Plaidophile

In my experience, the number of phone calls someone receives is directly proportional to how annoying their ringtone is. The obvious corollary is that the people who are conscientious about the obnoxiousness level of their ringtone are also the ones who don't spend all their time talking on the phone, thus making it not an issue to begin with.

Before condo purchase: about 3 years' worth of living expenses saved up, and gained another month of cushion for every month worked

After condo purchase: about 8 months' worth of living expenses saved up, and gain another month of cushion for every three months worked (well, before the tax break; after the tax break it's more like 11 months and 1:2 respectively, but I prefer to track that as an annual lump sum payment rather than an amortized cost)

Meanwhile, Chase has yet again decided that activity on my account (in this case, changing my address and phone number via their website and then OMG having the USPS do a change of address validation!) is a sign of possible fraud. Chase certainly has an odd notion of reasons to freeze an account. How obnoxious.

So, normally when you try canceling an account with a phone company, they send you over to customer retention, but T-Mobile gives you a much easier way. The magic words: "I'd like to convert my account to pay-as-you-go." They're more than happy to do that, and after that you can easily just port your number or, if you're also changing numbers at the same time (like I am), you can just have the old number forward to your new number until the minutes expire.

(Also, I might just mess around with making circuits or something. It'd be fun to try making my intercom dial my cellphone, for example.)

So, compared to most of my customer experience entries, I must say that the whole @comcastcares thing is pretty awesome. And the guy (or maybe it's a team?) even tracks weblog entries. Comcast's website can be pretty terrible when it comes to information about things which aren't their highest-tier services, so having someone who is actually willing to answer every little question about what they offer is excellent.

This one is very easy to take, though: it just analyzes your browser history.

My results: 50% female, 50% male. GO FIGURE.

I got the keys for my condo today. Woo! I haven't gone there yet though.

What I have to do:

• Get a mover (probably going to go with these guys since they review very well on Yelp)
• Deal with utilities
• Figure out my commute. Originally I was going to bike but then I noticed that the elevation profile is a lot worse than I thought, but then it turns out that SFMuni has a $45 monthly pass which covers both buses and BART within the city, so that gives me plenty of options. I like the idea of biking between the endpoints and the BART stations, so I get about 1.5 miles of biking (or walking) each way every day. And of course this makes my folding bike still very worthwhile.
• Figure out what I'm going to do about Internet service. I'll probably go with Comcast, since limited basic also has full QAM here, so $18 for limited analog cable + $43 for Internet (well, $33 for the first 6 months but whatever) = $61, which is a lot less than DSL alone here ($20 for the phone line and $65 for the DSL) and also has much higher bandwidth (12Mbps!). Of course, it helps that @comcastcares has been very helpful in answering my questions.
• Pack up the stuff I can pack up myself. Fortunately I've been very lazy and have been accumulating Amazon and woot boxes for the last several months, and of course the recycling bin always has plenty more. So that part shouldn't be a problem.
• Acquaint myself with the neighborhood. I know there is a jazz club next door and a Safeway across the street and a taqueria about a block away (and a somewhat-famous Indian/pizza place a little further). I am sure this will be excellent.

I am tempted to go there even before I've moved or anything just so I can finally breathe the air myself, without having a couple of realtors constantly chatting. As much as I liked working with Alina, and as good as the seller's agent Jeff was, it was as bit frustrating that I could never really listen to the building "breathe." It was pretty much non-stop chatter whenever I was in there. (They did give me a few minutes of alone time so I know it's very quiet there, at least.)