Hello, All

[Daniel.]

Well, I've changed my screen name to-- "Daniel." I got logged out, and the name "Daniel" was taken.

The trouble started when I left my phone in an Uber on March 16. I didn't have a phone or Internet for two weeks. I had to buy a new phone. It took about a week. The frustrating part was connecting my new phone to my carrier. This took being on the house phone of Best Buy while using their WiFi for a full three hours. The first call disconnected at an hour. Luck would have it the second call was with a guy who was studying to be an engineer.

Then my new phone got shut off again.

I had minutes to reply to an email that failed to send and would have kept the phone working. The content of my email was basically-- "Yes, please. Thank you." The only reason it didn't send is because the email and phone employees went on a "well deserved" two day break.

The break ended at 3:00 EST yesterday. So I walked to my neighbor's house across the street and asked the gentleman sitting outside if I could use his phone to call my carrier. The agent wanted to charge me $44 instead of $35. She charged me $35 "just for me" after I read her the email from them I couldn't answer. I read all of it to her and told her to fix this mess in no uncertain terms. I wasn't in the mood for calling them again.

My carrier is US Mobile. They suck.
All these monthly auto pay companies do in my experience.
You can get a low rate but you have to work at it. None of them is trustworthy in my experience.
US Mobile uses AT&T's network.

My new phone is a Motorola G 2025. I don't recommend it. It's more complicated to use than the Edge 2022. The screen has less pixels. I guess the saving grace is the lithium battery is new.

So, moving on, I've lived here for going on six years. I didn't know this gentleman across the street lived there. I had never seen him.

He has health problems. He sits outside in a very nice enclosed area at the back of the carport.

I thought the guy I see all the time and have had brief exchanges with lived there alone.

So, I talked to this gentleman for about forty minutes while I was on hold.

I enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed meeting him. It was fascinating that as it turns out he had been watching my housemate and me (and my housemate's mother spoiling him rotten) all this time. We had a good discussion about my life from his perspective. It was kind of uncanny but then again kind of unsurprising.

But it gets better. The two men are a couple. I wrongly assumed the one I knew was straight and single.

Let's call the one I knew-- "Rick." Rick pulls into the carport at the moment the call was done and the conversation was ending.

Rick walks into the enclosure without looking at me and keeps walking. I say, "Hi, Rick" and he says, "Hi" without turning around.

I thanked the gentleman for letting me use his phone and told him I enjoyed our conversation.

I'm leaving and when I get literally to the middle of the street, I hear Rick lose his temper and yell, "Were you talking to your boyfriend?!" His partner replied-- Oh, stop it!"

I'd be lying if I said I was completely surprised but I was a little surprised. I am 57.

It was an unexpected drama, somewhat flattering, and completely absurd.

I hope all are well.

[wtg]

@Daniel. If you want to continue using your original @Daniel as your id, you can ask for a password reset on the WTF login screen. You'll get an email at the address that's registered to that account and then you can reset your password, assuming you still have access to that email address.

Or if you're OK with @Daniel. you can just leave things as is.

[Steve Miller]

Sharon went through a similar ordeal when her phone was stolen. Every step of the process was like no one had ever replaced a phone before.

Welcome back!

[Daniel.]

Thanks!

One of the many problems was I didn't have the old phone to copy its data. Goggle wouldn't give me my own Gmail address because it already existed.

This created a cascade effect where every site and app (including my carrier) wouldn't let me sign in because my new Gmail address wasn't their address on file and/or they sent codes to the old Gmail address and I can't access it.

My new phone is still logged out of about half of the sites I visit.

The would be (hopefully) engineer said it's "a very sensitive thing to change phones."

It's not that sensitive. Wow.