I think it's safe to say that moving is never fun. Whether moving your household or your business there are lots of loose ends you won't see until they hit you in the face at midnight on a Friday during your move.
So, while moving is never fun, it CAN be an adventure. After all life is an adventure and moving is just another little chapter in the overall life adventure experience. Mark Twain said that two things in life are certain – death and taxes. I'd add moving to that short list, because even if you've found your dream home in your dream location – you'll be moving at some point. To something better, something bigger, something smaller. Never say you'll you'll never move. Even if you expire before you move – somebody is still going to have to move all that stuff.
Rule number 1 in moving – downsize before the move. You've got stuff you don't need, stuff you don't use and face it, some stuff that should have been thrown out a long time ago. Don't move anything that you don't really need to move – sell it, craigslist it, ebay it, give it away, donate it, dispose of it. It'll make your move a lot easier.
Rule number 2 – get some help to move. Even if you think you've downsized to the point that you can move everything yourself – plan on getting some help for the move. You can't do it all yourself and you'll probably run out of time – so ease the pain a little by planning ahead to have some help with the move.
Rule number 3 – never believe what the phone company promises about service at your new address. I called AT&T well ahead of our move to see if high speed DSL was available at the new address. Two days later I received a call that a technician had tested from the new address and DSL would be available. So everything was set to be activated on the last day of our move. A technician was supposed to install DSL between 8 AM and 5 PM on the day of the appointment. But a letter from AT&T that week said that since I already had the DSL modem, no technician visit would be necessary and my high speed internet would available after 8 PM on the day scheduled. Guess what? 8 PM rolled around on that Friday and the DSL light on the modem was still flashing red. So I call the number listed in the letter. After talking to someone with a Malaysian accent I got transferred to the “proper department”. The automated voice at the other end of that call then informed me that office was open from 8 AM to 7 PM central time Monday through Friday. Oh, I get it – service will be activated after 8 PM – an hour after everyone goes home so there's no chance of getting anything straightened out till next week.
It rained a couple of times between Friday night and Monday morning. Each time it rained, the DSL light on the modem would change from red to green about once a minute. Not a good sign. It looked like the modem almost had DSL sync but only when it rained.
Monday morning I am told there was a discrepancy in the order for service, and that it had been automatically rescheduled from Friday to Wednesday. Logically, it seemed to me like if they couldn't do it Friday, they should do it Monday – but this is the phone company.
Wednesday afternoon a technician shows up. After several trips between his truck and the back of the house where the phone stuff is, he tells me he's having trouble getting DSL sync. It works from the box at the street, but not at the box on the back of the house. Then he adds, even IF he can get the DSL signal to sync up – I would only have access to the SLOWEST speed that AT&T offers for “high speed” internet. While better than a dial up connection, it's way slower than the 6 MB service I had previously – all of 768 KB or a little better than 10 times the speed of dial up. And that's IF he can get it to work at all. I would consider accessing the world at that rate to be only a last resort. I've been spoiled by a high speed Internet connection for about 10 years. The thought of dial up (56K) or low speed DSL (768K) would seem like taking a step back in time to before high speed Internet was available.
I also told the tech that somebody had called to tell me that a technician had tested DSL from the new address and there shouldn't be any problem. He said he didn't think AT&T had done that for a few years (send a technician to verify before the installation). So in his opinion, no one had tested to see if DSL would actually work at the new address until he came out.
After he left – and that's without DSL working at all – I call the cable company to verify if their high speed Internet is available at the new address. Yes it is – and their 8 MB service would be $10 cheaper for the first three months as an introductory rate and the installation would be free. The only glitch with the cable company is that they didn't have an opening in their schedule until the following Wednesday. I considered that minor at this point, since it looked like AT&T couldn't provide DSL service and I had been managing this far with no Internet access – a few more days was no big deal.
While I say I had no Internet access – I should clarify. At least 3 households in the neighborhood have WI-Fi connections that are not password protected. But I tried not to take advantage of their wide open connections and only connected long enough to retrieve and send email several times a day. About 12 wireless routers show up in the neighborhood, 3 of those without passwords – so about 25% are running a wide open wireless Internet connection. That's never a good idea even if you trust all of your neighbors. If somebody wanted to steal your identity, a wide open wireless Internet connection is like hanging a “Welcome” sign outside an open door. I'd like to advise the people that aren't password protected they should lock down access to their router, but the 3 open routers are using generic names – either the brand of the router for the SSID (as in Linksys), or something like “Router” so I have no easy way to identify them. A wide open router means my connection to the Internet was not encrypted either – so that's why I limited what I was doing on the Internet to just email. I can't thank those neighbors enough for having an unprotected wireless connection – it sure helped me – but the first order of business for anyone with a wireless router should be WPA or WPA2 encryption.
Wednesday morning the cable tech shows up to install cable Internet and an hour later I'm back on the Internet with an 8 MB connection – faster than the DSL I had at the old address.
So that's a bit of what I learned from our move. And even though my wife says we aren't moving again (anytime soon)– I feel like I'll be better prepared next time. At least that's the plan.
So it goes.
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