Yearly Archives: 2006

Sep 07

Traffic and Road Closures

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I know its stupid to gripe about traffic, since if you live in a city of any size, bad traffic is a given. But, I hate it nonetheless.

Ever since we moved into our apartment, Bart and I have griped about how poorly maintained Veterans Drive is. Potholes in the winter that you could lose an entire wheel in. Lumpy and bumpy and just plain awful. Unfortunately we don’t really have a choice of whether or not to use it since we can’t get to our apartment any other way. However, many people in this city (myself included when I lived at my dad’s) use Veterans as a “shortcut” to get from 14th St to South Airport Rd and vice-versa, especially going from somewhere in town to the Mall or the Crossings shopping area.

This week Veterans was “closed to thru traffic” so that it can finally be resurfaced. However, this has not deterred people from using it as a passthrough. In fact, it almost seems like people are using it just because it is closed off. Yesterday I witnessed an older woman drive up to the barricades, pause, then make a u-turn, and instead of watching where she was going, she continued to stare over her shoulder at the barricades, as if she was just “taking a curious look” at what was going on.

My message to anyone who lives in or around Traverse City is this: if you live somewhere off of Veterans where you must use it, then fine. If you’re using it as a passthrough, STOP. At least until the construction is over.

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Aug 30

Tiny Frog

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I was sitting here at Josh’s desk last night, and some small movement caught my attention at the window. It was a tiny frog, maybe 2 inches long, eating the insects attracted to the window by the office lights. I had seen a similar frog (maybe the same one?) weeks ago when I went to leave one night, it was hanging on the window frame on the outside of the door. I wish I had a camera here so I could take a picture if it comes back.

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Aug 29

VOIP Phone Update

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Back on the “Day From Hell” our Packet8 VOIP phone (Uniden UIP1868P) stopped working. I put in a support ticket with Packet8, but they never got back to me. I also submitted a ticket to Uniden who told me I needed to send my phone in for service.

Uniden got my phone on July 29. I called them yesterday to find out the status of my phone. After waiting 15 minutes on hold, I was told that I needed to speak to a tech since this was a VOIP phone issue. The tech then told me he could see that my phone had been there for a month, but couldn’t tell what was being done to fix it, and that I would need to talk to repair (who had just transferred me to the tech!). At that point, my cell phone was dying and I had to end the call.

I called back today and after another 15 minutes on hold found out that my phone is unable to be repaired and that Uniden is waiting for a replacement phone to be sent to them by…. Packet8!!

If I had known that a replacement would have had to come from Packet8 either way, I would have been a little more persistant with their support department to begin with.

Update to the Update (Aug 31): My non-persistance has come back to bite me in the ass. I called Packet8 today to find out if I could get credit on my account for not being able to use their service for over a month since I had no phone to use it with, and they told me since I didn’t make an effort to contact their customer service earlier when the phone went kaput, I am basically SOL. But.. I did contact their customer service .. I sent in a trouble ticket, and updated it twice, with NO RESPONSE!!! No-one even responded to say “You need to call us and we will help you then”. What assholes. The girl on the phone told me that I “should have found a payphone to call them” since they have a toll-free number.

Aug 23

Die You Old Decrepit A/C Unit, DIE! DIE! DIE!!!

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The damn thing is driving me nuts. I haven’t ever been able to have a phone conversation in our “office” (2nd bedroom) while it is running. I couldn’t imagine trying to sleep in here. On Monday, to my dismay, it got even louder. Something is really wrong with the thing and I hope it just totally craps out so the apartment maintenance people are forced to replace it.