National election results released by mistake

From The Onion:

Sprint Ambassador Program discontinued

I have been a participant in Phase Three of Sprint’s Ambassador program. The program puts free Sprint cell phones in the hands of bloggers for six months. The idea is to provide feedback to Sprint about your experience. Although there is no expressed or implied obligation, I’m sure Sprint is hoping that bloggers will act as evangelists and talk up their service and the specific cell phone (mine was a Samsung UpStage).

A couple of days ago I received this e-mail from Sprint:

Greetings Ambassadors,

Thank you for your participation in the Sprint Ambassador program. We appreciate the candid feedback you have provided and are regularly using this information to offer our customers the best products and services available on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network.

After careful consideration, Sprint has decided to discontinue our Sprint Ambassador program so that we may focus on other key initiatives for gathering customer feedback. As a thank you for your participation, the devices you have received through the program are yours to keep. However, the service on those handsets will be terminated on January 31, 2008.

If you would like to keep the existing phone number on your handset, you have the following options:

• If you have an existing Sprint account in your name, you can simply go to Sprint retail store or call Sprint Customer Care at (888) 296-8806 to transfer the number over.  You will need your phone number and account password to facilitate the transfer.
• If you do not have a Sprint account and would like to open a new one, we invite you to visit a Sprint retail store for assistance and select from the many service plans that we offer.
• If you would like to transfer your Ambassador phone number to another individual’s account, BOTH PARTIES will need to need to visit a Sprint retail store to ensure a smooth transition.
• If you would like to move your Sprint Ambassador phone number over to another carrier, you will need to have the carrier you select call our Corporate Account team at (866) 657-6843.  Typically, a consumer that wishes to port their number would just need their account number and password. Ambassadors are considered corporate customers and, as such, cannot make changes to their account without going through the Corporate Account team.

For the Sprint Store nearest you please visit www.sprint.com.

Again, to keep your current Ambassador phone number, you must act by 11:59 PM on January 30, 2008.
Once again, we truly appreciate your participation in the Ambassador program.  If you have any additional questions, please send an email to AmbassadorProgram@sprint.com or you can reach Sprint’s Ambassador CARE team at (888) 296-8806.

Thank you!

I’m not surprised that Sprint is making this move. I’m sure the program was expensive for them to support and, with Sprint’s recently-announced financial troubles, they are under a great deal of pressure to cut back.

I will not be staying with Sprint. I’ve had my account with Verizon for several years. I will try to sell my phone on eBay as I did when I was a participant in Phase One of the program.

Merry Christmas to me

This is what I bought myself for Christmas.

Now I'm all set to install chair rail!

Blogging activity

After posting my most recent blog entry, I looked at the summary of blog posts by year. I used the new chart feature in Google Docs to create this chart. I need to step up my activity in 2008!

Reflections

It’s that time of year again when we reflect upon the past year and look forward (usually) to the coming year. I guess that’s the case this year. For me personally, 2007 was not a good year and I’m hoping that ‘08 is a better year for me and for civilization in general.

My move into the new house totally consumed my year. Before we could even think about moving, we had to get our old house ready to be sold. That involved painting (Lisa’s area of expertise), changing light fixtures, refinishing wood floors, installing new carpeting and the like. Somewhere, I have the cost of doing all of this, but I really don’t want to know right now. I’m well aware of the physical cost of doing all of this.

Going through the trauma of selling a house in this real estate market is horrible. Although she probably meant well, all I could hear from our real estate agent was that we needed to reduce the price of the house or we needed to give in on this request or we needed to do something else. Fortunately, our house sold early in the process — maybe because we did follow our agent’s instructions — so that stress was lessened.

The actual move was the worst part. All of the family members we counted on to help were not around when we needed to move in lae September. I personally think Michael going to Iraq was a bit extreme, but neither he nor Jessica were around to help, especially since they have a lot of their stuff still at the house. We rented three PODS and two U-Haul trucks and still did not have enough to contain all of our stuff. We were still moving out of our house at 5:00 a.m. the morning of our closing! I still don’t know how we managed the strength to do it.

Moving into the new house was a little better, but I absolutely hate just putting stuff into the basement or the garage before sorting it out. That’s what we did and the basement is still in shambles! It’s going to take many months to get it straightened out. Mom is moving in with us in mid-February (another story!) so her stuff will also be in the basement.

Now Lisa and I are trying to begin the improvements. Actually, Lisa is excited about painting and decorating. We bought a new Dewalt miter saw in November which counted as my Christmas present. We want to install chair rails and crown moulding throughout the house.

In October, we lost two family members. My dad’s brother, Lowell Cornelius, passed away from cancer. I attended his funeral and was able to reconnect with many of my cousins. Hopefully we can get together under better circumstances. Earler in the month, my beautiful Papillon, Mozart, was taken from me by a coyote. I did find his remains so I do hav some closure, but it has taken me a long time to recover from it. Strange how a pet impacts your life!

In 2008, Mom moves in with us so that will be an adjustment for all of us. We look forward to Michael safely returning from Iraq later in ‘08. Christine is making noise about moving to Seattle and attending art school.

So ‘08 will be a challenge, but hopefully not to the extent that 2007 was a challenge.

I hope everyone has a good year.