Harvard is Big

The dorms are quite fancy. But they don't seem to have any pubs. [UPDATE - apparently they do; they just happen to be on the block/street we didn't walk down...]

Boston

Madi and the kids spent a day with me before my conference started. This town (doesn't feel like a city...) is a neat place. I've had difficulty finding good beer however. Harvard have secret pubs; we looked darn near everywhere and found nothing special. MIT has a local brewery where I found an interesting gruit. But so far, I'm not impressed.

I've got $8 left on my Charlie Card, so I hope to find something tasty tonight.

Mike

Mean, mean Verizon

My wife lost her credit card a few weeks ago. After a few calls to the bank, we thought we had everything under control...

A few days ago, our FIOS Internet service stopped working. On a hunch (her's, not mine) we wondered if the credit card had something to do with it. Well, it turns out that we had been paying our FIOS bill by CC, but we got a new number when they replaced her card.

So here's what Verizon did.
- Within a week or so of our payment failing, they drop our service.
- Service charges were applied to the account.
- No phone call to warn us of the issue.
- No e-mail to warn us of the issue.
- No letter in the mail to warn us of the issue. We get tons of ads from them, so it's not as if they don't know where we live!

After a couple hours on the phone, we ended up dealing with a really pleasant customer rep. However, she said we had to go through a complete re-install to activate the service. That is, we get to sit around all day waiting for a tech to show up. The customer rep promised some kind of rebate.

Funny how they can shut your service off in an instant, but it takes days to get it back.

[Update - Verizon has called several times to make sure we know about the service call. Seems like they're trying to make up...]

[Update #2 - Waited around all day Sunday for the service tech.  I received a call late in the day that the tech would not be coming.  Sigh.  I asked, again, why a tech was even necessary to reactivate my service.  The woman said, 'Oh, I can do that from here.'  Huh??? Why didn't you guys tell me that a week ago?  In any event, she did something and the connection came right up.  I'm very dissapointed with you, Verizon.]

BenFest '08

70+ people makes the house feel a bit small. I think every one had a good time though - especially Ben! The backyard cyclocross course was back again this year, along with a bunch of sausage, kraut, desserts and fun stuff for the kids. I have to thank my mom for yet another incredible cake; it tasted even better than it looked. (I'm about to go eat the last piece...)


Thanks as well to all of our friends - our TMR peeps, friends of friends, a couple mid's in street clothes (ha! - I'm not tellin'), family. I don't know how I ended up with some many great friends and such a awesome family!

Mike

BCA Cross - Hagerstown

It wasn't my intent to go the speed limit. A flat tire towards the start of the second lap and a magically unclipping left cleat made the day interesting, though. The senior ranks of our AFC team were hobbled by a number of mechanicals, but Jimmy Klose took 1st in the 18U and 16U races. It was beautiful in Hagerstown and several hundred racers made the most of it.

My friend Sven (Chris, actually) grabbed a wheel off his pit bike to keep me in the race, and I had fun picking off a few of the (other) slow riders. I really wanted to make a go of it with Trevor and Jim, but the gap was just too big.

Watching Alec in the 16U race was my favorite part of the day. AFC represented well in the junior race, and it's nice to see racers and fans support the young riders. Cyclocross courses are the perfect place for new/young riders to have some fun.


Alec posted some of his thoughts about the race on the AFC blog.

Mike