Ready To Scream!

Face it, relocating twice a year has its downs. (Sure, ups too or why bother?) With everything possible shut down in Arizona to save money on utility bills, there's a transition phase that is often a royal pain. Sometimes it's a smooth process but simply having to dig out all those numbers and making those contact calls just adds to the general hassle.

Easiest is turning the water back on. We literally rotate a valve a quarter turn. Of course, this is the one where we pay a minimum bill every month whether or not a single drop flows. The company still comes out to read the meter year around. For us, it's two seconds when we leave, then two seconds on arrival followed by turning on faucets and flushing toilets to remove air.

Next one we do for ourselves is the electricity. Nearly everything gets turned off. Midway through the first summer after solar was installed, we were informed, contrary to what I wrote down word for word with drawings during the install, that we couldn't just flip the main breaker. Each house breaker got turned off individually, leaving the main and solar breakers on. OK, no real biggie, and we gave the verbal OK for their employee to enter our back yard and set it right. The hardest part is the spring-loaded lever on the bottom of the cover. That spring seems to have grown stronger than our hands with each use. It's easy enough to use a tool to force it to the side, but however it's done, the technique also has to control it far enough out on its tip so that while it's  moved the lid can also drop down. Both of us together manage on about the fifth try to accomplish both simultaneously. I could claim our language wilts the flora within a 20 foot radius, but secretly I bet that's the result of summer in the desert.

We might not fight so hard with it, tired as we are from our last day driving, but it's the only way to restart the AC for a house easily above 100 degrees.

The phone calls start either just before or on the way down. Gas should be the first, since we have to make an appointment for somebody to come out to the house, and the closer to the time the snowbirds return en masse, the more booked ahead they are. During this call we have to promise an adult will be on the premises during a 4-hour window while they do the job, so we need to allow for possible vehicle problems delaying us. In addition to turning on the gas, of course, they check out every item where it is used, making sure nothing leaks. We pay for that service, but it's cheaper than a monthly minimum while we're gone, as well as much safer than just leaving it on for months in an empty house.

The things which should be the simplest are always the most frustration: wi-fi and TV satellite service. A simple phone call and somebody switches them off at their office, usually at 12:01 AM the day we leave, leaving us no access to news or weather as we start off. But our costs drop to insignificant levels and the DVR doesn't fill up with an overwhelming load to sort through upon our return.

Ahhh, but if only it were that simple!

We started by checking the TV. There were things we wanted to set new timers for, a couple very time sensitive. Everything was supposed to be started up the day before our arrival. First phone call after determining that we had a glitch resulted in multiple trips between Steve's chair and the DVR control box, pushing buttons either on the remote or at the box. Second call, as well as third call, finally achieved getting the guide up and running... mostly. Let's take a minute to remind you how frustrating it can be when the person on the other end of the line has a nearly impenetrable accent and no understanding of American idioms. The guide finally started its setup, and Steve had instructions to give the system a couple hours to finish replacing all the "no information" entries with, well, information. That ended up requiring call #4, now requiring a full shutdown of the system for twenty minutes. At last it was fixed, and we were glad to have arrived early enough in the day to actually watch/record the desired evening programs. We also set to putting timers on shows which weren't on last year.

Now the real fun began. We had wi-fi the first night. Not the next morning. This one is also Steve's purview, so he got to exercise his level of patience, somewhat better than mine under these circumstances. Since this again was where I heard one side of the conversation, my role was to write down codes as he repeated them back to me so we'd both have a record and could accurately set up our laptops. Other than the usual clarifications between b, p, d, t, and everything else that rhymed, that part was fairly simple. We managed to make it work.

It wasn't until the next day we found out our Kindles weren't connected. No explanation of how that could happen when they were perfectly connected last spring. Not only that, they recognized 9 wi-fi signals within receiving range, none of them ours. I tried setting my Kindle up, having kept the data.  I kept getting an error message informing me I needed to be on wi-fi in order to complete the task of getting on wi-fi.

Huh?

Nothing worked, and with our old Kindles, any instructions we could find via laptop referred to a model called the Kindle White. Apparently it has buttons across the top. I promise you, ours don't.

Next phone call....  The "helper"on the other end of the line was incapable of listening to anything that varied from her script.  Frequent comments gave instructions we had no idea how to follow, not having taken our classes in jargon for a while. When asked how to do whatever she had just told us to do, the instruction was simply repeated. "Go to ____" is meaningless when one has no idea how to get there, if we can even translate what is being talked about. She finally gave up and connected us to a video showing the process. Again, wrong kind of Kindle. Also, too fast, information missing, and completely useless.

I had already figured out how to go through settings to find out what was what in available wi-fi signals. I'd even found the place for adding a new one. I'd tried about 8 different versions of how it might be entered. Did the company name go with the number or not? If it did, what might be capitalized? Any spaces between company and account code? I'd tried every variation I could think of with no results, other than getting screen freeze, requiring complete shutdown and reboot, then finding my way back into the wi-fi settings page, via any of the three ways I'd located so far. I JUST WANTED TO KNOW HOW TO ENTER THE INFO!

Steve was also reaching the very end of his considerable patience. He heard two bizarre things. I mean beyond the usual crap I've already described. First, we somehow had two accounts with this company. No explanation. I'm also waiting to find out if they think we owe them on two bills. The second was that they only hooked up our laptops, and if we wanted to add our Kindles to the account it would cost us another $10/month! Each!

Bullshit!

We declined  their generous offer, of course.

After hanging up and both of us calming down somewhat, we discussed the issue and decided to head to the local library. First, they were very hands-on helpful. Steve had used them last year to access library books. We figured after hooking up to their system, a weekly visit to upload our newest books and send read books to our archives, all for free, was the way to go. The person who helped Steve the most worked Fridays, so we'd wait till the end of the week. There was still unpacking, grocery shopping, and all that stuff to do in the meantime.

Next morning two things happened. Our Kindles were hooked up on wi-fi, no action needed on our part. An unrelated search through old archived email showed the account number (different) and password (same) for how it had been set up last year. Since whatever was done by whomever works for us, we've calmed back down for now. We're still waiting to see the upcoming bill.

The last bit of finalizing our return, the trip to the post office, was relatively effortless. Something had to be.