Work has been pretty alright lately. Well, it was until things start to go wrong and then it’s a bit of a headache to fix… I somehow became in charge of a task (it’s to do with printing), which I don’t mind, as it’s pretty mindless sometimes and easy to do. Then comes people losing the paperwork that I print out for them, and asking for reprints (constantly, at least once per day). So I went and confiscated all the paperwork from the production department and it’s now all neatly arranged in boxes in my boss’ office.  So it’s stressful, and people always leave it until about 15 minutes before I’m supposed to be done work to inform me that they’ve lost stuff and need it reprinted (they don’t have access to the only printer that can do some of the stuff, they also don’t get access to some programs…). Hello, overtime. It keeps me busy, for the most part, and I’ve been just going-going-going lately, when it comes to work. I hope it slows down soon (and even if it doesn’t, my last day is coming up very soon).

I am sort of ready for the start of school. Tuition has been paid (ouch), I bought more printer paper, some pens, a new Staedtler eraser, lined paper, a handful of coiled notebooks and duo-tangs (they were $0.09 each! – before tax). In terms of supplies, I still need to get textbooks (some of my classes still don’t list books, one of them has confirmed that there is no textbook assigned to the class – thank you, Introductory Oceanography! – one of them also lists four ‘required’ textbooks) – I’m waiting until I actually go to the classes to see if I need the textbook(s), if there are actually textbooks assigned, if older editions are okay and (drumroll) if there are textbooks in the reserved sections of the library. Poor student is poor, and poor student prefers to spend money on other things besides textbooks. I also need 3 lab manuals, but those are generally inexpensive (cheapest one I’ve bought so far was $5, most expensive was huge, high quality printing, binding and paper, at ~$70) and I won’t be able to get it until labs actually start (not during first week). I’m sure I’ll figure out new things that I need to get my hands on (off the top of my head right now, I know I need new scalpel blades and I’ll probably want to get a new calculator, or just new batteries). Oh, and I already bought a box of blue powder-free nitrile gloves for labs ($10 for 100 pairs, versus $1/pair in lab).

In other news, I got a new-to-me bed! I went from a double to a queen, someone in my family got a new bed, so I got their older one (which is a lot newer than my old bed, so I’ll take it) It’s so big, and makes me feel really small, heh.

So… What is new in your world? I’ve done some development on my new domains – haven’t gotten them up and running yet though! And I’ve got some other small projects and things that I want to get done before school starts up again – I have 3 more (full) terms left before I graduate (and apply and hopefully get accepted into a new program!).

I also registered two new domains today, through my registrar of choice: namecheap.com. Both of them are .com’s and I’ll be revealing what the name are when I get the sites ready and up (hoping to do so before I get back to school in a couple of weeks). I’ve tried two other domain registrars before, but one was full of ads all over the place and the other was just a confusing interface to use (and this is coming from me!). I think websites, unless otherwise noted, should be easy to navigate and easy to use – this also goes for personal blogs where the navigation is just roman numerals like I. II. III. IV. V. <- this tells me nothing about what the links are for. </vent about bad navigation word choices> Anyways, what I was going to say is that it’s a great registrar and I highly recommend Namecheap, mostly for the ease of using their website and how quick it is (also, as a major plus, there’s promotional codes essentially every single month for new domain names and transfers, which I happily used today to get a little discount on my new acquisitions!).

Oh, the kicker for today is that I got a message from a girl who was my ‘BFF’ back in grades 6 and 7. We stopped being friends over a boy (juvenile, I realize that – but we were 11-12 and totally thought we knew everything). As it turns out, she’s attending the same school as me and only realized this when she added someone on Facebook and it turns out we’re mutual friends, so she added me to decide to catch up. And the weird thing is, I swear nothing’s really changed about her. She still plays the piano, she still goes to church every week, she still sings in a choir. But then again, I suppose some things haven’t really changed about me either since I was 11 and 12 years old – I’m still clumsy, I still blog, I still roleplaying. I kind of expected things to change, but I guess deep down inside, there’s always something that does stay the same. It’s interesting, to be honest, talking to someone who knew me when I was that age – but at the same time it’s a little unnerving because she would know all the crap I pulled back then, what kind of a person I was and it’s not the same person that I am now.

My questions for you today:

• What is something that you bought recently? (Either online, or in person)
• What’s your favourite thing about the place where you work?
• When’s the last time that you spoke to an old friend?

My answers…

• Today! I bought 2 new domains
• Definitely the people, I love the fact that my boyfriend works there too!
• Today, I got contacted by an old friend (despite the fact that we parted on less than stellar terms) who wanted to catch up.

Stress from other people that goes to my boss ultimately goes to me. Because I am essentially the only office-working underling that he’s got. I say that in a positive manner, of course – I don’t mind the underling title. He realized today how many more days I have left at work (11 more work days, my last day is on September 3rd and then I have a long weekend and then it’s back to school) and he just looked incredibly shocked, with wide eyes (despite the fact that I know he put it into his company cellphone and onto his computer’s calendar) and went “Really? Already? You know, I could get them to hire you on full time!”.

[Which is a really generous offer, but I do have school in September (1.5 years left for my first BSc!) and I have some classes that I'm really excited about. Plus I'll be moving back onto weekday volunteering (so I get to see my usual volunteering supervisors again) and overall, I am looking forward to going back to school. But it's all very cyclical for me, I know come April, when I'm busily studying for finals, I'll be looking forward to going back to work and I'll even miss people from work.]

He has no idea what he’s going to do once I go back to school. Which I find to be a compliment. But I also know that they’ll find a way to muddle through things without me… Even though if they were to look at my coding system for any of the notes that I’ve done, no one is going to be able to understand it because I use very non-standardized shorthand for everything. I mean, it makes sense to me, but that’s because I wrote everything. I also colour-code things with highlighters and it doesn’t mean the same thing for every single project that I do so… Yeah… Looking back now, I could have done it a bit differently…

I’m just glad that people who were on vacation this week should be back the upcoming Monday – which hopefully means a little bit less stress being passed from people to my boss and then down to me. Hopefully. I’m tired of my inbox being ridiculously full before I even get to work (I had 20 unread emails before I arrived to work, all from today).

What’s been a source of stress in your life this week?

I was previously with Telus (although, I still sort of am, for about another half of a month). But my contract is ending (very) soon and I tried calling in and seeing if they had any sort of incentive for me to stay with them (all I really wanted them to do was to be able to price match an advertised student plan that was available through one of their competitors). But instead, after the first (super friendly) customer representative I got, I was passed onto their retention department and the woman I got tried to get me to agree to a more expensive plan than the one I was looking at (from their competitor’s website) or a plan that had the same price, but with a lot less included things. Also, the plan she wanted me to agree to was advertised on the Telus website and was available to all new customers, so there wasn’t really anything ‘special’ about it. I wanted them to be able to match it for me with something equivalent, not make excuses about how their plan is so much better.

The second customer service representative I got tried to convince me that the follow plan was an excellent deal and was comparable to the one I was wanting to see if they would match the price for the plan over at one of their direct competitors:

$30/month + taxes for:

• 150 anytime minutes
• Unlimited nation-wide family calling (this only applies if there’s more than one phone under one account holder)
• Unlimited evenings and weekends (local) starting at 9pm
• Voice mail (3), Call Waiting, Call Forwarding
• Free local calling on my birthday (whoo…?)
• Unlimited local calling for 1 month
• Unlimited local talk, text, picture & video messaging for 5 numbers

Which is actually worse than my current plan (200 anytime minutes, evenings and weekends starting at 9pm, free local calling on my birthday, I had unlimited talk and text for 3 months when I first signed, and unlimited talk and text to 8 local numbers). I don’t actually care about the picture and video messaging, my big thing was having unlimited texting, essentially. But I also wanted to Telus to match this student plan (which I qualify for) over at Rogers:

$30/month + ‘government regulatory recovery fee BS’ + taxes for:

• 150 anytime minutes
• Unlimited evenings and weekends (local) starting at 9pm
• Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Group Calling
• Unlimited messaging (text, picture and video, email, IM)
• Unlimited social networking access (via preinstalled apps for sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.) and unlimited on-device mobile browsing

But they wouldn’t match it. The first Telus customer service representative I got was really nice and seemed to think it was a ‘doable’ plan for me, but he couldn’t authorize changes like that so he had to pass me along to someone else, who tried to talk me into their other plan (the first one listed) and how it was ‘equivalent’. Or, better yet, tried to pass off a $40 student plan to me that had slight differences (200 minutes, earlier evenings/weekends at 6pm, unlimited talk/text/picture/video to 10 numbers plus the unlimited text/picture/video messaging, and 100mb of data usage per month). Why would I want to limit myself with 100mb of monthly data usage when I could get a phone that comes with unlimited mobile browsing (please note, I did not get a smart phone – the unlimited mobile browsing add-on can only be applied to non-smartphone handsets).

Plus I took advantage of a promotion going on at Bestbuy where if I activate a new cellphone through them, I get an extra 800 points through their rewards program (equal to $10 to spend in store on anything). Plus there’s a referral program going on at Rogers where one of my friends and I get a little bonus, 60 days from when I signed the contract.

So I ended up with a new cell phone, a new carrier, a new contract and, most importantly, and new phone number that essentially sounds like a tongue twister except for the last four digits. But… I’m happy with the phone that I got! Of course, the sales representative at the store was working as slow as molasses (over an hour to activate a phone? He kept on wanting to clarify my date of my birth, even thought it was clearly shown on one of my pieces of identification for the credit check.).

One of my Twitter-ite friends pointed out to me that if I needed a phone just for emergency purposes, it’d be a lot cheaper to go with a prepaid phone – and it would be. My sister uses prepaid phone with Rogers (same carrier that I’m with now) and she loaded up $100 on it last August and it’s not even used up yet ($100 worth of credit won’t expire for 365 days). She uses her phone sparingly and doesn’t talk on the phone all that often (well, as compared to how much she used the phone when she was in her teens…). But the thing is… I don’t think I could go back to not having a cell phone. I text far to much and I’m reliant on my phone for a lot now – alarms, calendar, texting, phoning people (not very often though – my usage has been under an hour per month for the last year). Plus it’s just an easy way for people to get a hold of me, like if we’re meeting up somewhere. So while it’s expensive, I do use the features that come with my phone and fully intend to utilize all the features that come with my new plan (besides, well, stuff like call forwarding).

And I’m not trying to bash Telus with this post. I’ve always had excellent customer service with them, my first cell phone was set up quickly and easily and I never had any issues (besides one billing issue where someone from my ‘unlimited talk and text to 8 numbers!’ came up as a long distance number because they didn’t have a 1 [the country code] in front of the phone number) with them. But I kind of expected more from them in terms of the end of my contract and if I was going to renew one with them, or anything like that. I asked them for a comparable plan and to match the price of an advertise plan, not even beat the price – just match it. To be honest, if they had, I probably would have decided to resign with them for the new contract (and to get a new phone, my first one – the LG Chocolate – is all cracked up on the key/number pad). But instead, they decided to offer me what was available to new customers right on their website and it was not what I was asking for to begin with so… Toodles to Telus.

I liked you, I really did, and it was a nice three years, but now I’ve found someone else. They were just.. a better fit for me. It’s not me, it’s you.

Could you get anymore fucking* confusing?

Option #1 from my previous post – I called them up again. I’d really like to keep my current cell phone number (less hassle, less going around telling people my new number, less trying to remember what accounts need to be updated). But first, the account (which is under my mom’s name, because when I got the cell phone originally, I didn’t have a credit card and plus my parents already said they were going to pay for it, poor students don’t argue with that kind of good deal) needs to be changed into my name as the primary account holder. Guess what? They have a fee for that. Just like they have a fee for transferring the number from one handset to another and to activate the second (new) handset.

I’m pretty damn tempted to just throw in the towel with my current carrier and go completely pay-as-you-go with Option #2. I’m not sure if I’d be able to keep my current phone number, which I would love to do. But if I can’t keep it, I’d still like to change carriers now. I’m all fee’d up (apostrophe is on purpose, of course).

Moving on from cell phones…

Work was good today. And by good, I mean that the weather was godawful and I stayed indoors the entire time and hardly ever left my desk. My legs were unforgiving for that, by the way. Oh well…

I hung out with a group of friends this past weekend, missing a few other birthday parties (it’s not my fault everyone decided to be born around the same time – I blame your parents for that). And I didn’t go to sleep until it was very late (or very early, depending on your point of view). So sluggish on Sunday… Blergh.

And… yeah, I think that’s about it for today… Very sluggish today too, despite work going well and my legs hating me.

* I swear. Someone at work the other day mentioned never hearing me swear before (I said “FFS” out loud, whoops). My defense? I always swear more during the summer and then I spend the school year trying not to swear.

Luckily, my cell phone (which is on a 3 year contract) is coming up for a contract renewal soon (my current contract ends on September 2, 2010). So I have some options!

I don’t talk on the phone much at all – my big thing is texting (last month I may have had 1500+ incoming and 1500+ outgoing) and I’d really like a phone that also comes with separate keys (for the LG Chocolate that I have, the number pad is all one piece with grooves to separate the numbers – not the best thing in the world, but it didn’t really start to die until maybe this year…)

Both phones that I’ve been looking at (that would be at $20 for a 3 year contract and $100 for buying outright) have slide-out QWERTY keyboards. The phone for Option #2 is also touch screen (oooh, ahhh), the phone for Option #1 does not have a touch screen (awww). Both have expandable memory with a miniSD card, both have a music player, camera, video camera, voice recording, alarm clock, calculator/tip calculator, global clock and a lot of other features that my current (beloved, but cracking) Chocolate has.

Phone for Option #1 has up to: 5.5 hours talk time, 12 days standby

Phone for Option #2 has up to: 12 hours talk time, 7 days standby

Option #1 – Stay With Current Provider

• $10 – move current cell number to a new phone
• $35 – “one time” activation fee
• $30 – per month for a plan with unlimited text/picture/video messaging, 150 minutes, evenings & weekends, voice mail (3), unlimited talk on my birthday
• $20 – cell phone, on a 3 year contract

Total cost (for 1 year): $425 (before taxes)
Total cost (for 3 years): $1145 (before taxes)

Caller ID is $8/month and not included above. If I include Caller ID, it would be $96/year and $288/3 years and bring the totals up to $521 and $1433 respectively.

Cons: No Caller ID without additional money. On a contract. What in the fudge is up with this fee to move my number from one phone to the next?? Activation fee?!

Pros: Would for sure be able to keep the same phone number. Picture messaging! Unlimited evenings and weekends – no need to ‘top up’ or worry too much about running out of minutes. Voice mail.

Option #2 – Jump Ship

• $100 – cell phone, no contract
• $20 – per month prepaid plan with unlimited Canada-wide texting, unlimited mobile browsing, unlimited calling from 3pm-6pm, INCLUDES CALLER ID, voice mail is pay-per-use (takes out of whatever prepaid credit I have in my account), I’d also get unlimited talk to people on prepaid with the same company (i.e. my sisters)
• $40 – SIM card
• $100 – for minutes outside of the package listed above in Option #2, at $0.25/minute – 400 minutes spread out over a year (at $100 for ‘top up’, it doesn’t expire until day 365).

Total cost (for 1 year): $480 (before taxes)
Total cost (for 3 years): $1160 (before taxes)

Cons to switching to Option #2 is that I would be unlikely to transfer my number from provider #1 to provider #2 (and I’d then have to go through and change my number on a bunch of accounts – like school, the libraries, bank, etc, etc – not to mention telling everyone about it) – however, if it is possible to move my number from provider #1 to #2, provider #2′s website states that it will do it for free. I’d also have to pay additional $$ for regular minutes (hence the $100 or additional top-up money).

Pros would be… unlimited mobile browsing? I’d get the unlimited texting that I want as well! Also, no contract. Overall, less expensive if I were to add in caller ID for Option #1. No activation fee. Free chatting with my sisters (like they don’t hear me talk enough as it is).

So… Internet, what do you think? Tell me your thoughts on my Option #1 and Option #2!

Saturday night, like I’ve mentioned, I went to see a concert featuring my favourite band with the best friend (K) and her boyfriend (E), who sounded horrible (and I hope he’s doing better now). The opening act was horrible (in my honest opinion) as he was a one-man show (his bandmates weren’t there for some illegal sounding reasons…?) and kept on stopping in the middle of songs to chat up the audience. The actual main act was wonderful. People violently moshed and pushed each other around, luckily no one seemed to get hurt and I avoid it (for the most part, except for when I went and got pushed straight into someone who managed to catch me before I fell, yay). It was wonderful though, there’s nothing like seeing your favourite band in person. Although, as K mentioned (and I fully agree), it’s weird when you’ve been listening to a band for X number of years and then you see them in person and the main singer (who’s the only original member of the band now) has aged so much and no longer has bleached blonde or black hair (and it wasn’t shaggy either… so weird). But amazing. Absolutely amazing. And that concert ticket was, for about 24 hours, the only thing on my bulletin board (joining it are my tickets for Les Miserables and Dan Savage, both from 2009, and a ticket from a musical I saw yesterday). ♥♥♥ The Ataris.

Sunday I was supposed to go to a parade, but when I went to call in to volunteering, L (who sort of supervises me) was so grateful that I was calling because she really needed a volunteer. Major guilt, hah, so I ended up going in to volunteering – which ended up really fun. Especially the part when we were singing Christmas carols for the church service (I volunteer at a long term care home) because the group that was supposed to be there didn’t show so we had to do something. We sang Amazing Grace, Jesus Loves Me, Silent Night, Oh Come All Ye Faithful and a few other songs that I actually knew the tunes to (thank goodness… one of the residents verbally abuses those who cannot sing properly, heh). And then later Sunday evening, I went to go and see The Lion King with my sisters. We had craptastic seats but it was so amazing and beautiful. I hated young Simba and Nala though (their singing voices), but everything else was fabulous! ♥♥♥

Anyway, I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. I bought new shoes today (and some other stuff… *cough*)! Super cute with bows!

What did you do this weekend?

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In other news, I’ve been getting a lot of mail recently – all doll related though (besides a bill and a cheque for textbook money!). Which has been rather fun, it’s always nice to get something in the mail that isn’t tell you when your payment is due, you know? Not that I get a whole lot of those to begin with, but it’s still nice.

And… that’s about it! It’s a long weekend, the one coming up! The first Monday of August is BC Day (it’s called other things in other parts of Canada, but since I’m in BC, it’s BC Day!) which is a statutory holiday, yay! Really looking forward to the long weekend! Plus, as it’s August, it hopefully means all my projects will be winding down soon, instead of them piling more projects on top of projects onto me at work. Which is probably wishful thinking, as I’m now remembering the year where I had 13 projects to complete/finalize in the last few days of work one summer… *knocks on wood*

I hope you’ve all been having a wonderful week! For those in Canada, what are you doing with your long weekend? For those elsewhere, what do you have planned for your not-so-long weekend? XD

Same fabric and notions store as last weekend… I’m weak (and I forgot to buy snaps last week, so that’s why I went back and, erm, got all of this).

• 1/8″ elastic
• 8 packages of snaps (24 pairs of snaps/package)
• 6 fabric remnants (wheeeee)
• A roll of tulle (over 2km worth of tulle!)
• 1 bag of thread assortment (10 spools, all different colours!)

I’ve now put myself on a ban from the fabric and notions store(s) until I use more of my fabric up! But since I can still put my entire fabric stash into a single large Ziploc bag, it’s okay, right? Still a small stash?

Life was good on Friday – work went by as relatively quickly as I could have expected for a Friday. I did a lot of running around (well, more walking, but whatever). A lot of printing, a lot of note-taking, a lot of organizing my meetings for next week and booking meeting spaces in the building. I’m nothing if not inventive at times. I spent a few hours out of the house today, for shopping (I’m pointing to the photo above now, haha). I got some work done for a few of my websites (amesrpg.com and blythelife.com) and I’m still working on that pattern that I meant to get out a month ago… Whoops? I guess things just got in the way of me finishing is all.

My sister just came in to talk and was looking over my shoulder at WordPress and asked how many websites I had now. I asked if she mean domains or domains + subdomains. She meant domains, and the answer was “I have to count”. I only have five right now, 4 dot-com and 1 dot-net, but I still have to count on my fingers. And I say them in my head in alphabetical order so I don’t forget any of them. It’s a good thing she didn’t ask how many subdomains I had, because I don’t think I’d be able to fully answer that without logging in to check… =/ Too many to count? Do people actually keep track of all their subdomains? Cripes. If you do, you’re more organized than I am… Teehee.

Hope you all had a lovely Saturday! What did you do today?