A Busy But Calm Day

First of all, the photos tonight are of no particular order, but will give you a good idea I think that all of us had a busy but calm day. There were no phone calls today so being on hold for hours didn't happen. With my payment to AT&T for their "balance due" on their free phone they gave me, processed and showing $0 on their site, I started the process to port my number and phone to Spectrum Mobile mid-morning.

I followed the instructions sent by the AT&T email and then the screen instructions at Spectrum to transfer. I must admit I was a little relieved to see it had completed. When I checked the settings in the phone it was Spectrum replacing AT&T .. so I made a phone call to a friend just to leave a message confirming the number was good, just in case I ever need to call someone.

The most time consuming thing today, was backing up the iPhone before the transfer, because during that transfer the factory settings are going to be reset and you are going to erase all the data on that phone for Spectrum's eSim card to work.

I remember the "old days" where it was simple. Plug your phone into your computer with a USB cord and follow the on screen instructions. But now the Cloud is involved so it's a little different. My backup didn't work because I didn't have enough free storage left out of my 5Gb limit for the Apple Cloud.

That sent me in the direction of deleting photos, texts, etc to increase storage space for the backup. I get it to over 4Gb of free storage available, start the backup to the cloud, same result ... not enough space available.

Unhooking the USB cable form my keyboard, I plugged that into the phone and saw it show up under the list of devices in the Finder Folder. The encrypted backup went flawless. When it told me the backup was complete, I unplugged the phone from the computer.

While I was sitting at my computer desk doing all of this I glanced out the window to see an AT&T manager I had talked to a few weeks ago by my fence, walking in front of my house. He had his phone pressed to his ear talking to someone. I found a couple of hours later as he was still walking and talking, he was talking to his boss.

He only told me that as he was walking in front of my house when I offered any recent updates he might want. No time though when you are surveying all the hanging cable, cable on the ground, cable laying on top of my bushes on the berm and the unattached end of the fiber cable two houses over ... and your boss is involved. 

He had been walking that fiber line a few times from the end of the street 6 houses away to my utility pole. He walked and talked for a long time because I left the house and headed to UPS Store so they could ship the router/modem back to AT&T. The young man at the counter seemed to act like this was not the first one he had done. Gut feeling. 

Then I drove to the store to get Watson, Walter and Henry another 40# of dog food. So I was gone for a while. After I parked the car in the garage, went inside to let the hounds and dogs outside ... he was walking in front of the house again.

The BOi crew that was hanging new fiber cable all day on Friday, missed this area for the 2nd day in a row. I have a feeling after that AT&T manager survey of their work and talking to a boss, heads are going to roll tomorrow. They might be working in the rain.

I was pretty happy I had made the change to Spectrum Internet and Mobile. Yes, their low prices only are locked in for 2 years but that seems to be the norm for most phone, internet or tv service providers. I can live with it and then fight that war in 2026 for discounts. 

Of course with a new router and wifi name and password that means the printer, iPad, iPad Mini plus my two OLD Apple Watches had to be set up again and paired again. I still have one more watch to go at this time. The iPads are for the wifi and the watches pair to the iPhone.

The bad thing is ... this "restore from a backup" was not nearly as accurate as "the old days" ... back then you literally got every little file, photo or document that you backed up. Today as far as I can tell I am missing 5 years or more of photos I had left on my phone. My homepage (screen) does not have all the apps I had sorted and all the bookmarked websites I had on the homepage.

To try to restore again, that means you have to erase you phone and do all that setup, pairing devices, etc ... after the second time I said enough is enough. I have all of those missing photos on my phone in my iMac anyway and on an external drive for backup.

Looking at my iMac I could see which apps I needed to download on my phone and which websites I needed to load and then bookmark them on my phone. Not a big deal. If you look at it this way it's a pretty good deal ... a lot of the stuff missing wasn't being used anyway so now I have a clean phone hard drive and plenty of space available.

Tomorrow is a big day for Ava. We will leave early in the morning to get her checked in at her vet between 7:30am and 8:00am. 40 minute drive through morning traffic with those that still work, means a pretty early departure.

Which is good ... I have to leave soon after she wakes up. It will take a little while to corral her to lead her to the car in the garage but this puppy LOVES TO EAT !!!! She is so excited she walks in circles while I am getting her food. Then right before she eats, the breeder taught her to go to the sit position. I tell her "you're welcome" and she starts eating in one end of the mudroom with Watson eating in the other end.

But with that change in her routine with no food ... she may not be too cooperative getting into the car with her leash attached. 

I am also having to have to remember not to feed her any food tomorrow morning for her spaying surgery later that morning. Her staples will be taken out and tonight her wound looks completely heal, dry and clean.

I hope I make it back home in time to stop the truck of BOi from backing into my side yard. It has been raining off and on all day today and I am afraid that damage from the heavy truck will tear the yard up more than before. I am not sure they will show up but I have a feeling they will and will early.

Plus I still have Spectrum cable laying on the ground waiting to be buried possibly Wednesday or Thursday. When that happens I have to be here to unlock the gate and make sure the hounds and dogs are inside or in the garage. I don't want the BOi truck to back over that cable nor do I want them to move it on their own. Leave it where it is.

I didn't know that AT&T manager would be walking along the line on the ground so the hounds and dog were outside enjoying a slot of dry weather. Watson followed that guy down the whole fence line jumping up and down baying the loudest you could imagine. And ... it is hard to get him to stop when I am standing next to him.

I am serious, if I had had known the day I picked him up as a 8 week old puppy, that all the adult bloodhounds (his mom and dad) did the same thing up on the hill behind the house whenever someone pulls in their gravel driveway ... I would not have bought him.

So internet, phone officially switched. I owe AT&T nothing for the phone, both account cancellations have been processed and confirmed by AT&T ... so things feel like they are back to normal. It feels good to be out of that loop of the work still happening with those internet cables behind my house. Somebody else's problem now. 

50% chance of rain tomorrow and after that we will be back to normal highs/lows for this area. I need to get off here and get back to my phone so I can sort all the stuff I have downloaded on my homepage back to the order I had it before the phone was reset.

I will watch the "game" part of the MLB All-Star game tonight but not all the pre-game hoopla nor the introductions ... just the game.

It turned out to be a good day here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.