Nine months ago when I tried to add 1500 minutes to my NET10 phone online I fought with their website for days because it would not let me actually skip an additional $10 charge for global minutes which I couldn't really use. After emails, discussions in their forum, etc I eventually had to use my phone to add 3 months of minutes totaling $30 for 300 minutes, the original 10 cents per minute the service is named after. I like the online 1500 minute plan because it only costs $100, a definite savings over using the phone to buy minutes. When those 3 months were over I tried again and was actually able to get the 1500 but it did take about 3 days of trying before it worked.
A few minutes ago I went to the website, logged in chose the 1500 minutes, skipped the global card (it worked!) selected my 1500 minutes, paid and wham, barely 30 seconds had passed when my phone beeped and there they were. Easy peasy! I love it when technology works right the first time!
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Sunday, December 5, 2010
I Like My HDTV!
It finally arrived Friday. It has been held hostage since the 17th of November in a warehouse in Taylor, MI. The shipping company claimed they can only deliver to my area on Thursdays, and since last Thursday was a holiday (Happy belated Thanksgiving) they couldn't deliver till the other day. Oddly, they didn't deliver on Thursday, Dec 2nd, but instead Friday, December 3rd. Wonder what their excuse would have been had I asked why not Thursday?
However, what I researched and purchased was an LG 42 inch LCD HDTV 1080p 120 Hz. I must say it looks very, very good. Damn good in fact. Hal also hooked up all our speakers so we're getting Dolby 5.1 surround sound again.
We reoriented our living room to accommodate this set up. Essentially, rotated the furniture 90 degrees. The TV, as it's very thin compared to our cathode ray tube 24" TV is now on the bookcase against the staircase wall between our tall oak cabinets. Stereo remains on the left side and we moved all the TV components to the cabinet on the right. Hal removed the old TV cabinet to his camp and moved his 8 point deer head to that wall. Eventually, it will have a chair beneath it when my younger sister brings the family furniture here in 2 weeks.
Since we had to remove a lot of knick knacks from the shelves to make this rearrangement, I have to put them all back again with fewer shelves as those same components took those shelves over. So, slowly I am dusting and polishing and replacing. Might get it done by the time my sister, her BF and Lyra get here in 2 weeks.
Or not. But the TV will still look good!
However, what I researched and purchased was an LG 42 inch LCD HDTV 1080p 120 Hz. I must say it looks very, very good. Damn good in fact. Hal also hooked up all our speakers so we're getting Dolby 5.1 surround sound again.
We reoriented our living room to accommodate this set up. Essentially, rotated the furniture 90 degrees. The TV, as it's very thin compared to our cathode ray tube 24" TV is now on the bookcase against the staircase wall between our tall oak cabinets. Stereo remains on the left side and we moved all the TV components to the cabinet on the right. Hal removed the old TV cabinet to his camp and moved his 8 point deer head to that wall. Eventually, it will have a chair beneath it when my younger sister brings the family furniture here in 2 weeks.
Since we had to remove a lot of knick knacks from the shelves to make this rearrangement, I have to put them all back again with fewer shelves as those same components took those shelves over. So, slowly I am dusting and polishing and replacing. Might get it done by the time my sister, her BF and Lyra get here in 2 weeks.
Or not. But the TV will still look good!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Bought a BIG TV and a few Other Things
At least it's big for me. A 42" LG high definition television. Looks nice, I've seen other LG's in person but not this one. Bought it from Amazon. It's supposed to be here by the end of the week. Bought it for $300 off list price. I was planning to stand outside a store on Black Friday hoping to get something similar, but Amazon has been having some pretty good pre-Black Friday sales. Can't wait for it to get here, our current TV is only a couple years old, and isn't a bad little TV, but it's only 24" and is not high def so can't take advantage of the HD signal we're getting from DirecTV. We'll have to pull the old stand out of the loft to set it on but that's no problem though a little awkward to maneuver down the stairs. The current stand will look very nice at Hal's hunting camp with the little 24" one.
Tonight I'm heading to his camp with a dinner of venison heart, a strawberry cake and a salad. Opening day of rifle season is tomorrow so I'll be out there with my dad's gun looking for dinner. Hal has already given a couple deer away to some of our less fortunate neighbors. They really appreciate it.
Luna will spend tonight and tomorrow at Uncle Butch's with her Uncle Yogi, Tank and whichever other doggie friends happen to drop by. Uncle Butch's granddaughter will feed and left my birds out of their coops in the morning so I don't have to rush back.
Did a little shopping last week, too. Bought Hal a new fleece hoodie. He liked it so much I went back the next day and got him another.
Eleven days till Thanksgiving. Many of Hal's clan will be up here for dinner at the farm, then holiday shopping on Black Friday. I'm looking forward to it. Plus I no longer have to get up at 5 am to wait outside Walmart in hopes of snagging a TV on the cheap.
Tonight I'm heading to his camp with a dinner of venison heart, a strawberry cake and a salad. Opening day of rifle season is tomorrow so I'll be out there with my dad's gun looking for dinner. Hal has already given a couple deer away to some of our less fortunate neighbors. They really appreciate it.
Luna will spend tonight and tomorrow at Uncle Butch's with her Uncle Yogi, Tank and whichever other doggie friends happen to drop by. Uncle Butch's granddaughter will feed and left my birds out of their coops in the morning so I don't have to rush back.
Did a little shopping last week, too. Bought Hal a new fleece hoodie. He liked it so much I went back the next day and got him another.
Eleven days till Thanksgiving. Many of Hal's clan will be up here for dinner at the farm, then holiday shopping on Black Friday. I'm looking forward to it. Plus I no longer have to get up at 5 am to wait outside Walmart in hopes of snagging a TV on the cheap.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Bought a Laptop!
Around midnight this morning, after 3.5 days of research I ordered a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop. This has been one of the quickest decisions I've ever made on a big ticket item, but after days of being frustrated by random, frequent freeze-ups on a used laptop, plus the fact I can't really use my 9 year old Dell desktop with only 256 MB of RAM for anything other than email, blogging (I'm using my old Dell for this right now), etc, and other wimpy, older applications, Hal decided it was time to put me out of his suffering. I guess I complained a little. Okay, a lot, but not without reason.
The final decision was between a Dell and a Lenovo. I sort of regret not getting the Lenovo because it has a high definition display and Dolby surround sound speakers, but the Dell allowed me to change the processor for a better one and in the end there was only a $40 difference. Except for taxes, I met Hal's requirement of keeping it below $600. This old desktop cost me $1069 back in 2001 and the power of the new one is far superior. Four (4!!) GB of RAM, a fast processor, wide screen display, dvd/cd burner, web cam and a 320 GB hard drive. I can hardly wait. But I'll have to since they said August 7th was the estimated delivery date. That's the problem when you don't buy off the shelf. They have to build this one for me.
In other news it's raining. A torrential downpour and we need it. I've been watering the veggie garden at Hal's camp with a water barrel on his tractor. Not very effective and only enough to keep the little plants form completely shriveling up. This will help tremendously. It may be a week or more before I have to resort to manual labor. The zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins will survive. It's probably too late for the beans though.
With all this rain the dogs escaped early to Uncle Butch's so they can stay there for now. I may read my book after this, another Harry Dresden by Jim Butcher, "Turncoat". It's due at the library tomorrow, I shouldn't have any trouble finishing tonight.
The final decision was between a Dell and a Lenovo. I sort of regret not getting the Lenovo because it has a high definition display and Dolby surround sound speakers, but the Dell allowed me to change the processor for a better one and in the end there was only a $40 difference. Except for taxes, I met Hal's requirement of keeping it below $600. This old desktop cost me $1069 back in 2001 and the power of the new one is far superior. Four (4!!) GB of RAM, a fast processor, wide screen display, dvd/cd burner, web cam and a 320 GB hard drive. I can hardly wait. But I'll have to since they said August 7th was the estimated delivery date. That's the problem when you don't buy off the shelf. They have to build this one for me.
In other news it's raining. A torrential downpour and we need it. I've been watering the veggie garden at Hal's camp with a water barrel on his tractor. Not very effective and only enough to keep the little plants form completely shriveling up. This will help tremendously. It may be a week or more before I have to resort to manual labor. The zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins will survive. It's probably too late for the beans though.
With all this rain the dogs escaped early to Uncle Butch's so they can stay there for now. I may read my book after this, another Harry Dresden by Jim Butcher, "Turncoat". It's due at the library tomorrow, I shouldn't have any trouble finishing tonight.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Driven Nuts by Net10
I bought my very own prepaid cell phone in January. When I was assigned my number I called technical support because the prefix (those first 3 digits after the area code) were for a town that would be a long distance call for me. I was told I had to verify that first by making a test call and checking my phone bill. Sure enough, I was charged 35 cents for 1 minute on top of the 10 cents per minute that my cell phone deducts.
This morning I called back and made my case. The girl, for whom English was not her first language, but still was understandable, gave me a new phone number after about 30 minutes of back and forthing. I then had to wait an hour to test it. It didn't work. I went online to their website and plugged in a bunch of numbers provided for reactivating my phone. When I tried again I still could not use the number. So I called them back.
Person number two, a little harder to understand had me type many numbers into my phone again, kept asking me to be put on hold while he checked with his supervisor, etc. After about an hour of this I was told everything should work after waiting another hour which I did. Again, no joy.
Now I asked both these people about changing my zipcode, but the first gal said I couldn't do that unless I actually moved away. Person number two had similar difficulties.
The third time I called I got a third person and after explaining my problem yet again, he finally informed me that the new number would not work for me. After typing in more strings of digits a new phone number appeared which had the same 657 prefix of my original phone number. I again mentioned that that number is a long distance call from my home phone to my cell phone and made no sense. However, this person had little trouble being persuaded to try different zipcodes for me. Finally, we hit one that still had local prefix numbers available for my phone. The only problem was I would need a new SIM card which could take up to a week to be delivered. Then I will have to go through the reactivation process again. Still, if this is what it takes to get me a local number, that is fine with me.
My only question now is why don't their zipcodes and access numbers actually match as they do for the old landline phones. It sure would make things operate a lot more smoothly! Spending 3 hours on the phone for something that ought to be simple makes little sense.
This morning I called back and made my case. The girl, for whom English was not her first language, but still was understandable, gave me a new phone number after about 30 minutes of back and forthing. I then had to wait an hour to test it. It didn't work. I went online to their website and plugged in a bunch of numbers provided for reactivating my phone. When I tried again I still could not use the number. So I called them back.
Person number two, a little harder to understand had me type many numbers into my phone again, kept asking me to be put on hold while he checked with his supervisor, etc. After about an hour of this I was told everything should work after waiting another hour which I did. Again, no joy.
Now I asked both these people about changing my zipcode, but the first gal said I couldn't do that unless I actually moved away. Person number two had similar difficulties.
The third time I called I got a third person and after explaining my problem yet again, he finally informed me that the new number would not work for me. After typing in more strings of digits a new phone number appeared which had the same 657 prefix of my original phone number. I again mentioned that that number is a long distance call from my home phone to my cell phone and made no sense. However, this person had little trouble being persuaded to try different zipcodes for me. Finally, we hit one that still had local prefix numbers available for my phone. The only problem was I would need a new SIM card which could take up to a week to be delivered. Then I will have to go through the reactivation process again. Still, if this is what it takes to get me a local number, that is fine with me.
My only question now is why don't their zipcodes and access numbers actually match as they do for the old landline phones. It sure would make things operate a lot more smoothly! Spending 3 hours on the phone for something that ought to be simple makes little sense.
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