Heh.

I'm in the Nationals player program three times.

First, as a UPA staff member:
On the roster:	In our team history:

Whoo!

At some point, I'm going to have more content (as in total number of posts, who knows about the total number of characters) than the UPA site. Doyle thinks I'm crazy for even caring.

Spent pretty much the whole day getting things organized to leave for Nationals (er, the Ultimate Players Association Club Championships) tomorrow. Kris managed, without costing us a $100 change fee, to move our flights from today at 6:20am to tomorrow at 9:05am. Early, but not painful. Surely I can get up at 7:00am.

Uh... yeah.

I am, oddly enough, not nervous about the tournament. My lack of nervousness may be due to distance: I'm not in Florida yet. Or the fact that the last day before a vacation is always ridiculously full of last-minute (last-second?) things to do before we leave. Laundry, clean the kitchen, buy $100 worth of gu and clif shots, clean the bathrooms, pay the bills, move the car into the garage, buy shorts for everyone on the team for the third time, run to the bank, hand off the house key, print up the Dummy's Guide to Krikitt Downs, show the house sitter where the dog food is, finish up client projects, prep the computer for offline development, backup the travelling computer, and think, "Oh. Em. Gee. I'm going to Nationals!"

At this point, I'm almost all packed and ready to go. I'm one underwear short of being completely packed. And that's the pair that goes into the carry-on with the cleats and red jersey, in case my bag is, uh, diverted to St. Louis.

Come on, laundry!

I know for a fact that all y'all are jealous now:

Uh huh. Yep. You are.

Well, this is going to be a pain in the rear, so I might as well start documenting it.

This is a documentary post and not interesting at all!

Kris purchased new phones for us last February or so. He did so through the Oracle company account, because the rates are so much lower than the rates individuals can get. As in, yes, you are being screwed by the wireless phone companies.

If you look at that date, you'll notice that it is after the announcement of the Cingular/ATT wireless merger which started in October of last year. No matter, Oracle's sweet wireless deal was with ATT Wireless, and Cingular is honoring those rates.

But, not really.

I have an okay rate for voice calls, but one that sucks (big time) for "modern phone features" such as text messaging or, say, picture messages. Lots of minutes, but heavy charges for SMS and MMS.

So, before heading off to Florida for Nationals tomorrow, I figured I'd call Cingular to add their unlimited media bundle, mostly so that I could send a cabillion pictures to my flickr account.

So, I call up Cingular, and ask to add the Media Net Unlimited bundle. Basically, lots of pictures, lots of text messages, and some additional web bandwidth, all for less than the overage charges I paid last month.

After about 10 minutes of confusion, the company representative realizes that what I'm asking for on the Cingular website (which is where any user will go if she tries to go to the attwireless.com website), and that my phone is a converted ATT account.

Um. Okay. Honor what's on the website.

Nope, she can't do that. She can offer me 100 text messages + 20 pictures for $8/month. No, I want the 1000 text messages and unlimited photo messages for $20/month.

Here's where the fun begins.

No, she can't do that because the account is an old ATT account. Fine, where's the web page that lists the packages? "On the web." Okay, what page? "On the website." Ding this is going to get me nowhere.

The website says I can sign up for this Media Net bundle, this is what I want to do. No, you can't do that because it's an ATT account. Look, ATT Wireless doesn't exist anymore, I want the company who sends me a bill every month to honor the bundle it offers on its website and let me sign up for it.

No, because it's an ATT phone.

The woman is retarded.

At one point, she attempted to talk over me. I kept talking, and in the middle of the conversation asked, "Are you going to let me finish my explanation, or are you going to continue trying to talk over?" She stopped talking, but never truly answered my questions.

Apparently she became more frustrated with the situation than I was.

The woman hung up on me.

So, now I'm frustrated. I can't add a Cingular media bundle because the phone is with ATT Wireless, but ATT Wireless doesn't exist anymore. I can't change the phone plan because I have to go through Oracle to change it from ATT to Cingular, but I can't do that because Kris doesn't work at Oracle any longer.

I keep thinking this system is completely messed up. I can't believe people actually think this system is working. This is all about screwing over the individual.

Kris: I win! I win!

Me: In the poker tournament?

Kris: Yeah. I'm good, you know.

Me: Sure, when you beat up on the beginners.

Kris: True that.

Well, after thinking it was well past time for a hair cut, one for which I paid more than $8, I finally went for a haircut at a hair salon. True to form, however, rather than gathering recommendations from friends and spending two hours having it done, when Cal cancelled lunch on Wednesday at 11:30, I stood up, walked downstairs, turned the corner and wandered into the hair salon below our offices.

Pure laziness at its best.

I walked in, asked if anyone was available, plunked my butt down in the nearest chair, and pointed to the middle short hair picture on the page the hair style book opened up to.

Yeah, I spend a lot of time worrying about my hair.

In reality, I was hoping for a haircut like the amazingly wonderful haircut I had in Hong Kong, back in 2001. Now that was a great haircut. It took two hours, with a 45 minute hair wash to start it off. Kris was given porn to read while he waited for the haircut to end. When it was all over, we were late for the wedding. But it was worth it. I need to find the pictures to prove it...

Anyway, so I have a haircut that looks a lot like Eris' do. The cut looks really cute on Eris, and I was hoping it would look at least somewhat okay on me.

As the stylist was finishing up with the cut (she did the whole thing scissor-free, using a razor to scrape all of my hair short), she asked me, "Do you want your hair colored?"

Huh?

Color my hair?

Mom tells me the story of when I was all of five years old, and, at one of my haircuts, she looked at the mousy brown color of my hair and wondered, "Huh. I wonder how long until she starts coloring her hair."

Yeah. That would be two days ago, Mom. Well, except when I went blonde in '98. Almost forgot about that one.

I figured, since Cal has been commenting on the grey hairs, maybe covering it wouldn't be a bad idea.

So, I returned the next day to have my hair colored.

The stylist presented me with a board of hair swatches, pick a color you want. I don't know what color my hair is, why do you think I haven't colored it already? Hello?!

I know my hair is some variant of ash, as in ash brunette, not ash blonde, but I had no idea which ash. So, I pointed to the top of my head and said, "This color." The stylist couldn't figure out if I was 06 Ash or 07 Ash. Eh, hell if I know, pick one.

So she picked 08 Ash.

08 Ash is slightly lighter than my hair color. I shrugged my shoulders and agreed when she suggested the color. I figured a little lighter on the greys wouldn't hurt. Right?

Well, I hadn't realized that even with the darker hair colors, the hair is bleached a bit to let the color set properly on the hair shaft.

The other part I forgot?

My hair has copper highlights. Visible only in some lights, or when viewing the individual hairs, my red hairs are usually covered by the brown and black hairs so can't tell they're there.

If you use 08 Ash, however, you can see them.

So, now I have a slightly reddish tint to my short hair with the funky slant. It's mostly cute, and I'm getting used to it. If I can keep it out of my eyes, I think I'll be happy.