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		<title>A long day of errands &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2016/08-August/26.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>A long day of errands</h1>
			<p>Day 00538: Friday, 2016 August 26</p>
		</header>
<p>
	This morning, my mother and I took two loads to the storage unit.
	My mother deliberately trying to avoid getting sweaty before their interview, we took very easy loads, consisting mostly of light-wight furniture and easy-to-stack bins.
	After that, my mother left for the interview, but it doesn&apos;t sound like the interview went well.
</p>
<p>
	My first stop today was my credit union, as I needed cash to pay the post office when I asked them to return the GT-i9100G.
	On the way there, I saw that T-Mobile had an odd stand out with lip balm and some sort of noise makers, but no one was manning it.
	It seemed a bit strange, but I continued on my way.
	The credit union wouldn&apos;t allow me to withdraw any money though, as my temporary state-issued <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> had expired! I&apos;d be locked out of any credit union transactions that involved withdrawals, though they said that I could still deposit money as usual.
	My mother found a bond issued under my name the other day, so I tried to deposit that into my account, as I couldn&apos;t exactly spend it without depositing it anyway.
	As it turns out though, credit unions can&apos;t redeem bonds; only banks can.
	Lastly, I asked the credit union to activate the credit card that they sent me a while back.
	However, the representative told me that they could only be activated via telephone.
	When I explained that I don&apos;t have telephone service, they told me that there was nothing that they could do about it.
	After leaving, I realized that I should have asked them to cancel the card because I can&apos;t use it, but it didn&apos;t matter too much.
	I would need to return to the credit union soon anyway, even if I didn&apos;t make it back in time to make any transactions today.
</p>
<p>
	Still needing money to pay the post office, I took a detour and headed home to borrow some from Vanessa, which I paid back later in the day.
	At the post office, things went mostly smoothly.
	I ended up needing to fill out customs paperwork, then the postal worker&apos;s computer wouldn&apos;t cooperate with them, but everything ended up sorted out soon enough.
	Once done, I asked for directions to the Department of Motor Vehicles, then headed out on the next leg of today&apos;s journey.
</p>
<p>
	The trip to the <abbr title="Department of Motor Vehicles">DMV</abbr> was a bit long, but there was nothing that I could do about it.
	I had to check on my semi-permanent <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card and get a new temporary one so that I could get back into my credit union account.
	<a href="/en/weblog/2016/08-August/25.xhtml">Yesterday</a>, the postal worker was blaming the <abbr title="Department of Motor Vehicles">DMV</abbr> for my missing <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card, but today, the <abbr title="Department of Motor Vehicles">DMV</abbr> representative blamed the post office.
	In fact, the <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card had been returned to the <abbr title="Department of Motor Vehicles">DMV</abbr> by the post office, though this was no doubt because the <abbr title="Department of Motor Vehicles">DMV</abbr> told the post office not to forward mail from them.
	What do you do when two government agencies are blaming each other for a problem? In any case, they said that they&apos;d resend the <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card and that it&apos;d take about seven to ten business days to reach me.
	Of course, I&apos;m not even entirely sure that it has a better chance of reaching me this time than last time, but I&apos;ll wait and see how this pans out.
	They issued me a new temporary <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card, and I was on my way.
</p>
<p>
	My walk back to the credit union was the longest leg of my trip today.
	I ended up getting lost due to the fact that sreets didn&apos;t go through where they should have and curved in unhelpful directions.
	At one point, I ran across a street sign pole that had become twisted about eighty degrees somehow.
	As a result, I thought that I was moving from Industrial Street to Thirty-Fifth Street, but I was actually doing the reverse.
	I finally made it back to a familiar area, where I saw that Cricket had a stand set up like T-Mobile, and I was going to be passing by the T-Mobile stand again, so I decided to stop and see what was going on.
</p>
<p>
	The Cricket stand had more interesting trinkets than the T-Mobile stand.
	While I much prefer T-Mobile, I only grabed Cricket items.
	These items included a thin, plastic ZTE cup, a thin Cricket backpack, a Cricket lanyard, and a Cricket key chain/bottle opener.
	Inside the store, the representative told me that the stand outside was to celebrate the location&apos;s grand opening; that didn&apos;t make any sense to me though.
	This Cricket location has been open for at least a few months.
	They&apos;re holding a drawing tomorrow for a new Cricket device, so I entered that as well.
	There&apos;s no way that I&apos;ll win, but it doesn&apos;t hurt to enter.
	THat said, if I <strong>*do*</strong> somehow win the drawing, it&apos;ll mean that I&apos;m stuck on Cricket service for at least another six months so that I can get the device unlocked.
	I&apos;m only on Cricket now because I was in Coos Bay, where T-Mobile service isn&apos;t available.
</p>
<p>
	Back at the T-Mobile stand, I inquired as to what their stand was about.
	They claimed that it was simply just about customer appreciation and wasn&apos;t really about anything else.
	As much as I feel that T-Mobile is the least underhanded of the four major United States mobile carriers, I had a strong suspicion that customer appreciation isn&apos;t what this stand was about at all.
	More likely, T-Mobile knew that Cricket would have such a stand at some point and had prepared in an attempt to avoid being shown up.
	Ironically, with T-Mobile&apos;s trinket offerings being so dismal, I think that they failed on that front.
	Luckily for them, I&apos;m not a fan of T-Mobile because of their trinkets, but because of their <abbr title="Global System for Mobile Communications">GSM</abbr> service, prices that are lower than other <abbr title="Global System for Mobile Communications">GSM</abbr> carriers, and the fact that they at least partially are trying to avoid screwing customers over as badly as other carriers.
	I&apos;m practically counting the days until my Cricket service expires and I can switch to T-Mobile service.
</p>
<p>
	Back at the credit union just before closing time, I was able to complete my withdrawal using the newly-issued temporary <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card.
	I almost tried to redeem the bond again before remembering that the credit union legitimately couldn&apos;t deal with bonds.
	Bracing myself so I wouldn&apos;t back down, I asked the new teller that I was speaking to this time to activate my credit card issued by the credit union.
	Once more, they said that it needed to be activated via telephone.
	I explained again that I don&apos;t have telephone service, so they went and checked with their card-activation team to be sure that it was only the debit cards that could be activated in-branch.
	The card team confirmed, so with no other choice (using a telephone is an option reserved for only the most desperate of situations), I explained that in that case, I needed to cancel the card.
	THat got their attention! I legitimately thought that my only option was to cancel the card, but when presented with that option, the teller changed their tune and found another way! They spoke with a representative in the back and they were able to help me activate the card via their own company telephone.
	Was that really so hard? When activating the debit cards in-branch, they use this same solution of having one use the in-branch telephones.
	The representative in the back used the telephone in the back on my behalf, but honestly, I&apos;d have been fine using any telephone provided for this task myself even, so long as they provided the telephone and the telephone service.
	It&apos;s unreasonable to expect everyone to have telephone service, and it should not be a requirement for any service-, support-, or account-related reason.
</p>
<p>
	My mother had merchandise that they had wanted me to return to a couple stores as well, but I knew before even trying that that would be an impossibility.
	My mother hates using cash, much preferring to use their credit and debit cards.
	Returning merchandise when a credit/debit card was used for the initial purchase requires re-swiping the card.
	Just to say that I&apos;d tried, Vanessa and I headed to the closer store that I needed to return things to, but as expected, we couldn&apos;t act without the card present.
	I didn&apos;t even bother going to the distant store though, as after running my own errands, I was exhausted.
	If the errand would have been a success, I would have happily run the errand despite my lack of energy, but when I knew that the errand would end in failure, what would even be the point?
</p>
<p>
	I noticed today that I don&apos;t seem to be as attached to my GT-i9100M as I was my GT-i9300.
	If I recall, I latched onto the GT-i9300 quite quickly, even before touching the device.
	Once I had it in hand, I thought that my mother was going to try to get me to return it, as they were throwing a fit about my having ordered it without talking to them about it first (despite having talked to them directly about it right before ordering it and having been dropping hint after hint about it for at least a couple weeks prior).
	I carried the thing around all day without service, not yet flashing it in case it did need to go back.
	Once I flashed it to run Replicant, it only got better, as I could actually trust the thing with my information and not fear that it&apos;d do everything that it could to steal my privacy.
	Somehow though, despite having more information about how to set Replicant up the way that I like it, this device just isn&apos;t the same.
	It&apos;s kind of sad, seeing as this device is in better shape than my GT-i9300 was near the end.
	The GT-i9300&apos;s camera was blurry and the <abbr title="Secure Digital">SD</abbr> card slot was failing.
	On the other hand, I&apos;ve noticed no damage-related issues with the new (used) GT-i9100M.
	Why is this device not an improvement to me?
</p>
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