"Allover" failure

Got back last night from my little vacation trip to Santa Barbara. It was a nice trip. Relaxing. Way too much ice cream... Pretty town, nice wharf, mild weather, lots of restaurants.
Ronny missed me much while I was gone. He was very happy to see me again last night. Brought me flowers! What a sweetie!! :)
The big news, though, would be that I now hate Cingular. We had been together for 5 or 6 years now. Back in Wisconsin, we got along great. After moving to Massachusetts, things got a little rockier. Just the little things always getting in the way. But the trip to California really ruined it for me. I plan to end things today. I have been checking out Verizon's package, and plan to go for it. The problem was that when I got to CA, my signal bar was GONE. Nada. I went to a Cingular store on State St in Santa Barbara, it was like a 5 minute walk. They checked that I still had a battery and the SIM card was OK. (Because I like to sabotage my own phone before complaining it doesn't work!!) After that, they were stumped. Several phone call transfers later, they said they would have it fixed that afternoon - an update would send over the network, I just needed to power-cycle my phone. Don't you love our modern era. Turning something off and then back on again has become such a routine means of "fixing" things, that we have a tech sounding name for it!!
Anyway, it didn't work. Borrowing my friend's cell on occasion, and receiving calls at the hotel room allowed me some converesations with Stefen as he tried to fixed my phone. Didn't work. By Thursday they had come down to me taking a cab to the next town over to get a new SIM card. I was flying back home Fri morning, so figured it wasn't worth it.
Friday night get back home, and guess what. My phone doesn't work. Whatever they changed to try to make it work has now screwed it up so I can't use it here, either. I get a message saying "Welcome to Cellular One. Your call can not be completed as dialed." Cellular One?????? What did they do????? Needless to say, standing at the airport with a useless cellphone is not a pleasant feeling. Luckily payphones still can be used to make phonecalls in Massachusetts. I tried one in CA, and it didn't work. You can call 911, phonecards, or call collect, but you can't actually PAY into the PHONE to make a call. Despite being a PAYPHONE. That was not a happy day...
Stefen was nice enough to credit me this month's bill, since I had gone through so much trouble. He was very nice and did his best to help. Too bad he works for a company that I don't like anymore. I had a nation-wide calling plan, and Cingular trumpets their "Allover network" as being so wonderful. Too bad it doesn't really work if you leave home... While I was sitting at the Cingular office on hold with Customer Service, a young guy came in who had just moved there from Rhode Island (I recognized the area code) and his phone didn't work. They sat him down on another phone to sit on hold with Customer Service, too. Then a lady came in who had just moved there from "out-of-state" and her phone didn't work. The clerk said the lady just needed to charge her phone up and it would work. The lady said it had been charging all night and said this morning the battery was fully charged. Didn't matter - the clerk sent her away. I was not the only one... By the way, the young guy got a new phone out of the deal, but that probably won't solve his problem, just like charging the phone probably won't help the lady.

Santa Barbara has a couple local burger mini-chains. Habit and In-and-Out. Habit was a couple blocks away and made for a nice lunch on those days I was by myself. I had a lot of cheeseburgers this past week. There was also a Coldstone Creamery next to the hotel, so had more ice cream than I should have... Went to the casino one night. Had the buffet. It was seafood night, so had a ton of shrimp and lobster. Tried the crablegs, but they had no tools for cracking them open, so didn't actually EAT any of it. But before you get the wrong idea, I did also have some classier fare. Went for Indian one night (mango chicken was Fabulous) Italian another (salmon with raspberry-tarragon sauce is quite good) and some yummy brioche french-toast one brunch...