So I’ve got some news! We officially have an official business line. Let me tell you, it was a process getting it. I went to Sprint, hoping that they’d be able to use my old phone to set up a pay-as-you-go contract with me on it. The answer was a quick ‘no’, so I ended up having to buy a cheap and rather ugly Virgin Mobile phone (from Sprint, what the heck is up with that?) and I got a thing where I use a card to load up minutes onto the phone each month (200 minutes for $20, that’s a good deal, I think).
Well, I had to go to the library to use the computer in order to activate the phone. So I go in and I realize I’ve forgotten my wallet. (Oops, that’s driving without a license, ma’am. Sorry officer!) Which means no library card, which means I don’t have my card number to get on the computer. The library is awesome enough to give their patrons four hours of computer use a day, all you need is your card number to get on. (More time than even the most hardcore nerd could need. I’ve spent tons of time at the library and I don’t think I’ve ever needed to use up that whole allotment, though I’ve come close). Anyway, so I have to go to the desk and sheepishly ask for my card number and they need a photo ID for it. Ohh, snap. I don’t have my license either, fortunately I had my school ID, which is actually technically for a school out of the county but they accept it and I go on my merry way.
So I get on and I have to do 14 billion things to even start THINKING about activating the phone, let alone to actually get it working. I turn it on, and remember I’m in a library, and it goes off with the loudest beeps and boops I’ve been subjected to in ages. Since I keep my regular phone on vibrate all the time, I’ve forgotten how loud and annoying they can be. FInally, there’s only one step left, which is to dial in a complex series of numbers into the phone to tell the phone to activate itself. (I thought I’d already done that, what were the rest of the 14 billion steps for??) Well, as I dial the phone loudly beeps and boops merrily away and I can’t go out to the lobby to take the call, ma’am, I need to be on the computer so it can tell me the next forty steps to activating a cheap and ugly phone. So I finally get the number dialed in only to hear a loud voice tell me “We’re sorry, that number is incorrect, please activate your phone before use.” ….What? I thought I WAS activiating it?? After five more times of this, all the while I’m getting more paranoid that the librarians are going to come over with the police to haul me away for disturbing the peace, I finally decide to go to the lobby to try this again. I don’t exactly know what I did that time but it finally worked.Apparently Virgin Mobile is a big library patron…
Anyway, so it’s activated and now I have to load minutes onto it. I got a card from the sales guy which I have to go to the site and plug in a long string of randomly generated numbers to activate the card. I try it and no dice…it says that the card is already activated. I try again, thinking I might have typed it wrong. Again, nothing. By this point I’m sick of the whole process so I figure that maybe I already have the minutes on the phone, since the sales guy had to scan it in when I bought it. Nope, I bought another $20 worth of minutes online (which was really really not nice *frowns*) but I’m too tired of dealing with stupid technology to go back to the sales guy and complain I was scammed out of my minutes. I should have remembered Moscow Rule #9: Technology will always fail you.
So, on the other side of the camera, auditions are coming up next week and we’ve got several choirs signed up already. We’re going to meet on Friday and try to work out what all is going to happen and make sure we’re ready for next week. It’s been FUN doing the scheduling for the choir auditions. Well, it has been enjoyable, even though it’s sometimes a pain to be on the phone all day long playing phone tag with people, explaining the process over and over and trying to sort out a million details. Ah well, it’s been really interesting so far and a learning experience and I wouldn’t trade the job for anything.
Phones and their systems are so incredibly stupid sometimes. And the default of phones being ‘LOUDEST SETTING’ is annoying!
I’d be interested to know, in another blog entry if you’re allowed to post about this, HOW you actually audition the choirs- Like, what sorts of things you’re looking for, especially if you’re not a choir person yourself. If they all sing the same song to you, that sort of thing.
It is annoying when you’re trying to do something on the net and you get all the questions and it doesn’t work.
4 hours? You get an hour a day for an adult where I live, an hour a week for a kid.
Pity I wasn’t in the states. I’d audition in a choir for you.