July 19, 2013

Today turned out to be entirely different than I originally thought. Around 8:30AM I got a text from my dad asking if I wanted to help with my brother's Eagle project. We talking about this a day or two ago and I was on board. His time frame was late morning. Which apparently meant 9:00AM. I bumped that to 9:20ish so I had time to do a brief exercise before my shower and then grabbed a couple granola bars for the road before heading out.

I had meant to check my work schedule before I left but I was a bit rushed and forgot about it. On the way out to the lake my dad asked me about my availability on Monday and I usually work at night but I decided I should check just in case. And I was still feeling like I should check it for today. And my feeling was correct because it turned out I was supposed to open today, not close like I usually do. I would have preferred to have my dad turn around and drop me back at my car or for me to be let out so I could walk back to my car but we decided to be quick about get the measurements we needed for a bench.

When we got out there my brother was already there sweeping and my dad took the measurements and my sister took pictures because documentation is needed for the Eagle project. She also got some pictures of me pretending to take measurements. Then we got back in the truck and headed back to town so I could go to work.

It was pretty close but I was able to make it home, make my lunch, change clothes, and made it to work only about five minutes later than I normally get there. Not bad. And then my day was pretty much the same as a normal day at work. I read a bunch, cross stitched some, and listened to the radio. I have comments on all of those things.

Under The Dome is getting crazy. There were kids having seizures, a double murder followed by a suicide, a near suicide, the examination of dead bodies, a fire, and a bunch of other stuff. I have to read it in bursts so I don't get too overwhelmed by it all. I'll read several chapters and then right when something bad is about to happen, I take a break. It's a system and it works for me.

I made a bunch of progress on my cross stitch. And then I pulled it all out because I made a counting error near the start of my stitching today. And then I made a bunch of progress again, eventually surpassing the initial progress. I think I could have possibly come very close to finishing the letter had I not made that mistake right off the bat. And I definitely could have finished it had I not been reading so much. But I like reading so I'm cool with how I divided my time today.

The last few days I've been listening to the college radio station. They have a better music selection than any of the main radio stations in the area because those stations have the same five songs on repeat. Although the college radio station only has about twenty songs on repeat. But they do throw in listener requests more often so that changes things up. The thing I don't like about the college station is when the DJs try to use what they think is a radio voice. There is one dude who slows to a crawl when he is saying the station name. I remember him from a year or so ago and it was incredibly awkward then and you could tell he thought it was something cool to be doing. He has gotten faster but it is still awkward and very unnatural sounding. There is another dude now that has a political show, which is bad right off the bat because kids talking about politics is always annoying. And on top of this, the dude talks in a very thoughtful (aka – slow) and proper way, which I imagine he thinks sounds professional but it doesn't. It just sounds very put-on. DJs need to have a conversational sound to their voice. That is a lot easier to listen to than someone trying to change their voice or manner of speaking for the radio. It's like these people don't have any friends willing to give them shit for how weird they sound when they're on the radio.

Tonight, also the same old thing. I ate some dinner, watched some YouTube videos, did more research on phones and possibly switching from T-Mobile to Ting, and played Trials HD (because it was cheap on the Steam sale today so I have it on my computer now). The phone thing has been a bother for awhile now. I find my phone to be more of a burden than a positive addition to my daily life. I like that I can text with my friends and family and have the occasional phone conversation but I don't really do a lot of that and I'm paying nearly seventy dollars a month. When I had my phone off for nearly a month I felt great. At least when it came to the anxiety created by my phone. That anxiety has not returned to the heights it once reached but it is still occasionally their and I do wish I could lose the phone all together. But I also don't want to become a hermit and I know that phones are pretty much a necessity in modern society. Unfortunately.

Ting is a fairly new wireless carrier that uses the Sprint network, better phones than pay-as-you-go services generally offer, and they offer a better pricing system than the big wireless carriers. Pricing for talking, messages, and data are kept separate and their isn't actually a monthly plan. There are tiers for each category and as you use up one tier, you get bumped up to the next. The first tier for talking is 100 minutes for $3 and if you use that you get bumped up to 500 minutes for $10 and then 1000 minutes for $18. So if you talk a bunch one month you might be paying $18 for minutes but the next you may only pay $3. And the same goes for texting and data (with different pricing), and those are independent categories are independent from each other. If you text like crazy but rarely talk or use the internet you may be spending $16 for 6000 texts but only $3 for 100 minutes and $3 for 100MB of data. It isn't like a normal phone plan where if you only want a lot of one thing you still have to pay for a lot of everything. There is quite a leap from the lowest tier to the next level, which kind of sucks because I may end up talking just over 100 minutes in a rare month but get bumped up to the next tier with 1000 minutes. But that's only two more dollars so it could be worse. There is also a flat $6 monthly usage fee plus all the other added things like taxes and fees and stuff. Being generous with my estimation of that stuff, plus the $6 fee, and using past monthly usage amounts for my phone, it looks like on the high end I would come in somewhere around $50 a month, which sounds a lot better that the $68 I currently pay. Even if I was paying $60 instead of $68 I'd still be saying almost a hundred dollars a year. And there are months when I could be down in the $30 range, which would be great.

So now I'm really on the fence. The main hiccup is having to get a new phone because they only support Sprint phones which is on a different signal or whatever from T-Mobile. So do I splurge and spend a ridiculous amount of money on a Sprint compatible phone and cross my fingers that Ting is as good as it seems to be? I haven't been under contract with T-Mobile for years now but I am used to them. But if I drop a bunch of money on a Sprint compatible phone, and I end up not liking Ting, then I would probably sign up with Sprint again (which I haven't had since high school because they were rude in the store) to get my money's worth out of the phone. So I need to take the precaution of looking at their plans and see if I would be getting boned compared to T-Mobile. I would really like to just get a cheap phone but phones don't really seem to have a happy middle ground. They're either inexpensive and pretty bad (or at best very hit and miss) or they are expensive as hell and get decent reviews. I still have a lot of research and thinking to do. So much thinking.

Now I am listening to music and I think I might read a little bit before going to bed. It is almost one in the morning at this point but I don't feel that tired yet and I don't want to just lay in bed wide awake. Hopefully my dad won't start texting me early in the morning about building benches.