Question: How many Apple & AT&T techs does it take to get voice mail working on your brand-new iPhone?

Answer: Six. Or was that seven? I’ll have to ask my husband whether he spoke to one or two reps the last time he called.

Okay. It isn’t too fascinating a story, so I’ll try to keep it short. Our old cell phones were about four years old and desperately needed replacing. We already had AT&T as our carrier, and we decided to pick up iPhones. Yeah, yeah, everyone’s ragging on them, it’s cool to hate the iPhone. Well, too bad. We like them. I like the features. I like the fact that, historically, Apple’s had a good track record when it comes to producing working hardware. Okay, so there’s a chicken-and-egg problem regarding reception (AT&T didn’t want to roll out lots of G3 towers until they had plenty of customers for them, so the coverage isn’t good yet), but we aren’t far from DC, so we didn’t think that was likely to be a huge problem. I heard rumor of iPhones being fragile, but everyone I talked to who actually had one said they were amazed by how durable the things were.

So. We got ‘em on Saturday.

The good: TOY! Weather reports, maps, driving directions, a good contacts database, etc. I can customize which ringtone matches up with which caller so I know who’s calling. It doubles as an iPod music player. I’m no power-user, but it certainly meets my needs and then some. The battery life so far has been wonderful. Best of all: the reception is AMAZING. My old phone sucked. This one’s fantastic, at least where I live and where my husband works and in the spaces between.

The bad: the voice mail button didn’t work, and anyone who called us got told we hadn’t set up our voice mail boxes yet. My husband had to go through five levels of tech support over the course of more than an hour, repeatedly trying the same things over and over again, until he reached a ‘voice mail specialist’ who sent something to the sim cards on our phones and had the problem fixed in under five minutes. Oh, except I guess the person who force-activated our voice mail boxes didn’t realize we were supposed to have the ‘visual voicemail’ feature, so that’s what the second phone call was about.

On the plus side, by that time they were so worried we’d be unhappy with them that they were going out of their way to make us happy, including not only back-dating the minute plan downgrade we wanted to the beginning of the month, but also rolling over all our extra minutes to the new plan, which usually you can’t do. Just try getting a company like, say, Comcast to stick with you long enough to fix this kind of problem, let alone volunteer to do nice things for you afterward to make up for it. So while it’s really silly that it took that many people to fix our voicemail, it’s great that they kept at it until it was fixed and then tried to make sure we’d be happy customers.

Today’s review is of a kitchen-related gizmo: the Wine & Dine. Yesterday’s isn’t exactly a review, but rather a non-review of Melina Morel’s Prey. And this is the necklace & earrings set I made this morning. Best viewed in full size (click through and click on the image to enlarge it).

I am hopefully taking tomorrow off, so have a great weekend!

How many Apple and AT&T tech support workers does it take to get the voice mail working on your brand new iPhone?

Answer:

That’s not funny. Laugh at something funny.

Tomorrow: the iPhone story.

Today’s review is of Shiloh Walker’s upcoming novel, The Missing. Do yourself a favor and pre-order a copy today!

I’m still beading like crazy. A couple of thoughts:

Etsy appears to be an absolutely fantastic place to sell your wares. The storefronts are highly customizable, and it’s a popular enough place that nearly every crafter I run into on DeviantArt or Craftster seems to use it. Speaking of which, Craftster is a decent place to get some feedback and suggestions regarding your work, and DA is a nice place to get exposure and feedback as well.

When buying in bulk (and even not), Fire Mountain Gems blows me away with their prices, selection, and customer service. I highly recommend ordering from them.

States seriously, seriously need to acknowledge the fact that there are now a lot of small-time home-working crafters who like to sell their wares, and streamline some sort of business process for them. Having ethics is a serious challenge, I swear. If I were willing to cut corners like most online folks, I’d just set up an etsy shop and make a little money. But legally, if I want to sell my wares, I have to collect sales tax from any other Maryland residents I sell to, and that means that legally I need a business license and all that rigamarole. You’d think that for one-person self-run small-time businesses they’d come up with some sort of simple “yes you can collect sales tax without being a business” easy certificate, but no. So, we’re working out how to fold the crafting into the ErrantDreams.com, LLC pre-existing company. Once that’s done I plan to open an Etsy store. It’s driving me a little nuts having to wait, but, that’s life.

In the meantime, you can get a glimpse at the kinds of things I’ll be selling at first by looking at my DeviantArt craft photos.

This new chair design is absolutely awesome. Found at Hey Lady! Whatcha reading?:

I was over at Shiloh Walker’s blog reminding myself of her URL for the review I’m in the middle of writing (I just read the book she has coming out in November—-WOW!—review tomorrow).

Anyway, she had a little meme there that I felt like doing. So here you go. Open-tag to anyone else who wants to participate.

Name five books you’ve got close by… if you’re at work, then the first five off the top of your head

1. Shiloh Walker, The Missing (ARC)
2. Christine Feehan, Turbulent Sea (today’s review)
3. Davis Liu, M.D., Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely
4. Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, Holiday in Death
5. Draconomicon (d20 book)

Now name the last five books you bought (or the last five you remember buying)

1. Inspired Wire: Learn to Twist, Jig, Bend, Hammer, and Wrap for the Prettiest Jewelry Ever
2. Easy Beading: The Best Projects from the First Year of BeadStyle magazine
3. The Beader’s Guide to Color
4. Getting Started Stringing Beads
5. Teach Yourself VISUALLY Jewelry Making & Beading

Now name five books you want to buy (there are so many books & series I want to read that I’m going to have to group them here)

1. The first four books of Jean Johnson’s ‘Sons of Destiny’ series
2. Shiloh Walker’s ‘Hunters’ books
3. Val McDermid’s Tony Hill novels
4. Jennifer Estep’s first two ‘Bigtime’ novels
5. Stephanie Meyer, The Host

Name five books you’re debating about buying

1. Terry Taylor, Chain Mail Jewelry: Contemporary Designs from Classic Techniques
2. Irene Petersen, Silver Wire Jewelry: Projects to Coil, Braid & Knit (Lark Jewelry Book)
3. Jim McIntosh, Wire Wrapping: The Basics and Beyond
4. Susan Ray, Wire-Jewelry Workshop: Techniques For Working With Wire & Beads
5. Chandler & Ritchey, Jewelry Studio: Wire Wrapping

I took the last two sets from the ‘highest’ and ‘high’ portions of my Amazon wishlist, but they’re just a small sampling of the books I’d love to read!

Oh yeah, and here’s a jewelry piece I’m really proud of:

At least, I have a magpie’s fascination with shiny objects. I don’t actually wear much jewelry at all; I’m a jeans and t-shirts gal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t drool over shiny things. So, it seems I’ve taken to beading rather naturally.

When I was a kid I loved little artsy-craftsy kits. But I also have a practical streak a mile wide, and didn’t have the patience for the kind of things they put out for kids—you know, crafts that come out looking big, blocky, and useless. The kind of things you give to your relatives at the holidays, and they smile with that fake, plastered-on smile that you reserve for ugly things your family gives you that you’ll never use but have to pretend to like anyway.

So, I stopped doing crafts. I picked up sewing briefly in the 90s, but tendonitis scrapped that and I stopped again.

Then I saw one friend of mine sewing beads onto trim for garb-making several weeks in a row, and another friend of mine happened to mention having a catalog for Fire Mountain Gems. The lure of potential shiny objects sent me to the website, and I was a goner.

Ever thought about doing something, and just KNEW it was the right thing to do? That’s how I felt when I looked at beading. It never even entered my mind that I’d make cruddy stuff or no one would want it—it just felt right. So I picked up a bunch of materials and set to work. I posted photos at DeviantArt. I’m thinking of opening an Etsy shop (just at a hobby level for the moment), but haven’t yet, and someone already asked if they could buy one of my pieces. I posted some photos for critique at Craftster and several people said they didn’t look like beginner pieces—they looked pro.

Yeah, I’m bragging. I’m really proud of that last bit. It’s slowed down my reviewing a little, but I AM still reading books for review, and making anywhere from one to eight pieces of jewelry at a time (24 done so far!). Who knows—it might or might not turn into a business later down the road, but right now it’s incredibly fun.

Not to mention shiny!

Book reviews posted since my last entry: Easy Beading from BeadStyle magazine; Ace is Wild by Penny McCall; Jinx by Jennifer Estep; and Into the Shadow by Christina Dodd.

*hack, cough, wheeeeeze* It took me a little while yesterday to realize this was more than just allergies. When you start hacking weird things up out of your lungs, though, that tends to be a good indication that you’ve moved on into the realm of a cold.

Yes, as predicted I am still able to find exercises on the wii fit that are fun and not too taxing when I’m sick. I just kept my exercise down to about 15 minutes total or so, and stuck with things from the balance games, yoga, and a couple of easy strength & aerobic bits.

I have three beading book reviews for you: Jean Campbell’s Getting Started Stringing Beads; Chris Franchetti Michaels’s Jewelry Making & Beading (from the ‘Teach Yourself Visually’ series); and Margie Deeb’s The Beader’s Guide to Color. Michaels’s book is top-notch, as is Deeb’s. I’d reserve Campbell’s for dabblers who don’t intend to go deep into the world of beading, or for beginners who get easily overwhelmed by detail. One more beading book review to go!

Found at Baby Got Books:

I believe I mentioned that whole thing where I posted a bunch of texture images on DeviantArt. Well, hands down so far the most popular one is the hardwood floor texture, which has been downloaded 37 times in the past day and a half. This led to a wry observation on how popular our floor was.

I turned our slate porch surface into an interesting ‘window’ image, which I’m pretty proud of. I’m also playing with part of it to create an eventual banner for a possible craft-selling etsy store. Yeah, fine, that’s more than a little premature, but once I get an idea into my head I just can’t let go. And besides, I think it looks pretty cool!

Just to really pile on the artwork, here’s a new cafepress tabletop roleplaying design. It came out of some truly spectacular D&D fumble tales from the last few months:

 

Yes, it really does say “An arrow in the butt is better than a spear in the winkie.” Did I mention that our GMs have some particularly vicious fumble tables?

Here are the latest book reviews for you: Vicki Lewis Thompson’s Wild & Hexy and the awesome Jean Johnson’s The Storm.

The Little White Thing You Stand On (oops… I mean Wii Fit…) is WAY too much fun. We’re contemplating dropping our gym memberships, although we’ll wait to make sure that in the long run (say, a month from now) we still feel we’re getting an adequate workout with this. If that works out, it means the Wii and Wii Fit will have more than paid for themselves.

The aerobics stuff, like the running, is definitely enough to work up a good sweat and leave you out of breath. The strength training is surprisingly effective—it uses core conditioning techniques to pit you against your own body mass so you don’t need machines. The yoga stretches and balance exercises, of course, work perfectly with the balance board. Someday I hope they come up with a balance mat version that’ll allow a wider array of activities, but I think this works surprisingly well for now. There are quite a few benefits to working out with this thing, as silly as it may seem at first:

• The ‘game’ format keeps things fun, challenging, and entertaining, not to mention less chore-like.
• Since you can do this in your home, you can fit your workout easily in around chores, work hours, dinner, etc.
• I find it easier to work out when I have the most physical energy and motivation—which for me is usually late morning. That’s a horrid time to exercise outside where I am, as I don’t deal well with heat & humidity, both of which are pretty nasty here. It’s also a time when I can’t get to the gym.
• The workout pieces seem awfully short at first, but you swiftly ‘unlock’ extra reps and such, quickly building up to a level you’re comfortable with.
• The board and program are surprisingly good at noting how you’re doing by measuring how shaky, steady, etc. you are.
• Presumably they’ll be able to put out additional disks later with additional exercises on them—and there are already plenty to begin with.
• The tracking and charting functions are so well-integrated that you hardly have to do a thing. It measures & tracks your weight, BMI, and exercise levels for you. No more having to remember to write that stuff down.
• Because there are some easier exercises in there, such as one or two of the yoga poses and some of the balance exercises, I can imagine continuing to get exercises even on days when I’m tired, sick, sore, etc. That means fewer breaks in the routine of working out, which means I’m more likely to keep it up as a habit.

All in all, as silly as the concept seems, the execution is brilliant.

Okay, a bunch of things today.

1. After reading an entertaining texturizing tutorial, I started seeing textures in everything around me and couldn’t help taking photos galore. So if you’re looking for some free stock textures available for unrestricted use, I’ve made a bunch available through my DeviantArt account. More to come, I’m sure. Please do show me if you use them for anything cool!

2. The wii is freaking awesome. A couple of great friends of ours (the ones whose wii we tried in the first place, thus getting hooked) found a wii and called us to ask if we wanted them to grab it for us. Boy howdy! (Isn’t it good to have friends?!) We got it home late Sunday night, hooked it up last night, and promptly got hooked on doubles tennis. It’s amazing how much of a sweat you can work up playing a video game.

3. I’m pathetic. Today I tried out the wii sports fitness test, which gives you your ‘fitness age.’ Dare I admit that my fitness age is twice my physical age? I think I just did. *hangs head in shame*

4. We gave in and ordered a Little White Thing You Stand On (aka wii fit) through ebay. It should arrive tomorrow. This is where I have to admit that it was actually the parody ad that made me want the dang thing:

5. Today’s review is of the Reader’s Digest New Complete Guide to Sewing. It’s fantastic.

6. I seem to have suddenly re-discovered my old love of crafts, and went and bought some beading books. More cool stuff to review!

7. More book reviews soon!

So, my life is about as full as it can possibly get, but in a good way. What’s keeping you revved up?