Hey! You! Get offa my cloud!

*****ATTENTION COMMENT SPAMMERS*****

While I am truly impressed with your ability to use a search engine to find my blog posts about Las Vegas and cell phones, I am slightly less than thrilled with you taking things to the next level and deciding to take advantage of anonymous comment posting to liter my website with your trash.

Or to be more specific, it pisses me off that you think my space is your billboard.

So, in a word. STOP!

Spammed comments will be deleted immediately and never seen by all the millions and millions of people who visit my blog and want free laptops and cheap Viagra.

So... there!!! :-Þ

Hello Moto!

Nope. You're not dreaming. Its a brand spankin' new post from your master of ceremonies, AI. Yeah, I know its been a while, but as you well know, sometimes you just get busy doing stuff... and time gets away from you.

"Yeah but you haven't posted in over a month!" you say?

Yeah... sue me. I was really busy!

Anyway, I'm here now and I've got a bloggeriffic tale to share about my new cell phone, pictured on the right. The Motorola RAZR BLK is the newest toy in my collection, and I'm really enjoying it. Click on the pic to go to the phone's home page and look at all the neato features that it has.

My buddy Ted has had the RAZR V3 (its silver) for about 6 months now and seeing it really gave me the new phone bug. When I saw this black beauty on the market a few months ago I really started chomping the bit. Unfortunately, it was a little out of my budget, so I had to leave it be. Well, to make a really long story, a little less really long, I finally came into enough of a budget surplus to blow it all on this phone. :-) And that was, of course, the beginning of all the trouble...

I had ordered the phone on a Wednesday through Cingular's website and I had to wait until Friday before my new knick-knack would arrive via Fed Ex. That was the longest two days I've lived through in a while. I really wanted this phone! So Friday afternoon, I get home and there's the box on the front porch. Huzzah! Like a little kid, I get the box, take it inside and rip into like a T-Rex. I put all the parts together, spent a little time pretending it was a communicator from Star Trek and yelling stuff like "Scotty we need warp speed in 2 minutes or we're all dead!" into it, and then hooked it up for a charge like the instructions told me to.

Well, I didn't let it charge completely... I was anxious to give it a try, so I unhooked it after an hour of juice and turned it on. Curiously, the phone didn't seem to be able to dial out. The words "Unregistered SIM" were emblazoned along the top of the screen to let me know that the phone hadn't registered itself on the Cingular Network like it was supposed to. The big "READ ME FIRST" flyer that came with the phone had said that it might take a few hours for the phone to register. It also had the instructions on what to do if it never does register. So I took the phone out with me to dinner and was out for hours. In all that time, the situation never changed. So, I called the 800 number to try and get the ball rolling so I could use my phone.

The first person I talked to was a nice guy. Seemed to know what was going on. It seems that my account was still "transitioning" from AT&T to Cingular so he had to hit a few magic buttons to whisk me to the next step. He gets me through all the setup screens that he has and says. "Ok. Now all you have to do is go through our acceptance system and agree to your 2 year contract to finish the activation. I'll transfer you in." Sounds good to me so I readily agree.

A few beeps and boops later I'm in the system and its telling me to press 1 to accept this and 2 if I don't want that, etc. And after about 10 minutes the system says "Ok we're almost done. Press 1 to complete activation."

And I do.

... and I wait...
... and I wait...

"We're sorry. We cannot complete your activation at this time. Please try again later."

Hmm... well that's odd. I'll just call the system back and start over. So I call back.

"Hi welcome to the Cingular Activation System. You've already activated this phone. Goodbye!"

Hmm... well that is odd. Ok I'll wait.

So another hour goes by. I try to make a call. I can't... I get an error message recording that says... guess what? My phone hasn't been activated.

*grumble*

So I call customer support back. Talk to another really nice... seemingly knowledgeable guy. This time I know things will be alright. He sees what the problem is and before I'm off the phone with him, he's called the cell phone to test it out and by jing... it works like a charm.

I'm tickled to death and ready to relax for the night. So, me and a friend decide to go out and have some dinner. Before going into the restaurant I stop for cash at my local bank.

First ATM won't give me any money. Hmm. Out of cash? On a Friday night? Oh well. Next ATM. Same thing. These are the drive through kind by the way....

Two drive through ATMs out of cash on a Friday night? Too bizarre.

Ok so I walk up to the ATM outside the bank.

Yeah you guessed it. No dice. Obviously I've enter the ATM No Cash zone so I decide to use the ATM in the restaurant.

I don't have to tell you do I? It didn't work. So now I'm totally vexed. First no cell phone service, and now I can't seem to get at my own money! The waiter suggests calling customer service. That's a novel idea so I go for it. I go outside the restaurant, with my new phone, and call the bank.

"Ah yes... I can see here you have a hold on your account. I'll transfer you to our fraud department so you can sort it out."

Great....

"Ah yes... it seems there's some activity on your account that we want to talk to you about Mr. A.I. Our records show that you spent $230 at... hmm.... Cingular? Is that right?"

I take a deep breath.

"Yes. That's right. That's the purchase of the cell phone that I'm currently talking to you on."

"Oh! New cell phone. This is a known expense then, yes?"

"Yep."

"Ok great. Its just that we analyzed your account and since that was such a large purchase we thought it best to double check."

"Thanks."

So don't get me wrong. I'm glad my bank is looking out for me... but dang that's some bad timing. After all the time I wanted and waited for a new phone... to have so much trouble.

Its enough to make me flip this phone open and see if anyone's out there to beam me up.