Holy crap. I got the Voice Mobility annual report today. I took a look through it out of morbid curiosity.

What a read! in 2006 they burned another $3.3 million USD. That is a lot of dough. To date they have a net operating loss of $46.6 million USD. I still cannot fathom why that company is still operating. I still cannot fathom why any institution or individual would willing invest in them. They are a money pit.

They have an excellent product, but they lack something: a competent sales force.

What company in their right mind would purchase from them now? They have been operating for over 8 years, and haven’t had a single significant sale. If I was in the market to buy, I would steer clear of them.

I still want to see them succeed, but I doubt they will. All that hard work down the drain.

Thursday evening while driving home, I saw an unmarked police truck parked in a driveway. As I passed it, they pulled onto Lampson behind me, and turned onto Bewdley as well. They then pulled a U turn on Bewdley and sped off in the other direction.

Half an hour later I could hear some noise on the street in front of the house, and when I looked there were 3 officers standing there watching a fourth with his dog. The dog was in the scrub bushes across the street and was barking up a storm. Then I saw a guy behind the chain link fence and he was yelling at the dog and swinging a stick at it.

I was thinking that this guy was trying to outrun the dog, then I noticed the guy had a padded arm, and a very bulky jacket. These cops were doing a training exercise on our street.

For the next 10 minutes we watched as the dog apprehended the guy, another officer came in and arrested the suspect, then the suspect broke free and the dog re-apprehended the suspect. It was interesting to see this with such good seats, but I was a little baffled that the police never informed us this was happening in our neighbourhood.

Sure enough at one point a car drove through their exercise and the people in the car looked a little confused.

Also, Sprout watched with great intensity since he loves dogs right now, but if he were older we would have to prevent him from seeing that. I can’t see how explaining why a dog is biting a man on the arm would be easy.

This was all very interesting, yet baffling.

Well, I found a replacement mug for the one I broke. I was pretty stoked about that. I went to order it, noticed it was $10 US. Still not too bad. Shipping cost was $23 USD. Yipes. There was only one shipping option too: expedited. As much as I loved my mug, I will not spend $33 USD on it. Back to being bummed.

Fuck.

That is what I wanted to yell a earlier today.

I had gotten to work late, and my morning was a shambles. I was looking after Sprout while Sox was returning from Vancouver. Sprout was out of sorts, and seemed extremely tired. Looking after himn when he is in that state is taxing and tiring.

I decided to grab a cup of coffee and noticed my mug wasn’t on my desk, meaning that the cleaners had run it through the dishwasher. I went to the cupboard to grab it, and was distracted as I reached for it.

I broke my mug. The cute dog getting himself a snack mug. I loved that mug. I almost want to cry.

It broke when I pulled it off the shelf and another anonymous white mug fell. I tried to stop the anonymous mug but in the process whacked my mug on a shelf, and it broke. Almost in half.

I hate mondays, this one especially. I would much rather be spending the day with Sox and Sprout.

The day progressed, and as I was leaving I noticed a bag of garbage in the parking garage. I didn’t think much more until I stopped at Oak Bay Bikes. As I jumped out of my truck I noticed someone had tossed a bag of tree branches into the back of my truck. Grrr.

The weekend was pretty good. My mom and sister were down and we went for dinner for my birthday. Nothing fancy, but a good place to go with Sprout. Earlier in the day I had tackled the garage and cleaned it up pretty good. I have a few things that need to get transported out to the dump. I’m hoping I can find someone who is already going out there, and tack on our few items.

Sunday was an odd day. I had to work, so I rode to work, did what I needed to, then went for a long ride as a workout. Then it was dinner with K and JJ.

Today is Monday again, and the week has begun anew. Except that I woke up with a sore throat and am feeling gross right now.

Today is the day. 32 now. Sox and Sprout and I have dinner plans tonight with my family, and that is the extent of the celebrations.

Telus Mobility has been my cell provider for several years. Their Island coverage is pretty good and I don’t subscribe for too many features.

They have a self service website which allows me to see my bill.

Last week I wanted to add voicemail to my phone. I thought I remembered seeing something somewhere that said I could do that online. I fired up my browser and used my stored password to open my account. I couldn’t find this ability anywhere so I switched to IE to login and try with that browser.

IE doesn’t store my password so I typed it in. It was incorrect, and after trying a couple more times I locked my account.

Their site says to call them to unlock my account, and it also sends an email with the exact same information.

Eventually I get around to calling them and get put on hold for a very long time. I waited and waited and waited. At least 15 minutes later I got through to someone. I was able to get my transactions done, and then I asked the CSR to unlock my account.

She tells me she can’t tell my my password since they are stored in their DB in an encrypted form.

I didn’t ask about getting my password, I wanted them to unlock my account. She repeats her statements a couple times, but she just doesn’t get it.

Her suggested course of action is to create a new account. ?? WTF. That is a lame workaround. Why can’t the CSR uncheck the box on their screen that says this account is locked? That makes sense to me.

Finally she suggests to me to reset my password by clicking the “forgot your password?” link. I am not sure why I didn’t think of that, but when I tried it, I was prompted with my secret question. A couple clicks later and I was back into my account.

So, here is the procedure. If you lock your Telus Mobility web account, and want to unlock it, forget what their site tells you to do, and pretend you have forgotten your password. Hopefully you will be able to remember the answer to your secret question.

Here is a good samaritan story that has happened to me a few times.

I was in a parking lot and someone has left their car. They left the lights on.  I tell the person, wondering if their car is the kind that automatically turns the lights off.  They inform me that the lights will go off in a couple minutes.

Who invented that lame feature anyway?  Why is it useful?  Every time this happens to me I feel like such a shmuck, and I wonder how many times those people get warned that their lights are on.