our house, so we’re a little more likely to care what style the cabinets are or whatever else we’re able to finally customize without knowing deep down that we have to change it all back when we leave…

The thing is, I guess I just don’t really get the same sense of pride out of fixing stuff myself that typically feeds a lot of male egos … in many cases, I’d much rather focus on the things that I’m good at and let somebody else fight with the garage door opener for 3 hours to figure out why it only works half the time that it’s supposed to! Very rarely is getting all dirty and sweaty for the purposes of home improvement actually rewarding to me – if I think about it, probably when installing Christmas lights and that’s about it. For everything else, they’re nothing more than chores and it’s kinda hard to get excited about that!

On one hand it’s going to be neat to see how this house that Sara and I have purchased evolves into a home over the years to come and we’ve already got lots and lots and lots of things that we’d like to do to make it our own … but then again, if I’m the one who actually has to do all of that stuff?!?!?!

😕

Recounting a Chaotic Weekend of New House Preparations

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I don’t know why I was so excited to get things moving with our new house … because now I’m just really, really tired…  😯

Appliance Hunting
We need them.

Specifically a washer & dryer, and a refrigerator.

I think we spent most of Saturday trying to figure this one out – who has the ones we want, at the best prices, and will actually give us credit to purchase said appliances. Also had some confusion to clear up about coupons that we had been given, and confirmed that there’s pretty much no reason to ever shop for appliances at Sears because the coupons they issued were for 10-25% off regular prices, not their sales prices … meaning when you actually do the math, it’s just cheaper to buy from somebody else.

In the end we ended up getting our washer & dryer from Best Buy, and our refrigerator from Lowe’s. We actually wanted to get it all from Best Buy, but we had credit issues and they couldn’t do it, so splitting the order up was the only way for us to avoid either keeping a cooler filled with ice in the kitchen or making regular trips down to the river to scrub the dirt from our getups…

Still More Locks?!?!?!
Just when I thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous … we found another lock … this one holding the garage door shut. I swear, this lady must’ve gotten a hell of a deal on padlocks because she literally had seven of them securing every gate, fence, and questionable entry point around this damn house of ours!!!

Of course, the bitch (yes, she’s a bitch for being this irresponsible and not bending over backwards to get everything unlocked for us at this point!) couldn’t be bothered to answer her phone or send somebody out, so our exceedingly awesome agent actually went out and bought a pair of bolt cutters to clip the thing off himself!

Chris Henry, Signature Realty – ladies and gentlemen! I’ll definitely be sure to trumpet his praise more in a later post when all is said and done, but as of right now, just go ahead and assume that he’s a legend and you’ll have a good start at how great of an experience we’ve had working with this guy.  :mrgreen:

So Many Upgrades, So Little Money
For a little fun the other night, we sat down and made a list – a pie in the sky kind of list of everything that we’d like to do around our new house someday.

As of right now, we can’t afford to do any of those things!

Some aren’t that bad, like painting and hanging some shelves here and there, but I’d also like to completely overhaul the “garden” out front and get it looking a little more tropical, plus we’ve got electronics that desperately need to get upgraded, maybe eventually cabinets that could be refinished or altogether replaced.

I’ve already been told that the work of a homeowner is never done and there’s always something else to do next weekend. As of tonight we’ve officially got a charge card with Lowe’s, so I guess maybe they can come over and we can build something together…

What’s that – they’ve got a new slogan now???

“Never stop improving.”

Not for nothing, but that’s sounds like it could be really, really expensive…  😕

Dude, Where’d My Weekend Go?!
The rest of the time was pretty much just a blur – running back and forth, trying to get things ready in one place while also starting to clean things up in the other. Our official moving day is now only 6 days away, so I suppose it would be safe to assume that sheer and utter panic ought to be setting in for the duration just about anytime now.

On one hand, 18 more days until we have to move out of the new house doesn’t seem so bad, but on the other hand, I have other fingers that say I’d better stop counting digits and start getting to work!