August 22 - 29, 2024 (Thursday - Thursday)
The ''FucFone'' Saga

...All because I was trying to get a new phone number-- and only because ''Goo-G00'' refused to accept the current number in order to register a new email address/account for myself  (a ''requirement'' they've established to be 100% completely unavoidable!)  --my ''phone service'' went through all various cycles of hell and not back and virtually destroyed every bit of confidence I'd had left in  ''Tracfone!

The problems began on  Thursday Morning (Aug. 22),  around 9:30, when I began having serious connectivity problems after after having used their stupid ''Automated'' service to request & effect a phone number change (something I knew full well even then that I should not have done without the assistance of a 'LIVE' human on the other end of the line... but... ''impatience'' will get you every time)!

Ahead of getting around to detailing my frustrating & soul-crushing dilemma regarding this infuriating & lengthy disruption, I sought to hopefully get some insight and a potential solution by posting my issue on the ''Tracfone'' Sub-Reddit just shy of 3:30  Monday Morning (Aug. 26),  (which subsequently got purged by [one of] the Sub's ''moderators''), whereby I'd without intention covered many of the generalized details which fairly sufficiently captured the scope of what I'd had to endure during the multi-day stretch (as reproduced in-full directly below):

Thursday (four days ago) I'd requested a Phone Number exchange [via the "AUTOMATED" process, like a dummy, instead of going through the process with a "Human" on the other end], and as soon as I did, the phone operation went haywire.

I spent LITERALLY SEVEN (7) HOURS (unbroken, except for getting cut-off after the first three hours) in Customer Service Chat [on phone before moving onto PC after getting cut-off the first time] trying to get the Service restored.

By the end of it, I was informed that my SIM was likely faulty and needed to request a replacement. I was told to expect a call from "Corporate Department" who would arrange my getting a replacement, but no call arrived.

I called back the next morning (for some reason, unbeknownst to me then, I was able to make outgoing calls, and somehow was able to receive "authentication code" texts from Tracfone... but absolutely NOTHING ELSE worked) and I explained to the Customer Service reps here (again, I went through two of them) that I was supposed to have received a call from "Corporate Department" to get a replacement SIM and never got the return call: instead, the first rep I spoke with claimed that the SIM wasn't the issue and wanted to "RESET" everything on his end, insisting & reassuring me that NONE of my settings would be affected in any way.

When this "reset" didn't work, I had to deal with the next rep, who, eventually (after I'd spent all my time REPEATEDLY telling ALL of them that I didn't begin experiencing these problems until after I'd initiated the Phone Number switch) decided to look into my Tracfone account (which I could not access myself, because NONE of the apps would work on my phone), and she returned with the claim that "I" had "Used Up" *ALL* of my reserves!

And by "ALL", we're talking SEVERAL THOUSAND MINUTES (I cannot recall exactly how many, but the last time I'd calculated it out of curiosity it totaled about FOUR DAYS worth of talk -- so we're looking at least at 4,000+ talk minutes easy!) and OVER 10,000 TEXTS! Plus I'd still had just under 2.5 GB of DATA remaining!

It almost reached screaming match responses from me as she kept trying to insist that I'd "consumed" (her term) all of these NETWORK talk/text credits & data in a mere Thanos Snap and everything registered "ALL ZEROs" across the board!

She kept wanting to argue that I couldn't possibly have so much accumulation of credits because someone had apparently never explained to her how "Pay-As-You-Go" smartphone plans work, to where I even had to get access to a PC and read back to her DIRECTLY OFF THE TRACFONE WEBSITE that and minutes/texts/data that remained "unused" during the active Service Activation Period "DO NOT EXPIRE"... and that I've been accumulating these credits since I'd first began service with Tracfone way back in APRIL of 2013 -- and I barely talk on the phone longer than three (3) hours every other month... if that! And if I send 10 texts a week, THAT'S A LOT for me... and I might receive MAYBE the equivalent of double that, because of those obnoxious "animated gifs" a family member keeps sending me practically every day!

So we stayed arguing, with her constantly trying to brush me off by saying she had "spoken with [so-&-so]" and kept trying to dismiss my problem by still trying to insist that somehow "I" had "consumed" *ALL* of those credits in literally a blink of an eye, even as I scrolled through and read off every call I'd ever made or received on my phone, going back as early as three years ago, showing her that all of that activity even compressed together would barely crack the surface of all of the credits I'd seen blipped out of existence.

I kept insisting that, rather than repeatedly telling me that she'd "talked with" somebody, she transfer me to someone else's department where they did have the "Tools" she claimed she didn't have so that my problem(s) could be worked on, because I insisted that there's definitely SOMEBODY in that network who can review those records and pull up the evidence of what I'd had in my account prior to my number switch that did not transfer over to the new number!

Eventually, she did transfer me to someone, and I had to go through the whole lengthy & frustrated explanation again. After spending another three (3) hours going over this, he said he'd sent some sort of a request or report or something (can't remember exactly what he said) to have someone investigate, and in the meantime he'd restore "SOME" of my access credits (500 Min. + something like 400 texts and 1 or 1.5 GB data) just to get me re-connected again... which was confirmed when I checked my account on PC.

He'd also explained that the reason I was able to make outgoing calls was because the phone was using Wi-Fi in lieu of Mobile Data. Now that I was made aware of this, I proceeded to locate on my phone where to switch off "Wi-Fi Calling" in order to confirm I had Mobile Network access. Again, the phone went stupid on me, NOTHING AT ALL would connect.

I decided to wait it out over the weekend, hoping in that time things would clear-up... but STILL nothing, not until I re-established Wi-Fi connectivity, which I did reluctantly, but I needed to access the text feature. But now, on Wi-Fi, I can access APPS and WEBPAGES... but again, *NOTHING* related to "Mobile Network" functions! -- not even "Wi-Fi Calling"!

At this point, I had to check again, just to "make sure" -- but against even semi-hopeful anticipation, I was smacked with ANOTHER bombshell....... the "Grace Period" credits that third Customer Service rep on Friday had placed in my account WERE *ALSO* DELETED COMPLETELY!!!

So I'm going to speak with their in-store representative at "Walmart" when they open later this morning, and either we're going to get this situation FIXED & CORRECTED before the store closes (because I swear, I WILL wait around in there for the entire day, if I have to!) ...or I'm simply going to cash in my chips after this decade-long run and kick Tracfone to the ditch and go with SOMEBODY ELSE'S Pay-Go service!

I've had way too many issues with Tracfone too often... and this just may be the drip that made the tub overflow! This is ridiculous!!!

Who do I talk with about this? (Someone who can track this lost information down and RESTORE what was taken from me!)

Just an hour prior to that mad rant, I was engaged in a mad scramble trying to learn how to ''recover'' my text conversation thread with Mimi, which when trying to clear a failed & unsent ''TesTexT'' before trying to check to see if I could still be able to connect via Wi-Fi, as the then most recent ''fix'' seemed to suggest, I'd inadvertently deleted our entire text conversation history (and of course with no possible way to recover any of it outside of having installed a ''storage/recovery'' app or an active ''Cloud'' account) -- so all of the back-&-forth between us from ''July 12'' of Last Year (2023) onward have been completely ''Thanos'ed''!

My inner urges kept trying to entice me to venture to the ''Little-54'' Walmart location even long before I left the apartment at 10:00, but I was determined to first swing by the more direct & convenient ''Ridge-19'' location instead.

Upon arrival, and inquiring whether their ''Tracfone'' representative was currently at this location or the other one, I was informed by the Electronics' staffer that they'd not had a Rep from Tracfone for the past several months, which was further confirmed when I requested that he make call to the other location, whereby they too expressed that they were similarly unstaffed.

As a last measure, I'd asked if I could request that he could be on hand to serve as an ''alternative phone'' connection if I stayed there to get try to get Tracfone ''Customer Service'' to try to figure this mess out one final time -- before I'd remembered that I still could not have connected with Customer Service anyway, as **NOTHING** on my phone was working. The staffer actually did me one better and permitted me to connect & work with Customer Service using their store's phone at the Counter.

I was beginning to feel a little bit stupid, as I'd observed my ''LTE'' bars lighting up strong on my phone just as I was beginning engaging in conversation with the first Representative  (yes... yet again, I had to end up going though several of them in one sitting, and again as a result of being ''disconnected'' from the first one),  but as it turned out, it was all a fluke, so I was put through the ''troubleshooting'' processes all phukking over again!!!

After being disconnected from the first Rep after an hour of the store phone glued to my left ear, the second Rep tried what he could, then fairly quickly passed me up the conveyor to the ''next level,'' where the Lady here seemed to have a genuine concern in trying to rectify my situation, including/especially wanting to address the issue of my vanished Minutes/Texts... and after several attempts of trying to break through the barrier of the technicians whom she said were VERY busy, she'd managed to come back with ''Good News'' that the ''Lost'' Minutes/Texts had been ''restored.''

I was just ecstatic to see some semblance of my missing Minutes/Texts restored: I was actually more ''relieved'' and a bit in disbelief honestly, as at this point I'd about resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going see any of it restored -- so much so in fact that part of what led to my posting the above recap on ''Reddit'' was the fact that I was already searching out various ''alternatives'' to Tracfone for replacement consideration. I did note that I'd been re-credited drastically reduced ''Texts''-- down to about 20% of what I'd actually lost --but I chalked this up to the fact that I'd expressed no huge concern about reclaiming quite so many Text credits anyway, as my Major and Primary Concern was the restoration of my lost ''Talk Minutes.''

It was also during this uncomfortably confident ''re-established connection'' phase, when my phone/text operations had seemingly been permanently restored, that I quickly took advantage of the situation, as a ''just-in-case'' precaution, and finally managed to secure & establish my new ''Gmail'' account.

In total: the time I'd spent on the phone going through this final round of restoration attempts was Two-and-a-Half Hours; factoring in the totals of the prior Phone/PC chat sessions back at the apartment, we're looking somewhere close in the vicinity of a literal ''Half-a[n Earth]-Day'' of trying to hammer this maddening pressure cooker situation back into shape!

Immediately after I was (still somewhat cautiously) satisfied that the problem had finally been rectified, I made a quick trip through the Grocery section for a couple of ''Tony's'' pizzas, a couple of cans of pineapple, a red onion, and a box of what had become my favorite tea from when I used to work at my first place of employment in the Region: Bigelow  ''Constant Comment'' -- (I'd actually had every intention of obtaining a box of Lipton orange pekoe, but passed on the idea when I couldn't readily locate it on the shelves anywhere, and I didn't feel too much like looking too terribly hard for it). I then dropped those items off at the apartment and proceeded to collect my latest  ''Amazon Vine''  deliveries which I'd left sitting for quite some time.

A few hours later, I shut off Wi-Fi to test whether a text from my Mother could be sent through unaffected, which it seemed it did, so I followed that with one sent to ''Sister Vikki, along with an old snapshot to confirm that I'd been the one who'd sent the earlier ''TesTexT'' back when I'd first believed my connectivity issue had solved; then in the early Evening I composed a ''Test Text'' for ''Mimi,'' comprised of a list of 'device' & 'attachment' settings (which included a still image from the video I'd recorded of our most recent encounter) and other related technical information pertaining to its composition & transmission. Having not heard anything back from either Martha or Mimi, I sent out follow-up emails to both of them around 2:30  Tuesday Morning (Aug. 27)  including a screen-cap of the message & picture I'd texted to Mimi attached to her email, then at 9:00 sent a similar follow-up & request for acknowledgment of receipt to Vikki's email.

While going out to discard my ''packaging trash'' and re-cover my motorcycle later in the morning, I brought the Tape Measure with me so that I could finally get a  precise  length/height measurement of the papaya corpse I'd uprooted, and it came out to almost exactly thirteen (13) feet, or when converted for International Measurements, a tad bit more than 3.95 Meters -- almost exactly what I'd ''guestimated'' at the time of it's extraction... which is something of a minor feat for me, as I'm typically horrifically inadequate at judging/guessing lengths & distances at a glance. I went back out a bit later in the Afternoon to toss the roto-chicken scraps & container, and during this time I decided to test the Fig trees for their sturdiness, and though they possess quite significantly more resistance to uprooting I still managed to extract one of the pair and toss it in the dumpster, leaving only the other Fig and the Hibiscus to rip out before dismantling the garden set-up completely.

After more waiting for any responses to my emails, I took the next step of re-submitting the screen caps of the texts I'd sent, with the inclusion of a brief ''explanatory'' note in the text typing field & a request for a reply, only this time sending them from my email accounts to their Carrier Network direct addresses-- (as retrieved via the ''FreeCarrierLookup.com'' service) --first sending to my Mother at about 20:45, then, as it was nearing 21:00, finding Mimi's direct MMS address and re-sending the text screen snippet I'd sent earlier to her email address. I'd next intended to do similarly with my Bio-Sister's account, only to discover that I'd never had an email for her on-record... so instead I typed out a rather lengthy text that took the better portion of about a half-hour explaining the situation regarding the earlier Test Text submissions and trying to get her to acknowledge the changes and to reach out to Martha to get her to likewise be aware of the reach-out attempts and to update her/their Contacts accordingly.

That distraction must've caused it to slip my mind that my original intention for Vikki's follow-up transmission was to send a direct-delivery MMS image of the text chat snapshot from her Conversation thread, and I'd inadvertently begun working on a second email message, only this time with the text page screen cap included as an attachment.

At around 21:50, as I was partway through the process of composing that email for Vikki (from my phone's keyboard) the familiar applied alert tone of the ''Gmail'' account which I'd established solely for the purpose of screening & arranging ''Pussy Eating Dates'' sounded... which could only mean that I'd just received an email message from Mimi. But since it was in fact an email send, it would not necessarily equate that it had been sent in response to any of my other contact efforts... that is until several minutes later, after 22:05, when the ''Call/Text'' ringtone I'd assigned to her number announced her connection attempts, and in all of these messages was the request that I give her a direct phone call.

After I'd gotten the email to Vikki rifled off, right about 22:15, I called Mimi and confirmed that I'd indeed been the one who had been sending the prior contact attempt messages. She explained that from her perspective she'd been concerned about the legitimacy of those texts as they had been automatically sent directly to the ''spam'' folder (which I'd not considered as a possibility), and then, because of the ''imagery'' of my face buried inside her naked thighs that I'd submitted to her with those messages, she was concerned that my phone might've actually been ''hacked'' (another careful presumption that I  really  fell short of considering as a reasonable possibility). I figured that this might partially explain why getting replies to my attempts was like shearing snakes for their wool, but that still would not have accounted for why I'd not been receiving any responses to those messages sent via my official email accounts. Mimi and I stayed connected for over a half-hour until she said she had to address a call she'd received from her sister, and said she'd call back.

During the anticipated return call wait period, I'd realized just shy of Midnight that I'd inadvertently sent Vikki that latest attachment from the ''Wrong'' email account (the one reserved for my ''Business/Responsibility-related'' contacts, instead of the one set aside exclusively for ''Family/Friends''). With no way to ''recall it back'' once it was sent, I'd opted to resend the same message & attachment, adding a few extra words to the mix to make it appear as if some previously overlooked information was now being included, and emphasized the  ''proper''  email address to which I'd expected to receive any replies by providing a stand-out link, and this time successfully incorporating the screen cap image into the body of the composition, rather than attaching it as a separate download link.

I'd received no ''callback'' from Mimi since she ended the call with me; and I still received No Contact Outreaching from anyone else throughout the entire Day of  Wednesday (Aug. 28),  up until the time I was awakened by my nightly ''eyedrops reminder'' clock alarm which I keep set at 23:45.

Earlier during the day, having become comfortable with the progress of the healing of my skin-scraping operation, I attempted another go-round with the disgusting unsightly blemish taking-up unwanted residence on my Mons, figuring that I might this time be able better control and considerably mitigate any ''outside-the-[intended]-bounds'' damage by applying duct tape surrounding the spot. The effort left a lot to be desired, and I'm beginning to consider that I'm just not using a course-enough grade of sandpaper to effectively break & strip away skin: I'm thinking my next attempt at removal may entail ''roughing/ripping it up'' with a needle to give the sandpaper something ''tear away'' at... hopefully.

Spent much of the Post-Midnight hours of  Thursday Morning (Aug. 29)  addressing & trying to sort my mess of chaotically uncategorized files on my computer, having particular difficulty with my photographs collection, as my ''put-it-off'' impatient behavior had resulted in my having lost/misplaced several of them (the ones relating to my Pussy-Eating escapades in Honolulu in particular) or discovering that many others had been ''incorrectly titled/attributed'' according to the various ''time/date naming'' methods I employ. During this headache, as a result of trying to relocate the picture of ''Patty'' (a.k.a. ''Kitty''), I went back through the Journal archives in hopes of confirming the Date/Time of our Cunnilingus-offering encounter, I found that the ''Folder Date'' matched... but the memory of certain details had revealed information I'd either forgotten or had gotten distorted over the course of Time -- particularly my post-belief that she had visited me from a residence somewhere perhaps in/around the Ke'eaumoku St. & farther ''Diamond Head'' areas, but had in recorded fact had come to visit me from across the  ''Windward''  side of the Island (which helped me to recall that she'd mentioned routinely feeding feral cats in or near that area, clearly resulting in the confusion), and that she was uncomfortably LOUD when reaching her  ''Stress Release''  breaking point.

After all of this time of stressing over the fact that I couldn't get anyone outside of this penis-shaped mental institution to respond back to my contact attempts, it finally dawned upon me around 8:00 that I could call the Roanoke City Police Department and have them conduct a  ''Welfare Check''  on my Momz -- so I called at 8:20 (first trying to see if I could use the ''iRoanoke'' phone app for that before searching for their number), and conveniently had forgotten her House Number, having recorded all other personal information pertaining to her location EXCEPT THAT ONE (thought I'd had it memorized)... so I had to pull-up ''Goo-Goo Maps'' to get the precise location; but after mentioning a couple of times the name of the Church her house sits next to, the Dispatcher whom I was speaking with said she knew exactly where I was referring, and said she'd send someone out there following a series of personal questions about identity, habits, etc.

When it was approaching 15:00 and I still had not heard word back from Roanoke P.D. regarding the requested wellness check, I re-contacted them, informing them that I'd still not received any follow-up calls from either my Mother or from the Local P.D. My call was then transferred to the woman who claimed to be the responding Sergeant who'd conducted the check who also wondered why I'd never received any sort of a callback, but she'd assured me that she'd checked all around the house and received no responses, and also noted that there was no accumulation of mail in the mailbox (thus confirming that Martha had indeed followed through on her mentioning that she'd intended to surrender the Post Office Box due to their now exorbitant rental rates), which now affirmed to me that the hesitation I'd felt toward the idea of attempting contact by sending a letter or post card through the mail service was justified.

Because of the answers I'd received, I inquired if it might be possible to provide them with her number and have them see if she could be contacted that way, which they'd agreed to, and shortly responded back that they were in fact able to obtain contact and passed along the message that I'd wanted her to check her ''email'' (since at this point I still wasn't confident that she was receiving phone texts or wouldn't know how to retrieve them if they had been automatically re-routed to the ''spam'' folder).

Once I'd had that confirmation from the Police that all was okay, I immediately sent out a text asking her to contact me directly by call. She explained to me that she had indeed been receiving those texts, but due to how what I'd written could've been perceived as ambiguous, she did not comprehend that I'd been trying to inform her the entire time that I'd been trying to alert her to the fact that I'd acquired a new number I'd wanted to update her on, and that she'd thought I'd wanted her to message Gwyndolyn about the texts I'd been sending to her (my sister's) phone, but said she'd wanted to wait until receiving a call from Gwyn before mentioning it to her.

It also didn't help matters any when my Mother likewise revealed to me that she'd still retained the two previous numbers I'd been associated with in her Contacts list, and had been trying to respond to me using those dead numbers instead of replying directly to the texts I'd been flooding her with.

Because of issues & complications such as these and other speculative scenarios in situations such as this, I explained that this was precisely why I was insistent on obtaining contact via Text Messaging  first -- to avoid any possibilities that she might [very likely] have rejected the call from an ''unknown number'' outright without answering to investigate... just as she'd admitted she was almost poised to do when the Police Department placed their call to her (which would've been further aided by the fact that when I'd asked the P.D. Sgt. how the incoming call would appear in the Caller-ID, she assured me that it would show displayed as  ''City of Roanoke,''  which my Mother assured me it most certainly did not).

But all of this still raises the question re: why neither Gwyndolyn nor Vikki have been able-- or chosen --to respond back to my contact attempts, or why, in Gwyn's case specifically, she [wouldn't? couldn't? refused to?] pass my information & concerns along to our Momz after I'd sent her a text Tuesday Night giving her those very instructions, especially when taking into account that our Momz mentioned that Gwyndolyn had called her early this Morning around 7:00, when she was leaving the house for a haircut appointment which lead to keeping her out of the house until the Afternoon, thus coinciding with the ''No Contact Made'' visit by the P.D. Sgt.

But somehow, during all of this madness, a tiny bit of a ''bright spot'' could be highlighted:

...Back on  Sunday, Aug. 25 (at approx. 19:30 -- as suggested according to the ''browsing history'' record of activity in ''Firefox'')  I'd finally managed to unlock the secret to SUCCESSFULLY and EFFECTIVELY circumnavigate that infuriating ''modal'' pop-up that ''Who?Tube'' keeps trying to force me to ''acknowledge'' unaccepted & refuse-to-admit guilt that continually tries to lock me out of accessing their site though my registered account! The previous day/night/whenever (quite a few hours earlier, regardless), out of pure frustration, I'd decided to call-up a ''drop-down menu'' in order to examine the ''Page Source'' to see if there was a way to clear away the modal blocking wall ''element,'' and I discovered in the menu an option from one of my two installed ''ad blocking'' programs  (''uBlock Origin'')  presented,  (''Block element...'')  as an active option, so I tried it on the ''pop-up text window'' portion of the page... and it SEEMED to work, though not entirely, as pages on the site would still lock me out from accessing ANY of their features on occasion, though the frustrating issue was still not quite as frequently intrusive as when the text window was there, but it remained problematic nonetheless. It wasn't until the above noted incident where out of another bout of grief with this nonsense I'd decided to test whether I could eliminate that ''background'' modal as well, in all genuine honesty not expecting any sort of an effective remedy... but to my surprise, it not only worked, but  continued  to work, with the ONLY drawback being that OCCASIONALLY, once playback has started, it will spontaneously shut itself off after the first few introductory seconds, but that's the only irritating side-effect, and it's so minor as to not even warrant a mention.

I also became aware just within the last day of this typing that the howling and door-scratching flea bag in the apartment next to mine, has finally learned to chill-the-phuk-out and recognize that the ''Humans'' are going to periodically leave it to his own company.

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