Using the knowledge from setting up china.tobic.com I decided to apply some upgrades to my personal pictures area. Now, perhaps I can start uploading the hell out of my photo archives!

We got a nice surprise here in the metroplex today for Valentines Day. - SNOW! Yep. Quite unusual for these parts. So, I popped a few pics on line so you can see fluffy white stuff.

"A few days ago the Sci Fi Channel officially announced a 13 episode season for Ronald Moore's Battlestar Galactica remake. Looks like they'll be bringing back most of the cast members, including Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. The new series will begin a few days after the miniseries that aired a few months back. Production commences next month in Vancouver, B.C."

Woo Hoo!

Friggin' Sprint! I have been a customer for several years now. My cell phone is always with me 1 So a few weeks ago, I decided to get a new phone. My last slab-style phone was dying. A few of the buttons were no longer working as well as they should, the battery was shot, and my address book was getting cramped.

So, I headed out to my second most hated place 2 to wait in line. I verified with the overly happy Sprint rep that my account qualified for a rebate IF I purchased a new phone with a specific type of service plan. No problem. I just had to fork over the full price of the phone up front, and then the rebate would be forth coming after XX weeks of waiting.

So, happily buy my phone, fill out the paperwork, migrate my old plan to the new phone and await my rebate.

Sprint is nice enough to post your rebate status online. How nice! So, I have been checking it every few days to see its status. Today the status changed from "processing" to "INVALID - Incorrect service plan"

WTF? I specifically bought that service plan to get the rebate.

So I call Sprint, wade through about 10 levels of automated menus and finally crash out to a real person. I am not even going to comment on how clue less this person was. Suffice to say they were a few DNA strands short of being a human. After about 10 minutes of this nimrod telling me "Hold on, I think I can find the information over here.." and "Please hold while I ask somebody" Asshat. I was ready to reach through the phone and hand this a fist full of clue.

Finally, dorkwad decides he can't help me, and transfers me to the "business accounts dept" because for some reason my service plan is now classified as business plan (who knew!).

So, Mr. Business Plan gets on the line. I have to go through the whole explanation again. He is able to verify my phone number and service plan type (ding!). He then tells me the reason my rebate was invalidated was the plan I chose is so new, that the computer hasn't associated that particular plan as a rebatable plan. But it definitely qualifies for a rebate. So he fiddles with with his computer and tells me that I have to resubmit my rebate form. "But," I say " I already sent in my receipt and original rebate form" "Oh don't worry, just go to the Sprint store or a RadioShack and pick up another rebate form and submit that".

Ok. what ever.

Luckily there is a Ratshack 3 just around the corner. I pop in to grab a new rebate form. The poor Ratshack employees can't seem to understand why I want a rebate form with out buying a phone from them. After some discussion, I finally am able to coax the hallowed rebate form from the store manager.

I get home to fill out the rebate form. And I notice the form is slightly different than the one I filled out originally. Turns out this one is for purchase dates between Feb 1, 2004 through April 2004. Damn it! I have a receipt that has Jan 27th on it. The original rebate form was good through Jan 31st, 2004.

So, already I know that I have to go back to the dreaded Sprint store and hope they have some older rebate forms that I can use. Because I *know* that if I submit my Jan 27th receipt attached to the Feb 1st rebate form it will get denied again.

The games that these companies play 4

1 I am the poor fool who will burn through 1000 minutes in a few weeks. Its insane. Luckily its mostly work related calls.. but still. My brain should be fried by now.

2 I only hate Banks more than the Sprint store. Banks are NOT there for the customers. Access fees, crappy lobby hours, pisspoor customer service, etc. Fskin' banks. The closest I will get is a credit union.

3 While I was in there, I picked up a sweet digital multi-meter. My poor analog one was well used well beyond its designed lifespan. So, my trip to Ratshack wasn't completely in vain.

4 When sitting in traffic, sometimes I will call the automated voice activated customer "help" line and talk with 'Claire' the automated attendant. I am slowly working my way through the system, trying various hacks trying to get to a higher level access menu. So far I can get to a prompt that asks "Please say your supervisor code word". I'll get it eventually. Sprint doesn't have that much imagination.

I know - I started this bog to talk about interesting things, and what do I do? I ended up dedicating most of the first entries to my sister and her hubby. How very un-self-centered of me :)

Anyway, I will continue the trend - at least for now.

The travelers made it to China. They called a few hours after arriving in Hong Kong. They have been settling in. already we have made contact via email and instant messenger! I am impressed that they have taken the time to sit down and pound out a bunch of emails. I know that if *I* were in China, I wouldn't look at the computer twice - too many other things to taste, see and do. (well, perhaps I wouldn't totally ignore a computer - esp if it had email capabilities). So, in summary, they are settling in, learning their way around their neighborhood and seem to making new friends.

BTW - Happy Birthday G!

As I type this, my sister and her hubby are on the plane to Hong Kong. Its been a long day to say the least. Last night the couple came back to the house after eating dinner. It was a mad rush to get the final loads of laundry finished and then cramming everything back into their luggage. We didn't go to bed until about midnight.

To make the flight on time, we had to leave my house by 5:15am. Ug. I am by no means a morning person. I am a much better night owl. But, being the good brother, I set my alarm for 4:30 and was showered and dressed by 5am on the nose.

When I walked out of my room, the China-bound travelers were slamming Dr. Peppers sitting on my couch in the dark. I have no idea if they went to bed. I highly doubt that they slept.

Luggage loading done, we headed out to the airport. Amazing how traffic-free the roads are at 5:15 on a Monday morning.

We got to the airport in plenty of time. I dropped them off, and kissed everyone good bye. It was a bit heart wrenching to see my sister dragging all her luggage up the escalator to the ticket check in counter.

I have been tracking their flights on the web in real time. Not that I can really do anything about it. But it makes me feel better looking at the little plane icon, knowing who is onboard.

Now, we wait for them to re-emerge into civilization.

Don't get all excited. I'm not going, but my sister and her husband are going. They signed up with an international head-hunter of sorts. They want to spent sometime teaching English overseas. When they started down this route of employment, the two of the really didn't care where they went, just as long it was overseas. Well, a private school in Shenzhen, China responded.

Its not a bad deal actually. Their flight is reimbursed, they get a "western style" apartment with rent and utilities paid. They will teach English for the mandated 20 - 25 hours a week. After that, their time is their own. They can take on private lessons for more money, or head out and go tour. In addition to all the benefits, they also get a small paycheck every month! How cool is that!

For those of you not up on you China geography, here is a map of the general location. It is apparently an easy 45 minute commuter train ride to Hong Kong.

So, the happy couple has sold off most of their belonging, put the rest in storage and packed what was left over. they are on a whirlwind tour visiting family members before they leave. They have a flight out Feb 9th - early.

Right now, I am lucky to have them crashing at my place for the weekend. I think I have been defacto nominated to bring them to the airport.

I am so excited that they have the courage to take on this adventure. They have signed an initial 6 month contact, with an option to extend another 6 months if they want. As much as I will miss my sister, I hope they end up staying the full year - only if they are happy. Nothing opens the mind like travel.

Its finally in the ending stages. I have decided that my previous Tobic.com pages were looking a bit long in tooth. And besides, my content had outgrown navigational capabilities. So, I started to slap together some graphics and futz around. The end result? Well, you are looking at it.

I am pretty pleased so far. I still have more content to add, but at least the structure is in place.

About the blog - I must confess, I don't know if I will keep this up or not. But it seems to be the "latest" rage - so I figured why the heck not. I'll give it a go and see what comes of it. The comment sections should be working. It works a bit differently than most other blogs - it actually will email your comment back to the server, which in turn will post it. So, if you leave a comment, just go with the flow. Don't mess with the subject line. And I swear, I am not logging emails or any thing evil. I never even see the emails, they are just a carrier of your comment. the system will automatically post the email comments every 30 minutes. So, I'll see how it goes.