The Law of Getting Results By Hanging Up

I have generally found that if you get no satisfaction from a person whose job it is to help people (government help line, software tech support), backing politely out of the conversation and calling back (thereby getting you connected to someone else) is often the best way of solving the problem.

The most recent demonstration of the truth of this law occurred today when we attempted to upgrade our UPS WorldShip software. After actually upgrading the program, Drew tried for about 20 minutes to get a UPS tech support person to help migrate the 3-MB customer database from the previous version (and different machine) to the new version (and machine) with No Joy™.

I called about 30 minutes later and was breezed through the operation, which was a Good Thing™ for various and sundry reasons.

Cheers...

Too much time...

Putting together invoices today took entirely too much time: about an hour for two invoices.

Then again, this client is fairly demanding in the paperwork department. Each task is associated with an authorization form of some kind. Interpretation requires both an authorization and a time sheet.

In the end, though, I can only smile at the invoiced amount. Next month's "nut" is made. Payment of bills is assured.

* * *Galina and I went downtown today to sign paperwork to refinance the house. The refinance will take care of the loan on the store, which we only realized about a month or so ago was coming due as a balloon payment this month. That's a mistake that will not happen again.

We'll also have some left over to consolidate expensive debt. If we play our cards right, we'll actually have to cough up less money overall to make ends meet. That means if we continue to labor at the oars in the manner in which we have have become accustomed, we might actually accumulate some dinero over the next few years.

That would definitely be a welcome development.

Cheers...