A Couple of Hours I Won't Get Back Again

I had a call this morning that really surprised me.   It was from Barbara, whom I used to know some 30 years ago.  At the time she was a new Mom and her husband was writing some solemn papers for the art department, of which he was on the faculty.

Our relationship didn't last long, but was intense for maybe a year or so, while I was doing LaLeche League, I think.  So imagine my surprise to see her name on the caller ID of our phone.  But her reason for calling was even more surprising.

She said that she has received calls for the last several days from our phone, which are telemarketer calls for some insurance company.   I assured her that they were NOT from us and said I would call AT&T today to find out what is going on.

Famous last words.

I was going to have lunch with my mother in about an hour, so I decided I would get to the bottom of this matter right away and still have time to get to Atria in time.

Remember those days when you could dial "O" and the operator would answer and if she couldn't help you, her supervisor could?  Those days are long gone, my friend!  I dialed O and got into voice mail hell, but I expected that.  I answered all questions to the best of my ability and finally, after an 8 minute wait, got a live person.  I explained my problem and he said that he could not help me, but would connect me with someone who could.  What he connected me to (eventually) was the do not call list, so that I could add my information so I would not get calls I did not want any more.  Well, that was a bust, but it was time to go to Atria, so I resolved to call AT&T again when I got back.

Lunch was fine.  I wonder, sometimes, what her lunch partners think of my mother.  I've noticed more vagueness at lunch now, which I didn't in the past.  I wonder how many times she has told her table mates that Atria must require servers to have long black hair and make them wear it in a pony tail.  I know I've certain heard that a lot.  She's at her best when there is someone whose dementia is in about the same stage.  Then they talk and laugh together, they don't have a clue what they are talking about, but they don't care.

But then the waitress, who is generally pretty sharp, and one of my favorite waitresses, was having an off day too.  My mother ordered a hamburger and she brought her soup and later gave me a dessert I didn't order.  But she did get me a second caraffe of ice water, so I forgive her anything for that.   She's the only one who brings extra water.

Anyway, after lunch, I went shopping at Whole Foods.   I never shop at Whole Foods but today was 5% day

5% of all proceeds were going to a local organization, which just so happened to be Stone Soup, a catering service owned by our friend Sarah Clanton. There was as huge campaign to vote for Sarah over her two competitors.  One competitor was eliminated pretty soon, but it was neck and neck until they closed the polls, and when votes were counted. Stone Soup was the winner.  So today was the day they were going to share the profits and I felt I needed to help there too.  I didn't help much, but I did buy about $40 worth of food (including something called "beet chips" for Walt).  Probaby would have done her more good if I'd handed her $5 as an outright donation, but she will get $20 from my purchase and it was for the fun of feeling a part of it.

When I got home, I was ready to tackle AT&T again.  The first call went the way my previous call had gone, but when he was at the point of transferring me, I made SURE he was tranferring me to another person, not a recording where I could opt out of telemarketer calls.  He assured me that he was.  But I swear the guy he transferred me to was sitting next to him because I went through exactly the same process with him with the end result was that he was going to transfer me to his supervisor, and then disconnected me.

I think I did that twice, but now I'm not sure (this was an Atria day after all).  Ultimately, I gave up on the telephone and decided to try the internet.  I could not access my account because they had no record of my ever having an account.  So I decided to try their customer chat line.  Here I talked with Anthony.  I don't know how many calls those guys handle at the same time, but it took an eternity from every time I would answer his question until he would respond. At one time he hit the wrong canned response button and up popped a lecture on texting and driving and asking me to take the pledge and how I could use other options to get AT&T help.  He did -- eventually -- have the good grace to apologize for posting that.

After I had -- I thought -- explained the situation clearly (Someone has hacked my telephone number ID and number and people are getting calls from US about some insurance company) he asked "Beverly, From where exactly are you getting calls from?"

I exploded:

    Anthony *** I *** am not getting calls. OTHER PEOPLE are getting calls from ** ME **. I had a call from someone today saying she has received calls for the last four days from a caller ID with our name and our telephone number, but did not originate from our phone.  Who knows how many other people think we are sending out robo calls?

(I wonder how many other people do a copy of these customer service calls!)

After a very. long. time, Anthony told me he could not help me but that he was transferring me over to his supervisor Vince.

All I got from Vince, after "hello" and then a VERY long wait (3 games of solitaire) was "I will escalate the issue to our back office myself, so that they can block this type of calls to prevent any inconvenience in the future."   Suffice it to say I am not holding my breath that this will actually happen.

In the meantime, my friend Sheri, who is an IT guru, was letting me know about "spoofing," which is what  this practice is called.

    It's happening all.the.time. Telemarketers want you to think the call is local, or from a government agency, or a bank that they hope you do business with), etc. I don't believe there's anything you can do to stop it.

    It's illegal, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. You can contact the FCC, but really not much they can do. Google "spoofing caller id" for more info. I no longer answer my home phone unless I'm absolutely sure I recognize the number as someone I know.

Of course in this case the person receiving the calls did recognize my name, which is why she answered.  In any event, I dashed off a letter to the editor letting folks know that any telemarketer call they received from my name is not me.  And I will figure this is all I can do.

But there is a lot I could have done in the hour and a half I spent on the phone and chat line trying to find out about this!!!

100 Happy Days

 

Day 2:  Ready for lunch with my mother.
(notice her toes?)

Disrupted. Again.

Well, this time it isn't just us against AT&T, it's the whole DCN network. Early this afternoon, Walt came downstairs to ask if I had internet connection. I had been working on the computer, but not on the internet, so I didn't know. I checked and found that I didn't.

I called DCN and got a recorded message that there was a problem, they were trying to connect with AT&T and that they expected service to be back by 2 p.m. I scoffed.

Shortly before 2, I called again (since we still had no service) and got an updated message saying that service was now expected to be restored by 6 or 7.

Seemed like a good time to go to the movies, so we did. I sent a text message to Twitter (which rolls over to Facebook) that we were again without internet access.

When we got home from the movies (at 6), I called again and learned that there were AT&T people working to repair the >150 pairs of fibers that had been cut by an AT&T subcontractor and that they expected service, now, to resume between 9 and 10.

It is now after 9 and there is still no service, nor any updated message.

I was going to go to Mishka's to post this entry, but decided to give them overnight to get the thing going again. If it's not up by the time I wake up, well, I could always use an excuse for coffee and a croissant at Mishka's anyway!

We went to the Varsity Theater, which shows more oddball movies. I decided this is my favorite place to see movies in Davis. For one thing you only have three previews of coming attraction rather than a half an hour worth. For another, the ambience is just...nice. More like the movie theatres of my youth. And, of course, we are quite familiar with the place since first Jeri and then Paul managed it for several years.

The movie we went to see was Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which Char had raved about and which she highly recommended seeing on a large screen rather than waiting until it came out on video.

I can understand why. The sweeping vistas of Paris, even the small streets and back alleys...well, you just have to see it on the large screen.

Owen Wilson is obviously playing the role that Woody Allen would have played if he had been younger and he is a perfect substitute for Woody Allen. In fact, almost better because while he delivers the lines the way Allen would, love scenes are more believable with the better looking Wilson in them (though they lack the absurd humor of Woody Allen being irresistible to women).

The story is a time travel story. When the clock chimes midnight, a car arrives for Wilson and transports him back to Paris of the 1920s, his favorite era, to allow him to interact with his heroes Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and some of the famous artists of the day, primarily Picasso, with whose girlfriend Wilson falls in love.

In the meantime, Wilson's girlfriend, who is obviously all wrong for him can't understand why he doesn't want to go sightseeing with her, her parents and their friends,

The story progresses in logical, if fantasy-like, manner and the conclusion is absolutely perfect, especially what happens to the detective hired to follow Wilson's character and report back about what he does on his midnight walks around Paris.

This is a highly recommended (by me!) movie, especially if you have been to Paris, want to go to Paris, or have a great love for the writers and artists of the 1920s.

* * *

Oh my goodness! 9:15 and service is back! Be still my heart!

Now that it's over, I do need to say, once again, how much I appreciate being with a local internet provider. When service went out, I just had to call DCN and there was a report of what went wrong and when they expected it to be fixed. As the day progressed, reports were updated. And service was restored in a fairly reasonable time, considering that the problem did not lie with DCN, but with AT&T. I compare that with being without a land line for two weeks, unable to reach any living person at AT&T, then three missed AT&T appointments and then when someone finally showed up, it only took 10 minutes to repair. I may grouse when things go wrong because, well, I'm used to instant gratification, but bottom line is that I suspect you won't get better service anywhere than the Davis Community Network gives its customers.

Damn AT&T...they got it repaired in timely manner. There goes my chocolate croissant!

And the winner is...

It was one day while Walt was still in Boston when I picked up the telephone to call my mother and discovered there was no dial tone.

I believe I mentioned that fact here at the time.

It was late in the day, too late to call AT&T but I tried to file a complaint on their web site. I was able to leave a text message that our phone line was out (a message that was never answered), but when I tried to leave a detailed report, it would not recognize Walt's SS number or my SS number as valid, and so I was stymied.

The next day was Betty's funeral and I knew I wouldn't be home to meet a repair person, so I didn't bother following through on it then. The day after, Friday, was also a problem with timing and then there was the weekend. I knew Walt would be home on Monday, so I decided to just let people who might want to call me know I had no land line and let it go at that.

In truth, it was kind of nice knowing that nobody could call in. I could leave the house and leave the dogs in the yard and not worry about hearing a nasty voice message from Mr. McCoy if they barked.

I meant to call AT&T on Monday, but forgot and then Walt's flight was canceled for technical problems and so he didn't actually fly in until Tuesday.

On Wednesday, he got on the phone repair business (I missed him! Nice to have him home to do that for me!) and filed a complaint. They gave him a time when the repair person would be out.

We waited all afternooin and nobody showed up. Obviously they couldn't call us, because the phone is out!

Finally Walt checked the web site and learned that they had been unable to come and we would get "the next available appointment," the time of which was unspecified.

He finally learned that they would be out today, some time between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

I have been keeping AT&T updates (which my friend John Fitzgerald points out is an oxymoron) on Faceboook and when I said that they would be here today and asked "guess what time I think they will finally show up") (my guess--5 p.m.), I had a slew of wonderful responses:

Pat Doyle: 4:55
Lyndsay Schaeffer Korbylo: 5:22, just after you've given up and gone out for dinner.
Ronald Hall: I'm thinking the middle of next week some time..... just sayin'
Sally Pebler Hannan: Either 7:30am or 5:30pm
(clearly she was delusional...arrive EARLY?)
Jennifer Pelot Rysewyk: Day after never?
Robin Hellgren: 5:01
Marte Brengle and David Gerrold: Tuesday

We sat here, dutifully, all day today. Walt went out a couple of times, taking his cell phone with him so that if someone arrived, I could call and he could hurry home. At 5:15, he called AT&T and was told that they were "still working in the area" and would be here eventually. Now...this is Davis. We are a town of 60,000 people. We aren't Sacramento. It has taken them three days and they still are "working in the area"? If that were true, there would be big stories in the newspaper about a big telephone outage, because we always read about piddly stuff like this in the paper.

Finally after 6, Walt got a call to say they had determined (without coming out here) that the problem was in the main cable--this took them 3 days to discover....NCIS's Abby and McGee or Criminal Minds' Garcia could have figure it out in seconds.

Anyway, now that they have identified the problem, they know that it is going to involve more major repairs, like digging up the street (which they did just a few months ago when the cable went out!)

The latest prediction for when we will have service restored is....

Tuesday.

Prizes to Marte and David (not to be awarded until I actually have a dial tone on this phone on Tuesday, of course!)

Season of Miracles

My entry a year ago is called "The Christmas Miracle," referring to the fact that I seemed to have gotten over a cold overnight, and would not be spoiling Christmas.

There was another miracle on this date this year, only a very different one. Mid-morning, two trucks pulled up across the street...

It was the AT&T guys showing up, after nearly a week, to finally bury the electric wires in our neighbor's driveway. They were here a couple of hours and when they finished, they asked me to check to see if everything worked. It did.

Several hours later, it still works. Be still my heart.

The other miracle of the day was watching President Obama sign the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't tell. As emotional a ceremony as that was, it didn't affect me as much as this video shows.

I was wiping away tears as Harry Reid returned Choi's West Point ring to him. God, let's hope this whole thing is behind us now!

---

The only problem with today was that Walt and I had forgotten to coordinate. When he went off to work I thought he would be on his bike like every other day, but he was going to the post office and it was a grey day, threatening rain (which hasn't arrived yet) and so he took the car.

My plan for the day had been to do some baking. I'm bringing dessert to my mother's tomorrow's early Christmas dinner, and pumpkin pies to Walt's sister's house in Santa Barbara for Christmas. I also wanted to do some baking to leave goodies for Ashley, who will be staying here while we are gone.

But with no car, there was no way to get to the store to buy all the stuff I needed to do.

I did get something baked for Ashley, and wrapped all of the Christmas presents. I finally got to the store at 7 p.m., after watching Jeopardy. So as I write this, there is a pumpkin cheesecake baking and when it is finished, I can get some sleep so we can start our multi-day Christmas festivities.

I will have the laptop with me, but wifi is iffy at my mother's, so I don't know if I will post an entry tomorrow night or not. I will WRITE one and then see if it can be posted.

---

Puppy Update: I swear I weighed these puppies 3 days ago and Max was about 10-1/2 lbs. Today he is THIRTEEN pounds! He's getting too heavy to lift over the fence in the doggie yard!

My Day in Facebook Status Updates

About 7 am.:

This living without a phone is kinda nice. If you call our house you hear that the number has been disconnected. If anybody needs to contact me, send e-mail or call my cell phone.

An hour later:

OK. Everybody cross your fingers right now. AT&T is digging up the phone line. MAYBE we'll have a phone soon.

A bit after that:

Will today be the day? Another phone person is digging up phone lines to see if they can get us a phone AND a DSL connection.

Meet Eduardo of
Irish Construction Company

After Eduardo left:

I spoke too soon. I forgot this is the age of specialization. Eduardo is the guy who digs the ditch to give the phone people access to the phone lines. No word on when/if the phone people will make an appearance today or not.

Two hours later:

Eduardo has gone and we have a trench. We don't have AT&T people and it's looking like rain, but gosh darn it, we have a trench.

A bit later:

There is a white plain paneled truck parked across the street. Either AT&T is here, or we are under surveillance. I'd better watch what I say, just in case

An hour after that:

Well, the panel truck was a gardener. Now we have Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). I think I saw this on a Marx Brothers movie once.

Some time after that:

Because I know you are all waiting on the edge of your seats for the next installment, now we have a city truck here along with the PG&E truck. One of them is marking where the trench guy needs to dig, despite the fact that the digging already took place and Eduardo is gone.

A couple of hours later:

It is now pouring rain and getting dark and AT&T calls my cell phone and says hey will be here in 30 minutes.

An hour later:

AT&T guy (Nathan) came. It's a zoo here*. He's here half an hour, charges us a hefty fee, finds a problem, fixes it, leaves, Walt uses his cell phone to call the house and the phone doesn't ring. Last I heard he was screaming "Oh shit!" and running outside to see if he could catch the guy before he leaves.

[the problem was apparently a short in the box in our guest bedroom, where the wire for Walt's computer connects and then goes over the ceiling to the other end of the house to connect to his computer. By the time Walt got back in the house after talking with Nathan, the phone was working.]

A few minutes later:

OK. I have internet. House phone rings when you call the house number. Our caller ID works. Even the recording of the 1812 Overture which plays when Walt calls (and I don't have a CLUE how I programmed that) works. MAYBE we're finally done...

...but it turns out that we are not. Everything IN the house is fine, but remember Eduardo? He's the "fill in the trench" guy, but he's not the wiring guy, so when he left, he had filled in most of the trench that had been dug by the trench digging guy. But he left this:

This is where the wire from our house goes under our neighbor's fence to go under the small manhole cover on our neighbor's driveway. But Eduardo is not a wiring guy, so he can't put the wiring in the hole and make the manhole cover flush with the concrete again.

So we wait. Again. But at least if they forget to come back, we can now CALL them on our land line!

(And BTW, yes, I'm aware that you can have the DSL and land line on the same phone number and we are so glad that we don't. This would be 1000% worse if BOTH lines were out. It's worth paying for the second phone line to have the option of a spare line to use if one goes out)

Oh yeah--and one last thing. When they go to put those wires back in the ground? They have to disconnect our service to do it.

---

*"It's a zoo here." Picture it. I'm sitting in the recliner giving Patty her bottle. The other puppies are wrestling in the cage. Sheila, Lizzie and Polly are leaping at the window trying to get to Nathan, I get a gate and manage to get them all locked in the living room.

Walt, thinking he's going to have to move all the furniture upstairs and that Nathan will also need to look at the phone jacks in the living room, races upstairs yelling that I will have to hold all the dogs for Nathan. I dump Patty back in the cage. She starts screaming because she hadn't finished her bottle. I let Nathan in and direct him upstairs to Walt.

I somehow get Lizzie and Sheila on leashes, since they need to be out of the living room, but Polly won't come near me because a STRANGER is in the house, and she has learned that usually when a stranger comes, I give her to that stranger and the stranger takes her away. She's not coming within 5 feet of me.

I get treats for all three and, leaving Lizzie and Sheila in the living room, drop Polly's in the downstairs bathroom and then lock her in there. Before I let the big dogs out of the living room, I go in the bathroom with Polly and manage to corner her and pick her up. Then I let the big dogs out of the living room and, holding both leashes in one hand, I try to open the door to the small cage on top of the puppies' cage and I shove Polly in there and lock the door. I yell upstairs to Walt that I am taking the dogs for a walk.

Fortunately it had stopped raining and the dogs were thrilled, but it's pitch black out, the streets are wet and there are wet leaves all over the place. In the best of conditions, my balance is not terrific, and I'm afraid I'm going to wind up on my keester somewhere, so we only walk around the block and Nathan is still upstairs with Walt when we get back. I lock the big dogs in my office, take screaming Polly out of the small cage and hold her with an iron grip in my lap. Patty continues to demand her bottle.

I laughed when Nathan came in, his feet encased in paper slippers so as not to track anything in my house. I wanted to apologize to him for the dirt, leaves, and dog poop on the floor!

As for Walt, the amount of stuff he moved in about 5 minutes was amazing. Both bathrooms were filled with boxes and books, and things had been moved everywhere. He said he felt like he was doing a set change for a theatrical production.

If there is anything positive (other than having everything work again) it is that this is the holiday season and we need to give joy to others at this time of year. I figure we have given Nathan material to dine out on for years, as he recounts his visit to this crazy house!

The Saga Continues

We are still without a phone.

Jason from AT&T came out this morning and was here for about half an hour, after which the land line worked just fine, and the DSL line worked just fine. The only problem was that we didn't have caller ID on the downstairs phone. He kind of played around with that a bit and said he'd have to come back when he could go through the wall connections (which meant we'd have to do major furniture moving).

About 10 seconds after he left, the phone rang. I thought it was Walt calling to test the line. I picked it up and it was this guy I try to dodge every year. He always greets me like a long lost friend, cheery in the used car salesman sort of way. He is selling tickets for kids to go to a ball game (baseball? football? I don't remember). I never buy from him because he just sounds so sleazy. And so I try to avoid him. I told him AT&T was working on the line and that I couldn't talk and hung up on him.

And then the line died. My bad Karma, I guess. As we watched Jason and his truck vanish into the distance, we were once again without a DSL line.

It turns out that we have a choice. We can either have the internet or a land line, but if we try to put both on one line with a splitter, one cancels out the other. The only number we can get to work is the DSL line...and nobody knows that number. Heck, even *I* don't know that number and we've had it for about 10 years.

Walt called AT&T immediately and they said they would try to reach Jason (who, apparently, was not answering his cell phone). They said if they couldn't get him back here, they would put in an additional work order to have someone else come out. Presumably some time before the end of the year. In the meantime, I have internet and if anybody desperately needs to reach us, it will have to be either by e-mail or by our cell phones.

After Jason left, I let the puppies outside again. Where yesterday they had been very cautious about being out in the Big Wide World, today they are getting more bold. At first they huddled together near the house, but when I moved them out to the grass, a long way from the house, they began moving more and soon, chasing each other, and us, around the yard. So cute.

Of course, I made a big mistake when it was time to bring them back in. I scooped up Laverne with one hand and then went to take Max with the other, but Max is such a big floppy horse that I nearly dropped him. Note to self: Two hands needed to pick Max u in the future!

We now have a dinnertime routine with the puppies. The minute they see me move, all three are wide awake and racing out of the cage. Max waddles over to the water bowl to drink and Laverne flops over on her back to suck on his penis. I swear these are the most oral puppies ever. Then Patty starts trying to climb up the fence because she wants a bottle. I fix their kibble and put it in the cage and all three attack it. They used to leave lots for Shiloh to clean up, but now they eat every single morcel. And as soon as they finish, Patty is back at the fence again, crying, loudly, for a bottle.

I give it to her.

She's this big horse, but she needs to suck. So, apparently, does Laverne, but she has found her own thing to suck on. I am gradually weakening what Patty gets in the bottle, so it is getting to be slightly formula flavored water now. I'm going to try getting pacifiers for both Patty and Laverne and see if I can get them interested in those, but I'm not hopeful. They both love their oral fixations so much!

Here's a good question: which will happen first...will the puppies wean or will AT&T get our phone problems fixed?