I get to the post office and place my package on the table in front of Mrs. Post Lady and she asks me the obligatory questions which more or less consist of “Is this a bomb?” and “No gooey liquid is going to leak out of this, right?”. After that she asks if I want insurance and quickly says it’ll be ~$25.00 and will get to Summit Racing in 3 days.

Now at this point I’m wondering if she thinks I’m crazy or just a dumb kid. The shipping price she just quoted me is over 1/3 of the cost of what’s inside and the package weight almost nothing. It’s at this point that I remembered reading an article about how the post office will quote you these really expensive shipping options and keep their mouth shut unless you ask if there is a cheaper option.

After a quick Google search returned a different article with the same basic story I rememberd reading about: The USPS - How and Why of Upselling.

Unfortunately for me I didn’t get the post office down as far as No Cleaning Here did. Mainly because I wasn’t persistent enough I guess. My final total was $8.10 with insurance and I can live with that. Next time however I won’t be so naive about those tricky post office people.

I’ve been trying to think what exactly I put on that card and while I’ve come up with a few things like my first Apple laptop, my trip to England, and some school books, I can’t really think of what I spent my money on.

The important thing is it’s finally paid off! Now it’s time to try and start paying off the new car.

I moved apartments recently and needed to get internet and tv service turned on. At my previous apartment I had Charter and they were great. Amazing customer service along with some of the best pricing made them pretty much the perfect internet/tv provider as far as I was concerned. They even gave my Speed and the Sci-Fi channel for free…mint!

So my first instinct when I moved was to try and either transfer my Charter service or sign up again with my new address. After a phone call to Charter and some investigation we found out that Charter can’t service that area….great, so now what?

Well my buddy Gabe just signed up for AT&T U-verse and since I had recently became at AT&T customer for my new cell phone I thought they might have a deal if I package a few more of their services together. Well AT&T doesn’t currently offer U-verse in my area yet. Can you see where this is heading?

As I’m running out of service providers to call I start thinking…crap…I’m going to end up with Comcast again. So I give Comcast a call last Friday afternoon and talked to a surprisingly nice guy about what services they offered and we even talked about custom DVR’s. He even said I could get Speed and Sci-Fi for no addition charge. I like Speed and the girlfriend likes likes Eureka on Sci-Fi. So anyway, the customer service rep says he’ll ship out my digital box and cable modem ASAP and they should be there my Wednesday at the very latest and that’s when my billing would start.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday come…nothing in the mail… So I give Comcast a call back. They have some story about how this happens sometimes and that I can just go pick up the two boxes from the local Comcast office.

So 7:55AM this morning, there I am, sitting in front of the Comcast office waiting for the doors to open at 8:00AM. The crazy thing is there are three people in front of my waiting in line?….so odd. I go up to the lady behind the one inch thick security glass (paranoid a bit?) and explained what had happened. Instead of trying to help me she starts telling me how I’m lying and they never sent out anything to me and wants my drivers license with my new apartment address. Well I just moved in less than 2 weeks ago AND it’s a temporary apartment since I’m buying a house. So I explain that to her at which point she says, sorry you gotta call Comcast and have them resend out the equipment, I can’t give it to you without proof of address. 1) Thanks comcast rep I called yesterday for forgetting to tell me I needed proof of address. 2) She said “resend”, but she just told me they never sent it…? and 3) If you can see my account which is all setup with address, name, SSN and a work order that a tech came out, WTF do you need proof of address for anymore?

At this point I want to just cancel service, but in the back of my head I keep thinking, then how are you going to get internet at your house, nobody else services the area. So I kindly ask her to stop billing until I can get Comcast to send out the boxes to me since I don’t want to pay for something I can’t even use. She goes off again on some ramble about how she can’t do that and how I have to wait until the first month is done and then submit a request for reimbursement and blah blah blah…I quit listening after that.

So I walk out to my car dialing Comcast’s number and to yell at someone when I see that I left my apartment welcome package in the car. So I run back into the Comcast office with this welcome package which anyone can pickup from the front desk of the office and she takes that as proof of address…seriously!?!? I have a whole account setup in your system and you take a welcome package as proof of address!?!? And she still needed my drivers license for some reason?

So I finally get all the equipment I need and as I turn to walk away. She says, “if that equipment shows up at your house would you drop it off here?” I’m not really sure what to say as she told me it never got sent out, then used the word “resend” and now this question? So I say, “I thought you said it never got sent out?” And she replied with something like, “well just in case ya know…”, with a stupid smile on her face.

Comcast why do you have such horrible customer service? And my reference to them knowing they have such bad customer service comes from my visiting both the Charter and Comcast offices to pickup or drop off equipment. In the Comcast office, employee’s are protected with one inch thick safety glass along with a drop box to transfer stuff through (are we at a high security bank?) and the Charter office was a nice desk with some music going and a couple of ladies that referred to me as “hun” and seemed to actually be enjoying life.

NOTE: I wrote this very quickly as I got into work and I’m sure there are plenty of spelling and grammatical errors that will be corrected later.

I also finally got the new iPhone 3G after saving and waiting for the Apple store to finally get more in stock. And yes the 3G and GPS are amazing.

And here’s one more cause fast cars + the rain = sweet!

Leaving work now it’s pretty obvious some thing’s wrong with my car…it now sounds like someone is using a grinding wheel to shape metal in the rear of my car. That’s when it hits me…Lance had this same problem a couple weeks ago. So I limp home and into the garage to check…sure enough…inside brake pad is pretty much destroyed…see you below.

Luckily my brother is home and we cruise up to Napa to grab some replacement parts…total bill for complete rear brakes….$47.56. I :heart: our discount. So I head home and swap out the left rear rotor and brake pads, but it’s pretty obvious the caliper also needs replacing. I’m gonna slack and do that in the spring if I can because I’ll be putting some different brake parts on for racing at that point.

I cannot thank my Dad enough for teaching me how to fix cars. I can fix ANYTHING on my car including replacing/rebuilding the motor and transmission. I can’t even imagine how much money I save because of that gift. So thanks. I’ll leave you with a photo that sums up how I feel about this whole situation…

I’ll either scan the prints I have or dig into my backup server tomorrow and upload them. Until then it’s ZZZzzz… time.

• my iTunes is cursed…it’s freaky…
• …so is every other source of music I listen to
• 2,592,000 seconds is a long time
• it’s worth the wait
• I love the thunderstorms tonight
• Vienna Teng is nice to fall asleep to
• I’m mini and have a beard
• this list is partially inspired by miller lite
• most people won’t understand this list
• Jane would of liked Chicago…
• …and the clothes at H&M

If anyone can identify the reference to ‘Jane’ I’ll…well we’ll talk when someone actually identity’s the reference…back to the list.

• I like even numbers like zero zero eight
• completely trusting someone is scary…
• …but completely worth it
• I keep one penny in my pocket
• I’ve spent to long writing this list

I’m going to start a second blog where I just ramble. The address is pbomers.com/codeword. If you know the codeword you are set.

p.s. Three posts ago I wrote that most people wouldn’t understand my posts for 2008. I wasn’t kidding…see above if you aren’t confused yet. Oh and to confuse you more…wikipedia has all the answers and Google is a good friend of mine.