Category: Jake

If you are, I have 149 here. Knock yourself out.

My mom-in-law needs a new cell phone for her T-Mobile plan. Anybody have an old phone that will take a SIM card that’s stupidly basic and simple that is collecting dust? No fancy features, just a flip phone that will make calls and has easy-to-read buttons (mom-in-law friendly). I have a pile of carrier-locked CDMA phones, but no GSM phones (AT&T, T-Mobile, etc…).

E-mail me if you have one that I can take off your hands.

I’m heading out of town later this month for my annual coast excursion, and am looking at the possibility of going over a day early and spending the night in Salem on the way over. The thing is, I can barely afford the vacation in general, and certainly don’t think I can afford another hotel night for the whole family.

But I rarely get an extended bit of time off from work, and I want to take advantage of it.

Anybody have any connection for any hotels in the Salem area, or even in the Silverton area, that can get me a deal (as we’re looking at possibly going to the Oregon Garden)? I know all about the Oregon Garden Resort but out of my price range (unless somebody reading this site works there). Contact me privately: jake {at} utterlyboring {dot} com.

So Grasshopper, the toll-free number service that I use here at Sunray as well as at Sunriver Vacations, is in the middle of a serious outage (going on the second day now). They’ve been updating as well on their Facebook page and twitter feed. Basically, from what I can tell (and since their communication has sucked during this whole thing, I don’t know 100% what’s happening), it sounds like something at their main data center kicked the bucket, and then they kicked into disaster recovery mode, and their backup plans failed, too.

Anyway, while the set-up for Sunriver Vacations is a bit complicated (low call volume, but equally rotated between a few companies, along with a few “press 1 to speak to blah-blah” type of options), the setup for Sunray is fairly simple. We basically have our main 800 number ported over to them, and have it forward to a phone number here. After closing time, it will play a message where folks can leave a voicemail or press a number to be forward to after-hours staff. Nothing really exciting, but their per-minute rate was much cheaper than what we were paying for 800 number service before, and the free voice studio stuff was a nice feature.

That being said, being down for over 24 hours is a huge problem, and is costing the companies I work for some good money. I’ve managed to setup a temporary toll-free number thanks to a local vendor/partner company and published it on our Web site, but a lot of people and web sites have that main toll-free number published.

While I don’t know if I’ll move to another service (just depends on how Grasshopper responds to all this, once they’re back up and running), I would like to have some options. What’s everybody out there using for small business 800-number service?

Lesson learned here? Test your disaster recovery plans. This can’t be emphasized enough, and reminds me that I need to do the same (it’s been a while).

In case you didn’t know already, I’m in The Band and The Band is having a concert this weekend.

Sunday, June 5, 2:00 p.m. FREE

The Cascade Winds Symphonic Band presents Space!, the final concert of their 2010-2011 season, under the baton of music director Dan Judd, June 5, 2:00 p.m. at Summit High School auditorium. This concert is free of charge, although donations are gratefully accepted, open to the public and suitable for all ages. Pieces to be preformed include Star Wars, Star Trek, The Planets: Mars & Jupiter, Sundance and Sky is Waiting. For more information visit www.cascadewinds.org or call 541-593-1635. Summit High School is located at 2855 NW Clearwater Drive, Northwest Crossing, Bend. No tickets required.

As I say every time, it’ll be a great show, and I’d love to see some of you there (and it’s a great, free, way to spend a Sunday afternoon).

Seriously, I just mowed the thing. Stupid kids.

The ol’ mortality meter that’s always been on the left-column of this site has been jacked up by another year. I figured I’d probably better do so, since I’m getting zillions of emails from all the forums I have accounts on, telling me it’s my birthday today (it’s actually in about 15 minutes, but close enough).

My cousin and I share the same birthday (I’m 12 hours or so older), and he sent me wishes at the crack of dawn this morning. It wasn’t until later that I realized why: he’s stationed in Japan, and it was after midnight over there.

So what do I plan on doing for my palindromic birthday? Not a thing. I’m going to sleep in (or at least attempt to), loaf around, play with my kids, and not do anything (and most of all, avoid the chaos at the Old Mill). And I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.