Panama Travelog #28
Panama City, Panama - Fri, 27 Dec 2024. 10pm.

OMG. What a fucking mess this afternoon and evening turned into. Things have finally gotten under control somewhat by now but I'm still so pissed off.

Around 3 or 4pm today things looked good. We finished a revenge hike near Gamboa and needed to drive into Panama City. The plan was ( Read more... )

Our new iPhone 16 Pro phones were delivered Wednesday afternoon. They told us it'd take a few weeks, but then the phones shipped in 3 days. Woohoo, fast delivery, amiright? Ah, but then came the fun part. We'd physically gotten the phones but we still had to get them to workYears ago when we bought new phones we'd go to the Verizon store (or AT&T ( Read more... )

I've been getting more spam calls lately. Well, potential spam. It's easier than ever to avoid it because the phone companies have added spam detection to their smartphone software. Now I see stuff like this when a potential spammer calls:


( Read more... )

It's been just over two weeks now since I finally got a working Verizon Home Internet device. Although it took nearly a freakin' month, including one stillborn system delivery, to get to that point, it did arrive not a day too soon. The day before, our much maligned T-Mobile Home Internet device conked out 4 times in the space of just one hour. ( Read more... )

Finally. Finally today UPS, aka FuckUPS, delivered. Though it took me taping a note like this up on my front door:

I AM HOME.
PLEASE KNOCK!...And keeping an ear cocked to the window all morning long to listen for the sound of the UPS truck driving up to the end of the terrace ( Read more... )

The ongoing saga with Verizon Home Internet is still not resolved. The problem now has shifted to UPS. After spending hours on the phone with Verizon last week Monday/Tuesday, they decided to ship me a new wireless gateway. To their credit they shipped it fast, on Wednesday, and via 2nd day air, so it was supposed to arrive on Friday. Supposed to. ( Read more... )

I spent over 3 hours on the phone and chat tool Monday and Tuesday with trying to troubleshoot our Verizon Home Internet service. We ordered it in late March- when T-Mobile started really pissing off with service outages. The device arrived over 2 weeks ago and has never worked. I have called half a dozen or more times and spoken to at least 10 ( Read more... )

Today it's been back to work for us. No, we didn't just zip home from the middle of our 9 day trip to Hawaii- especially not after posting just this morning about how I kept work at arm's length while on vacation. As usual for when we travel, my blogs about the trip are backlogged. In blog time it's 5 days ago ( Read more... )

I had yet another ordeal with a mobile phone company today. This time it was Verizon. I was on the phone for 90 minutes trying to troubleshoot why my new Verizon home internet service wouldn't connect. I was transferred multiple times, spoke to a total of 5 agents, and the best they could do was file a ticket and tell me my service should be fixed ( Read more... )

The replacement home internet gateway from T-Mobile arrived today. It arrived after 6½ days of no home internet. Quick recap:

• It broke Tuesday and required multiple customer service calls consuming around 3 hours.
• They'd promised us we could get one in a store Wednesday. We couldn't.
• They'd promised we could get one in a store Thursday. We couldn't.
• ( Read more... )