new cubicles and other changes

This week, at work, my group moved back into our old space, after having it basically gutted and refurbished. I mentioned last week that I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. Now that I’ve been working in it for a few days, I guess it’s not too bad. I still don’t like it, really; the cubicles are smaller, the walls are lower, and there’s not much storage space. But I’m getting used to it.

Overall, it’s been a rough week at work. We started using a new process this week that I designed and wrote (mostly) on my own, and we had some hiccups. I was hoping things would have smoothed out by the end of the week, but we’ve still got some issues that I’ll need to tackle next week.

One other random issue we’ve been having at work, which has been getting worse over time, is that Verizon cell phone reception keeps getting worse. It’s obviously a saturation issue, since it’s fine early in the morning, then gets worse over the course of the day. My cell phone is basically unusable by noon. It seems like AT&T works better, so now I’ve starting looking into switching carriers. That would be a big step for me; Verizon is the only cell carrier I’ve ever had, going back to when they were Bell Atlantic Mobile.

I’ve successfully made a few changes to long-standing accounts recently. (See previous posts about YouTube TV, my renter’s insurance, and my new Marcus account.) So that’s emboldened me to look at even more stuff, like maybe switching some stuff around with my phone plan. The first thing I’ve decided to do, finally, is to park my old home phone number. Verizon cut the copper in my building several years ago, so I switched to their wireless home phone service. I’ve had no problems with it, but at this point, I’m really not using it. But I still don’t want to give up the home phone number that I’ve had for 30 years.

So I’m moving it to a service called Park My Phone. They have several options for what you can do with your number there. I’m choosing their $6/month call forwarding service, so I can continue to get calls on the number. I initiated that today. It may take a week or three to complete. I’m pretty sure Verizon will put up some stumbling blocks. I did remove one myself, by logging into the Verizon site and unlocking the number, so the transfer won’t be blocked. I’m sure there are other weird little details that might get in the way.

I initially tried moving the number to Google Voice, which wouldn’t have had any monthly fee, just a $20 one-time fee, but that didn’t work. (And, Google being Google, there’s really no one to reach out to for help.)

Once I’ve got the home number off the Verizon account, then I’m going to think about moving the cell number to either AT&T or Consumer Cellular (which uses the AT&T network, I think).

Consumer Cellular actually has a wireless home phone service similar to Verizon’s, so I thought about moving both home and cell lines to them, but I decided it was really time to retire the home phone. It’ll feel weird not having an old-fashioned phone in the apartment, but I guess I’ll get used to it, the same way I’m getting used to a cubicle with no bookshelf and only two drawers for storage.

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