Day 1197

I've had the U-verse service for over a year now, so all the promotions that came with my bundle have expired. This, of course, results in a much higher monthly bill. Why are phone companies like this. It's always some sort of bait and switch proposition. Two can play this game though. I remember when we had Time Warner cable, there was always some guy you could call and get your promotions reinstated if you mentioned that you were thinking of dropping the service. I figured that AT&T must have the same sort of guy tucked away somewhere, so I started calling. After a few false starts, I found the guy in St. Louis. He agreed to knock $40 off my monthly bill and throw in some extra HD channels if I would sign a contract for another year. Done! Mission accomplished. I still don't know why this had to be so hard though. Couldn't they just charge a fair price in the first place.

Maybe the whole concept of a fair price doesn't even exist anymore. I received my first bid on the roof today and was amazed that the price was four times more than the last roof I had installed in 1996. When I called the company and asked how prices could have possible gone up so much, the estimator just said that things had gotten "out of control" in recent years. He didn't offer to lower the price though. Not by one nickel. I sure hope the other bids are more reasonable than this initial one.

The Land Rover dealer hasn't even bothered to return my call about the engine running rough. I think they're getting tired of me. I'm sure they'd much rather just sell me a new car than continue to repair one that is eighteen years old. I like the Defender though. I can't help it if Land Rover continues to postpone re-introducing the Defender to North America again. They ought to be glad to have me as a customer. I could have easily bought a new Kia for what I've paid them in repair bills over the years.

It looks like Spring outside. It just doesn't feel that way. Temperatures were in the mid-thirties when I walked the dogs this morning. It didn't really warm up that much as the day progressed either. I don't think it got much above fifty all day. In between all the wrangling with the phone company and the roofing company about prices, I managed to get a couple of websites updated and paid a few bills. My car is still running a bit rough, but it isn't stalling out at stoplights anymore. I guess that's progress.

Bubba is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 660

I shot some more videos for my physician client today. This time the subjects were sleep disorders and the effectiveness of digital X-Rays. My plan is to put a video on every single page of the website. The doc speaks very easily on camera, but it's hell to get him to write something on paper. I'll have a much better chance of completing everything this way.

I'm going to have to rethink how I price things. About six months ago I started doing what I called placeholder jobs at low prices to tide me over between the real jobs that paid the rent. The whole idea was that this would even out my month-to-month cash flow and eliminate the feast-to-famine existence I had been living. Well, the little jobs kept growing and growing and now I'm so busy that I don't have time to go looking for the big jobs I need. This is not a good situation, because I'm maxed out doing low budget website revisions, writing assignments and pro-bono animal rescue work. I need to either start charging more, or find out where those illusive big jobs are hiding.

When I was walking the dogs today, a neighbor told me that I looked real stiff and asked what was wrong. Jeez, I thought I was looking a lot better. If people still think I look stiff, I must have looked like a total zombie three weeks ago.

I finally got my service representative to return my call at Land Rover and I made an appointment to take my car in for service next week. It used to be real easy to get hold of my service guy, but there are two empty desks in the service department now. I don't know how people ever expect jobs to return when companies all over the country simply aren't replacing people anymore. The new normal is simply to have the remaining people work a little harder when someone leaves. If you have a job, you're probably overworked and if you don't have a job, you're probably not going to get one. That's just the way it is.

Cassie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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