neurological dryer lint

did something i swore i'd never do: gave cbell more money than i needed to. friday night i switched away from sprint, who i've had service with for five years, and went to the Man that represses us all. along with my $40/month service (their 1000 daytime, unlimited night/weekend deal) i snagged a siemens s56 phone. it's tiny, light, bluetooth-capable and uses their GPRS network for internet stuff. and no contract.

i've always had a problem with cincinnati bell. back in the day when i was at onenet, i sat on the sidelines while they rolled out their zoomtown dsl service. i saw the worst of the worst of their company as they hosed consumers just to save money and be cheap - and did it on a GRAND scale. it left a terrible taste in my mouth, and the foul, bitter backwash stayed with me for a long time. in 1999 i'd written to PUCO about my problems with them because they wouldn't respond to me otherwise with issues i had been having. i'd seen internal memos leaked out from their office that just made my opinion of them sink further. their big decision makers were just corrupt, greedy old men that wanted to screw people and take their money.

it must have been broadwing's purchase of them that forced them to clean up their act - i'd expected it would just deepen their corruption, but in the last few years i was amazed to see their service improve. their customer service group was - gasp - HELPFUL. they were willing to admit when they screwed up and didn't force us to pay for it. they rolled our services that benefitted the consumer, at fair prices. and when i started at Sant i met Jeff Lucas, our sales rep - and i've never found a more honest, helpful, friendly guy that was willing to do ANYTHING to make me happy as a customer. when we were getting our T1 put into our new office in november of 2002, he offered to drive to my office in blue ash from downtown and stay around after hours to reboot our router after the cbell NOC made some changes, so i wouldn't have to do it. warmed my heart :)

these guys have done a good job of turning around and doing things right for consumers. their upper level guys may still be corrupt - but at least it's not harming consumers (as much, AFAIK). they've changed my mind about a lot of things. they deserved a shot, and with a deal like i got, i'm pretty happy so far.

so i'm watching the bengals game (14-3 in the third over pittsburgh, woot) and finishing up our saleslogix upgrade, and procrastinating on my database homework. lovely.