Wednesday, February 17, 2010

K, Well, Time to Move.

Good morning Dear Reader,

I had to laugh at myself for thinking we might get a little less snow here in Virginia. While we missed the first 20 inches that were dropped on VA before Christmas, we have had the opportunity to experience 18 inches at the beginning of this month, plus another 5 two days later, and then another 3 inches a few days after that. I haven't had much need to go out of the house, as working from home allows me that flexibility, but today, I dropped Wiley off at work, and I had to laugh at all the snow mounds. Every. single. person. I've talked to here has said this winter is atypical. We may have beaten the snowfall record from 14 years ago. It's pretty, but I'm pretty much done with snow. I'm really gunning for spring. Skyline Drive is on my list of things to see, and it's been closed due to all the snow.

So, anyway, I wanted to publicly announce my new blog, Va Valley Girl. I've written a few posts already. There will be more pictures, I'm sure, once the snow clears. Enjoy!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Settling In.

Well, I've not yet gotten to making the new blog because I just got internet in the past few days and had some housekeeping to do.

First things first: do not use Verizon as your internet provider. Being a planner and wanting to get internet up and running as soon as we moved in, we contacted Verizon at the end of December. We were told January 11 would be our start date. Meh. On Friday, the 8th, I contacted Verizon to see where the modem was, as we were supposed to have it already. One person told us to wait until Monday and then if it hadn't arrived, to call. No thank you, so I talked to someone else who said they couldn't find that we'd placed the order and to call the very same people who just told us to wait. No thank you, so I told this guy we'd been there and done that and what was HE going to do to help me TODAY. Before we were done, I had an order number and a promise for a modem to arrive on Monday.

On Tuesday, said modem arrived with a user manual CD and a few cords. But the modem didn't work. So again I called Verizon and talked to a couple of people, one of whom said that the internet should be working and if our DSL light was not solid, then something was wrong with our jacks, and someone would have to take a look at them but couldn't do it until Thursday. My patience wearing thin, and my scalp getting irritated at all the hair-pulling, I waited on Thursday for someone to come, and of course, they didn't. So at 12:00, I called Verizon again to ask where the technician was that was supposed to come check my jacks, and Verizon had no idea what I was talking about. The conversations that ensued still irritate me, so let's just say that after 3 hours on the phone and talking with 3 different customer service reps, after saying, "This is not 1995 and this is not new technology", along with, "I thought Comcast was bad, but I'm considering going to them because this is ridiculous", and "I'm not getting off the phone with you until this is solved", on Friday, my internet was up and running. No jack problem, just people who don't know what they're doing. But now I'm back!