Going South...

I had talked with Wendy about going after all the 2001 caches in one day on Saturday night knowing that it really wouldn't be possible as they are scattered all over the state and it would mean a real solid day of hard driving time. I didn't sleep well Saturday night and ended up waking up at what would be 4am but because of the time change, was really 3am. I started playing with GSAK, updated it with all my PQ's that were sitting in my inbox and loaded the whole state of Maine into my GPS as points of interest. I wanted to make sure I had everything I could loaded so I could just meander around after getting the one that I was really after. The southern most 2001 cache was at Fort Mclarey that was my main target. I finally left the house at at 6 and was at the York rest area by 7:30. Luckily I had remembered to hit an ATM in Augusta to cover the tolls as I forget about that some times where as I almost never go that way. Once at the rest area, I used my current coords and loaded a 50 mile radius of caches as waypoints so I could see them without having to be zoomed to the 800ft view on the GPS. The first cache I attempted was a DNF. It was a cache called "The Way Life Should Be" which stinks because you hate to log a DNF on a cache with a name like that. I finally gave up after about 30 minutes of searching. Next was down the road a piece to "Farbucks 13 MMMMMM" which I was able to find. Farbucks was the name of "Starbucks" in the movie Shrek and I was thankful that the cache wasn't actually at a Starbucks location.
My next location was another DNF. It #97 of the 101 Dalmations series and was missing. There were a lot of DNF's before mine so I'm not sure why I wasted 10 minutes looking. You just never know whether those folks were missing something or not I guess.

Being only 1 for 3, I didn't have a good feeling for how the rest of the day was going to go. It's different caching in an area where you don't know any of the cachers or their hides so I felt like my geosenses were off a little. I decided to go right to the fort next as I was sure that might be something other than a micro. On the way, I traded texts with Chadd Roper (CARoperPhotography on the site) and we decided to meet at a cache when I was done with the fort. I arrived at the grounds and ended up running into another cacher and his son while I was searching. He had seen a GPS in my hand and asked if I was caching. His name was Jackmatt on the site and we had a quick chat about caching, numbers, and things that limit caching time. They walked off and I found the cache only to discover a full log. I found a page with some space and left my mark. Here are some of the views...




After finding this one, Chad was going for Nubble Trouble and that's where we planned on meeting. Getting there was a little slow as I had to go through a detour as well as getting behind some Mass people who were out for what appeared to be a nice slow coastal drive. When I pulled in Chad was parked right in front of the cache which was barely hidden so it was quite the easy find. We signed the log, chatted for couple minutes and I met his girlfriend Emily and their new dog Teddy. They took off and I grabbed some pictures before heading out myself.



I wasn't aware that you couldn't actually get to the lighthouse itself as its on an island. The only way across is restricted for care takers and involves riding in this little single person cable car...Not sure I'd want to take that ride.




This is the view from the "Beach Call". The cache was hidden near a payphone but that's all I'm saying.


After doing a bunch of Chadd's caches in Kennebunk, I went to this final one of his for the day. It was a DNF primarily because I got tired of looking while everyone was watching me. It's located at a very busy intersection but pretty cool to stop and look at. Apparently it had actually seen some action at one point or another as it has some bullet holes in it.


On my way back, I had to make sure I stopped in Scarborough to get the Centrum Challenge cache. Having completed the challenge using the Stud Mill Road series on July 3rd, I figured I had better get this now as I don't know when I'll get down this way again anytime soon. After logging that, I hopped on the turnpike and kept on trucking until I got home. I very rarely do this, but with not another car on the road, I thought I'd do it just quickly...I love my car, even if with the stupid check engine light on. It's just an emissions sensor but has no effect on performace so no worries.

Recognition 2...What's Wrong with people?

Again today, someone felt the need to talk to one my supervisors after I dealt with them...The sad part about the interaction with this customer is there wasn't a definite fix for the issue he was having with his phone. If it were me, I certainly would be feeling different if someone gave me two quick sets of steps to do on my phone and told me it might not fix the issue. The guys problem was that his phone when sending picture messages was coming back failed and aside from the error message, he was seeing symbols all over the screen. His best description was that some of the symbols looked like the Transformers logo. My initial reaction was to tell him to destroy the phone as quickly as possible as I wouldn't knowingly want a Decepticon out there plotting against us humans. I basically told him I've never heard of the issue before, told him I could help him through the steps to try and fix it, and let him know that if what we did didn't resolve the issue, that we'd have to open a trouble ticket and have some techs look at it. He was on the phone at the time so we couldn't troublshoot it and said he try what I told him and call back if neccessary.

Corey Masterson!!

I just spoke with Tim, who is the director of a 4000 seat call center (in the pulp and paper industry). He gave Corey very high praise in regards to his professionalism and courteous service. Tim's words: "Corey's service was through the roof.....he was honest and got right to the point".

Way to go Corey.......another promoter in our court!


Really, I'm only doing my job but if enough people keep thinking I'm providing some sort of spectacular service, I can last long enough here to find something out there that pays better or something I actually enjoy doing. Why aren't there jobs that pay you to geocache?

Recognition

I really don't get why people feel the need to do more than say thanks for doing my job. This was sent out today after a customer asked to speak with a supervisor when I got done helping her. It came out to the Customer Service email address from Kelli Hurley as she was the only supervisor available at the time.

Christine wanted to be sure we recognized Corey Masterson for the excellent customer service he provided her. Christine could not say enough wonderful things about her interaction with Corey. She had an difficult issue that Corey was able to solve! She said he was diligent, professional, and worked all his resources to find the answers she needed! She wanted to be sure we understood how lucky we are to have Corey at Verizon Wireless. I could not agree more!

Thank you, Corey, for making this customer a Verizon Wireless promoter!

The situation was something anyone could have handled if they had just made a phone call for the customer yet two people didn't take the time. She had dealt with two reps previously and didn't get her situation taken care of as they just quickly looked at her account without getting into details. As nice as it is, its really not neccessary.

Droids are coming

After seeing the commercials during football yesterday I was completely impressed with the outright attack on AT&T that Verizon is beginning. Before, it seemed like all the commercials were just plain about Verizon and how great the network is. The lastest series promoting the upcoming Droid phone that paired up with Google is one of them while the other is a play on AT&T's "There's an App for that" with "There's a Map for that" and are in my eyes a couple of the greatest attack commercials out there. The Droid commercial points out the flaws in the iphone with the following statements:

iDon't Have a real keyboard.
iDon't Run simultaneous apps.
iDon't Take 5 megapixel pictures.
iDon't Allow customization.
iDon't Run Widgets.
iDon't Allow open development.
iDon't Take pictures in the dark.
iDon't Have interchangable batteries.

The commercial follows all of this up with "Everying iDon't, Droid Does..." Pretty cool add if you ask me. Also found these little pokes out there as well...
Looking for images of the phone should be as simple as Googling the phone but who knows what has actually leaked out there. There are a couple Droid phones shown but they may not neccessarily be the version that Verizon is going to launch. I seriously doubt that the iphone can be killed as people just want the ability to say "i have an iphone." The same thing happened with ipods and still goes on today. I guess I just don't understand wanting a phone just for it's name rather than what it does and what its capable of. Keep an eye out. I'm willing to bet the phone will be out sometime before Black Friday to draw people in....

No Signal

Montages are always funny and I love seeing work related stuff like this. I particularly like the clip from Joy Ride: Dead Ahead for some reason.