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I’m about halfway through my off week. I used to think it was a little weird when I heard about people taking vacation and staying at home, but now I can totally see the appeal in doing that. Going on a trip can wear you out as much as working. I wanted to do this back in September and October, but the timing didn’t work out either month. Then the holidays came along and I’ve been extremely busy this year, so it took me this long to do it. Even some of my co-workers noticed that I hardly ever take time off any more.

I’ve been getting up at 8 every morning because I’ll feel like I’ve wasted too much of the day if I sleep until noon. What have I been doing? Reading, playing video games, clearing off my DVR, watching movies, playing with the dog, and taking care of errands that I haven’t been able to because I’m at work. I’ll sleep late on the weekend like I normally do.

I’ve got about 3 months of personal leave time accumulated, so maybe I’ll do this more often. I I’m going on trips in August and October, so there’s no need to go somewhere every time.

The other day I readThe Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. If you read the 7th Harry Potter book, you might remember that Dumbledore left Hermione a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard and it contained clues on that were helpful to her, Harry, and Ron on their mission.

It consists of 5 fairy tales for wizard children. It’s pretty short and I even I could read it in 1 sitting. The book doesn’t really add anything to the Harry Potter story that you couldn’t gain from reading the 7th Potter book. I guess it’s mostly for completists like me. Each story does have notes from Dumbledore, which are interesting to read. The author is donating all the proceeds to charity, so I don’t feel like she released this to make more money off Harry Potter.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
• Flashfoward, Robert J. Sawyer
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks is pretty entertaining and thought provoking book. I like it more than most of the other books I’ve read recently.

This book is written as if it’s nonfiction. Apparently, there was a worldwide zombie outbreak that lasted 10 years and the book was written 10 years after the end of the outbreak. It tells the story of the zombie war through a collection of interviews with survivors. The interviewees come from all over the world. The story progresses from the first case of the zombie virus until the “present” when the world is still rebuilding.

I’m not expecting a zombie attack, but reading World War Z did make me wonder how we would handle a global catastrophe. In the book, the governments of the world made some costly mistakes. I hope we wouldn’t make those same mistakes.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
• Flashfoward, Robert J. Sawyer
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Check another item off the list of things I told myself I wouldn’t do. I bought an iPhone. That means I’m only a Macbook away from being a full-fledged member of the Apple cult. I was going to get one of the new 16GB 3GS units, but they were out of black ones so I got a 32 GB. Now, I’m finally free of Sprint! Even though I don’t really like AT&T, they are much better than Sprint. It’s weird that one of the reasons I left Cingular (before they were AT&T) was because they had crappy phones compared to Sprint. Now, AT&T has the cool phone(s).

I’m happy with the phone so far. I’ve downloaded dozens of applications that I’ll probably never use. There’s only one small problem. I live kind of in the middle of no where. I seem to be relegated to the EDGE network when I’m at home. It’s not that big of a deal. I’m probably least likely to use the internet features when I’m at home. Beside, I can always use my wifi connection when I’m here.

I refuse the buy the new iPhone that is bound to come out next year. At least, that’s what I say now.

I ended up canceling my gym membership today. There’s no use in paying when I wasn’t going anymore. I already get up around 6 every morning and I don’t want to have to get up any earlier to work out. Also, I was having trouble motivating myself to go back out to work out after I got home from work.

I did, however, buy Wii Fit about a week and a half ago and have used it almost every day. Some activity is better than nothing. I just hope it doesn’t get boring.

I read Inside Straight by George R.R. Martin a few months ago, but never got around to writing about. It seems like he’s never going to get around to finishing the next book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, so I decided to read something else by him. Inside Straight is a part of the Wild Cards series. Each book is a collection of related stories written by various authors, and Martin serves as the editor.

The Wild Cards series reminds me a lot of what I’ve heard about the Dr. Who television series. It comes in cycles that last for a few books, then it goes away for a little while, then they bring it back for a while, etc. Inside Straight is the first book in the current cycle.

From what I’ve gathered, about 60 years ago an alien virus that was called the Wild Cards Virus came to Earth somehow. Some people were given superpowers, and they are called aces. Some were hideously deformed, and they are called jokers.

I should have really liked a book about superpowered people, but it was only ok. It focuses on a group of contestants on a reality show for people with superpowers. These people are using their powers in contests to decide who is going to be the next American Hero. There are tragic events going on in the news in Egypt and some of the contestants decide to do the right thing and be real-life heroes. Maybe if they hadn’t spent so much time on the reality show aspect of the story, I would have liked it more. I hate reality shows. It gets much more interesting at the end and I plan on reading the next book in the series.

I don’t think I’m going to get around to even half the books I wanted to read this year.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
• Flashfoward, Robert J. Sawyer
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I’ve been thinking about going to one of the music festivals this summer. All the ones that I saw near here were happening either a little too early (May/June) or a little too late (October). Plus, the lineups were pretty good, but there were only one or two artists that I really wanted to see at each event.

A week or two ago I found out that Pearl Jam was well on their way to finishing a new album and were rumored to be going on tour and also headlining Austin City Limits Music Festival this year. The ACL people didn’t want to confirm that Pearl Jam would be there, but they said it was the worst kept secret around. I went to the website and saw the bands they had confirmed so far. I put that with Pearl Jam and I decided that I need to book a hotel room right away, which I did. The official lineup came out around midnight this morning. It is great!

• Pearl Jam
• Dave Matthews Band
• Beastie Boys
• Ben Harper and Relentless7
• John Legend
• Mos Def
• The B-52s
• Sonic Youth
• Coheed and Cambria (don’t know much about them, interested in hearing them)
• The Virgins (a band I recently discovered)
• Lily Allen (I keep hearing her name, don’t know any songs)

You can check out the complete lineup here.

The festival takes place Oct. 2-4. Austin, here I come!

Yesterday, I got an email from the Justice Department about the postal employee who stole one or more of my Gamefly and/or Netflix rentals. Last summer I found out that she plead guilty to 1 count of Delaying or destruction of mail or newspapers and 3 counts of Theft of mail matter by officer or employee. She’s finally been sentenced. She got 1 year and 6 months in prison followed by 2 years of supervised release. Her fine is $0.00. Well, that’s the end of that. It’s been interesting getting updates while not really being involved.

I’m still with Sprint for now. I’ll wait until the end of my contract and decide on something then. I had a hard time making a decision on whom to go to. It takes me a long time to make decisions like that and I came up with reasons not to switch to each of the other major carriers available in this area. I’ll deal with it later.

For a few days I was getting a lot of messages and emails from Sprint. The tone made it sound like I didn’t need to call back unless I had other questions. My guess was that they were feeling bad about how much they had screwed up. I finally called back and they basically offered to let me take as long as I wanted to on paying that balance. I’m going to go ahead and pay it all at once when my bill is due. I’m not as angry as I was, but I’m still not happy.

I have been a Sprint customer for over 5 years. I’ve done my share of defending them even when I’ve felt screwed by them because they always seemed to make things right in the end. This time it’s different. Now I can see why they have the worst customer service ratings and are hemorrhaging customers.

I bought a new phone from Sprint near the end of October 2008. The price I believe was $279.99 plus tax but they applied credits to bring the cost of the phone down to $50 plus tax. Before the end of the first 30 days, I decided the phone. It was freezing up all the time and I just didn’t like it. In early December I called to see how much I my balance would be after they credited my account for the phone. The CS Rep told me that I would be credited the $279.99 plus tax and with the credits they had already applied to my account I would have a negative balance. I got him to explain repeatedly that those credits wouldn’t be taken away and I would be credited for the full amount of the phone. I was happy to hear this and even though it seemed odd, I thought that was just the way Sprint did things. How silly and trusting of me.

I called in January about that balance still on my account. It takes them 1-2 billing cycles to credit refunds. They put in a payment arrangement on my account for the $279.99 plus tax to cover the still pending refund and I paid the difference between that and the balance on the account. The same thing happened in February. Later in February I decided to try a different phone model because I was still unhappy with the old model I’d had for a while and tried to replace in October. Somehow the lady got the returned phone credited to my account during that call. When I got my next statement I had a balance of over $300 dollars. It turns out that I was credited about $60 for the returned phone instead of the $279.99 plus tax that I was promised 3 times.

It was explained to me that I could be credited only the amount that I was charged and not the $279.99 plus tax. The Rep I talked to this day said that the earlier reps probably didn’t see those credits made to my account, but I know that at least the first person did. I feel like I was lied to for 3 months. Even if it was a mistake, they should honor the original promise that was made to 3 times. I was going on the assumption for months now that I would be credited $279.99 plus tax and a balance has accumulated. I have been a contract customer for over 5 years and have always paid my bills on time. If I can’t break a promise to pay them, then it seems like they can’t break a promise to me.

I had this case escalated to their “executive office” and I was once again denied a refund. He said that if I was unhappy with the decision he would discuss it among his colleagues and reach a final decision. Not surprisingly, they agreed with him.

I guess it’s time to finally end my relationship with Sprint. When I got the 2nd new phone in February, I had to renew my contract for 2 years. If I break my contract now, I have to pay a an early termination fee, which I think is $185. Of course they said that they wouldn’t let me out of the contract without the fee. I have to decide if I want to pay that fee and get out of my contract or wait 2 years until the contract ends. Either way I’m gone. It’s hard to do business with a company that I cannot trust.