We had a nice time yesterday with Ray Cirino and a few of his friends dropping by to look at the ranch for events and such. He did some soil test and was very pleased with the make-up and topography of the place. He said there was plenty of good soil that would do as the bonding agent (clay) and sand everywhere.
Well the move went smooth and we are at the permenant site. Everything has been moved, and put into place, the Horseshoes, the Vollyball/Batmittin Court with it combo scoreboard and spectator seat, the 3 hole golf course, and 2 of the bars are up and going, and one of the hot tubs is almost up and ready. The Dart board is up but the first board I bought was a wound paper target which unraveled all to hell, during our first rain storm back in Dec or so. In changing that out I found out about a whole new type of board, one that is made out of compressed cork with a self-healing skin on the front, and man you can tell the difference in pro and simi-pro stuff. The prexisting concrete slab makes things a lot less dusty and during the rain, muddy.
Re: Daily Chatter... « Reply #6 on Mar 9, 2009, 4:16pm »
The move is almost 95% done. I have one more truck load left, then a final walk through the site, and I will be finished. Yeah! Then I can focus on the main building site and start moving things along faster...
The rain has slowed the install of the hot tubs they are sitting waiting, the carpet for the holes have been cut and laid in, now all I have to do is lower the edges all the way around so the edges sit flush with the ground.
After investigating the Composte toilets I should have the design ready by this weekend and ready to build by nest week. I think I have all the materials necessary to complete at least one whole toilet, at this point.
<rant> Ok that's it, I've had it with Hughes, my internet provider. In Febuary when I made the move, they wanted to send a technician out to relocate the pole and the dish assembly, that was $150 besides the special service call fee of $125, I said "hell I can do that, and if I do I save the money, yes?" she said haltingly, "yes". "Then all he has to do is point the dish at the satellite, make a few adjustments and bada bing he's finished right, that's just a regular free service call, yes?" ***silence**** then she speaks in that smug tone, honed from days in the training room getting that lesson drilled in by the class instructor titled "In the event a customer is attempting to get something we want to sell him, for free" class, I see you have the Superduper Galactic 1000, we can't send a service person out to work on anything under a Superduper Galactic 2000, and since you own your instead of renting it by the month so we couldn't make our usual exorbitant annual fee which we can offer you at this time for another $199." to which I reply, "My internet is working just fine, I don't want another box, I just want him to come and refocus the antenna. Firstly and mostly I do not have that kind of money to spend, like so many other I too am affected by the downturn in the economy, and I am pinching pennies, and cutting back too." she say '"Well I guess we could have him change out your Superduper Galactic 1000 for a Superduper Galactic 1500 for free but you will still have to shell out for the service fee because of the specialized set-up required." fearing losing my only source of internet access here in the desert I agree.
Four weeks passes by and which was a culmination of slower, and slower internet to a complete dead stop. I call them up and wrestle through their' tech support for an hour and a half to discover that it needs to be refocused to a new satellite, via a lone technician somewhere deep in "Server City", which supposedly all he has to do is physically push a button and my dish is redirected. After talking him through all this tech jargon all the software finagling I just went through with the last guy, he comes to the conclusion that I need to have a technician to come and do it, and there will be a $135." taken aback I say "It was just $125 a few weeks back, and they just came out to do the that should be covered by the service call he just made then, right?" to which he replies, " We no longer make free service calls because all of our installers are sub-contractors." so after a few more attempts to I schedule a tech to come out Wed of the following week, March 25.
Earlier the week before around March 15, I called in to make arrangement to extend paying my bill until April 1st, to which I was told that since my automic payment for Feb was declined and I was behind on the March bill now which had become overdue, the only way she could extend my payment schedule until April the 1st is to pay the Feb bill now, and went on to say I see the service is due for interruption in the next 48 hours, just to add that extra incentive to pay up. I tell her money has been flowing pretty irratic and it has been screwing up all my accounts, So of course I agree to pay Feb and extend the payment for March until April 1st. So when I go to depostit a check from one of my jobs, i check my account to see what kind of damage I have to suffer to cover the fee I find out that not only do I not have "any" money, in fact my account is $150 in the negative. I track the account back to find out that Hughes not only deducted the Feb payment of $69, I find and two days later hit my account for $59 for the March bill that we agreed to be paid on the 1st. Since I was not expecithg any more deductions until the first of the month the balance was only $50,to cover my small daily incidentals ie. my daily Starbucks, gas, snacks, or what not. Well the extra $59 deduction came with it's own $35 overdraft fee, and so did 3 diffferent Starbucks, and a purchase of $10 in gas. I call the bank to see if the mistaken charge and the subsequent fees can be removed, and they say yes but the only 2 ways of doing that is filing a police report or getting the vendor to do it on their end. So I call up Hughes and explain the mistake and I need them to reverse that charge so my bank can erase the 5 overdraft fees and I can deposit my check, so I am able pay bill as we had arranged in 3 days. Their reply was that even though I had made arraignments to pay the bill at a later date, and their computer had mistakenly gone ahead with the automatic bill pay deduction in spite of the arrangements, they were sorry the rule clearly states that , they do not reverse charges on accounts set up to auto debit. I argued that because of the agreed extended payment deadline, and obviously an error on their part they should forgo the rule and simply make the adjustment, but no. A rule is A rule, and once a rule has been ruled in can not be broken. It seemed the bank agreed with them and because the account was an auto-debit account their hands were tied, they even would not support filing a police report.
So anyhoo, a week ago I find out now that Sprint's 3G network allows me to use their stand-alone Express internet card, here at the ranch and am no longer at the mercy of Hughes Satellite system, not to mention I will be saving $20 a month on the service and the usb dongle is free with the account, and not to mention I will be getting a much faster signal. After last Fridays little customer shakedown ordeal from Hughes, Monday I signed up for the Sprint device, which I will pick up Monday, I immediately called Hughes and canceled the whole service contract.
I hate when salespeople, or any one in a similar situation thinks they have me or their customer over a barrel, and instead of trying to take advantage and rather being more on the humanistic side, and offering help and support without anything more than the circumstances asking for it. </rant>
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