Cell Phone Scam Detected

My brother decided to join our family phone plan. The rest of us in the family have iPhones. My brother used to have an iPhone 5. But I think the screen cracked and he went back to Android. He has a Samsung Galaxy S6.

Momoko called our phone provider. She upped our monthly bandwidth (my brother uses even more than the kids). She tried to add my brother to our plan. The phone provider service rep said she could not do that because my brother's phone was only a 2g phone. WTF?

Luckily my brother mentioned that he needed to go the phone store to buy a new phone. I investigated and heard the shenanigans. Umm the Samsung Galaxy S6 is like one generation ago, equivalent to the iPhone 6. My brother even has a phone plan with a company that is a subsidiary to our phone provider. He is using 4G-LTE service probably with our phone towers.

The real kicker is that we are upping our monthly cell phone bill to $300+, which is almost $4000 per year. These guys have to be able to give us a free phone or something. Otherwise it will be time to pull the ultimate trump card - "put me in touch with someone who can help cancel our cell phone service".

The OA

Netflix released an eight part series last month called The OA. The title is short for the Original Angel. Prarie is a girl who is reunited with her adoptive parents seven years after she goes missing. She was blind when she disappeared. She can now see. And she has strange scars on her back.

Prarie assembles a bunch of kids plus one teacher from her school. They meet in an abandoned house at night. She asks them to each leave the front doors of their houses open. She then goes and tells them her entire life story.

The synopsis of the story she tells is that she is a young girl in Russia who has a near death experience after a school bus crash. She is sent to the USA to live with her aunt. Then she get adopted by two old parents. She leaves for New York because she feels like she can somehow find her dad there.

Prarie says she is kidnapped by a weird doctor that studies near death experience cases. She finds other prisoners in the underground mine where she is trapped. The doctor performs experiments on the prisoners. They unite as Prarie thinks they can use some sort of magic to summon a portal to get the heck out of there.

There is a lot more to this series. There are eight episodes, each of which is about 45 minutes long. There is occasional gratuitous sex scenes. The ideas of the near death experiences are literally out of this world. It reminds me a little of a previous work by the main character called The Sound of My Voice.

Introdution to Tannerite

Kit Kat and Little Kat spent two days with their dad on vacation. We thought they would be back late Thursday. As we were driving to lunch on Thursday, they called and said they returned home early. Momoko and I drove with her sister's family to visit a restaurant known for their pies. They were closing in a few days. The line was out the door.

We instead went to a breakfast place. It was supposed to be good cooking. I ordered a monster 5 egg omelet. The English muffins were not toasted correctly. The hash browns were weak. My soda glass was empty most of the time. And I did was not the one with the worst problems at our table. The service sucked. At least the eggs were tasty.

In the afternoon, Little Kat's uncle picked me and Little Kat up. We wanted to go gun shooting at the outdoor range. Little Kat's uncle had not paid his dues in a while. So we went to get him current and the gun range owner's house. The we headed to a store to pick up some ammo. The most interesting purchase was a Tannerite kit. It was basically some chemicals you mix and shoot at for an explosion.

I shot some 22 caliber pistols. The rifle jammed up on me. Little Kat and his uncle talked me into shooting the 40 caliber handgun once. I also unloaded an assault rifle of its 30 bullets. It was not hard to hit the big targets at 50 yards. The smaller ones at 100 yards proved to be too difficult.

As the sun set, we mixed the Tannerite and set them out at 50 and 75 yards. The targets were small and I thought there was not much chance to hit them. Little Kat led the charge and blew a couple up. His uncle got the other one. We packed up and came home late for dinner. We ended up going out for a late night Mexican cheap dinner.

The vacation begins

The day before we were to depart on vacation, I printed out our boarding passes. We got somewhere in the middle of the queue. The flight was overbooked. Luckily, we got the last empty row in the plane. "We" means Momoko, Kit Kat, and Little Kat. I had to sit one row in front of them with strangers. It was not a comfortable flight.

Our destination airport moved all the rental car companies out of the airport. We loaded our many suitcases onto a shuttle that took us out to the rental car building. The rep for the rental company said all they had to rent me was a Chevy Trax and a Chevy Captiva. They said the Trax was less damaged. They forgot to tell me that it was tiny.

Before even getting into the rental, I ran back and switched to the Captiva. On the way to Momoko's parents' house we got some Sonic fast food to eat. Delicious. Little Kat spent most nights sleeping over at his uncle's house. Kit Kat got a grand queen size bed. I slept in a pull out trundle, while Momoko got a small bed.

Our vacation had begun...

Manual Transmission Lessons with Little Kat

Every afternoon at 2:30pm, Little Kat and I go out to practice manual transmission driving in my 2014 Nissan Versa Note. Little Kat is always asking to postpone the sessions. Nope. Postponing has got us nowhere. Now that the fall semester is essentially at its end, time to buckle up and learn.

On one of the initial session, Little Kat did pretty good. He did not stall the car. He had no trouble getting the car into 4th gear. He thought we would be done with the lessons in a week. Premature celebration. We have run into problems like stalling and rough downshifting.

I think it is just a matter of time until Little Kat gets good at 3rd and 4th gear driving. Then we will switch to highway driving in 5th gear. Finally we will tackle driving in traffic and dealing with more stress on the road with a manual transmission.

When we are done, I plan to sell the Nissan Versa and get an automatic transmission car for me to drive. I hate riding with the manual in heavy traffic. Might want to get myself a Fiat 500 coupe. If I get the cash, I will go for the upscale Abarth edition with the Turbo charged engine.

Closet Rennovation

I noticed that my brother was not making good use of the kitchenette in his bedroom. He had some problems with the shelf above the counter. It was not sturdy enough for his heavy items. My brother never used the sink or microwave in his room. Time for a renovation.

My handyman came in and demolished the kitchenette. He framed a wide closet to stand in its place. My handyman had the idea to install two rows of rods, effectively doubling the amount of clothes that could be hung up.

I needed to go into the office a few times this week. The handyman team needed four days to complete the closet. I gave them the code to get into the house by themselves when I was not here. Towards the end, they painted the trim and left it to dry in the carport. Of course Momoko backed into it, damaging some trim and her car. It's all good though.

Now my brother has good closet space. Time to call the carpet guys to finish off the bottom of the closet. I already checked with them. They can get the same carpet we used to redo my brother's room earlier this year.

Certifications

I am nearing the end of my college course which is supposed to prepare you to take the CompTIA Security+ certification exam. So far, I feel like I have not learned enough in the course. I just don't have that deep knowledge that I usually attain when I study hard for a class.

My company gave me some money to buy materials and pay for the certification exam. I bought a study guide from Amazon. The first thing in the guide was a pre-test. You need to get 83% correct on the real test to pass. I got an 83% right in the pre-test. Maybe I have learned a thing or two this semester.

I plan to rigorously study this exam guide over the next two months. If I can get up to a 93% or higher in the post-test, I think I will be ready to ace the test. While getting the certification is an important milestone, the real goal is to understand the topic. Nobody really cares if you hold a certificate. they just want you to know your stuff.

In other news, I had recommended that Little Kat might want to look into CompTIA A+ certification training. That would assist him in figuring out why his desktop computer sometimes does not work.