Don&#8217;t blame me when Grace is grand marshal at the Gay Pride Parade and you&#8217;re stuck in Fort Lee doing The &#8216;Gina Monologues.

2010
06.14

Don’t blame me when Grace is grand marshal at the Gay Pride Parade and you’re stuck in Fort Lee doing The ‘Gina Monologues.

Tags: business, code, gay pride parade, grand marshal, joe juneau, Kathy Griffen, number, office, pocket, wisconsin trip
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Today’s topics:

- Wisconsin Trip
So I went to Milwaukee for about 65 hours this weekend. Got there Thurs, left Sat afternoon. I couldn’t stay longer, so I was only able to do the basics. Visited Fluid, worked a full shift in New Berlin, and had a dinner with friends who were gracious enough to pick me up from work.

- Milwaukee Pride
Didn’t do much with Pride this year; had too many friends to visit local, so I just hung out at the bars within walking distance.

- Kathy Griffen
Saw her last year, and was told she wasn’t that great this year.

- Video and Pictures
Didn’t stay for the parade, so couldn’t take video; but several people sent me links to photos, so those are all available on http://gallery.soniq.org/

- Rules of Travel for Billie Hawkins
I mentioned this before to a few people, but I wanted to make a few points clear:
1. I CANNOT visit everyone each time I go to Milwaukee
2. I CANNOT individually contact every friend and family member each time I visit Milwaukee. (that’s over 800 people.)
3. I make the BEST EFFORT to fit as many people into the schedule as possible
4. I post my schedule online, on Facebook, on Twitter, and my blog each time!

5. If I can’t secure a ride to work and every place I need to visit, I have to pay for rental cars out of my own pocket
6. If I can’t secure a place to crash with friends, I have to pay for a hotel out of pocket
7. If I can’t get on a flight via my standby ticket, I have to pay out of pocket.

Please keep that in mind when you ask me to do something; I don’t want to have to say no to anyone, but if I do, you should know the reasons. Making me feel guilty about it will not help anything.

On that note, I do wish to shout out a thanks to Joe Juneau for the ride to work, Joe C for the place to crash, and Jess/Bob for the great dinner and conversation. I also want to thank Christian and Bill Janney for the drinks, and the fun conversations! Bill and Bill were really cool as always, and thank you for the fun Thursday.

- Bonus: Virtual Walk-through of our house

UPDATE:

Did I tell you the issue I had with AT&T about adding Tony to my family plan?

My goal: Keep my number, keep my sister’s number, add Tony to my plan, keep his number.

10/10/09: AT&T in WI told me it can’t be done, because we were in different billing ‘lattas’

12/2009: AT&T in Denver told me it can’t be done unless I change my number to a Denver area code. That would also change my sister’s number in WI.

2/2010: I talked to HR about the company discount with AT&T and she mentioned that we have one bill for all of the company cell phones in all 5 states.

6/04/10: I was determined to get this.

Here is how it went. (I typed it out beforehand so i would get the wording right, and i kept a log so I could document if it got to that point…)

Her: Thank you for calling AT&T, how can I help you Mr. Hawkins?

Me: I would like to add my boyfriend’s AT&T phone number to my family plan.

Her: I can help you with that.

Me: I do not want to change phone numbers.

Her: Certainly, that shouldn’t be necessary.

Me: Ahh, but I have a 414, Wisconsin area code, and he has a 303, Denver area code.

Her: I see, well, then in order to have him on your plan, we could just change his…

Me: I do not wish to change numbers.

Her: Well, that could be a problem. Let me see what can be done.

-- 5 minutes --

Her: Mr. Hawkins, it doesn’t appear that the system will allow it.

Me: I work for a company that has 30 cell phones in 5 states. They all have local area codes, and my HR rep in WI pays One bill.

Her: I see what you mean. Let me check one more thing.

--2 minutes --

Her: Here’s what we do. Get your mate to call in, and transfer financial responsibility to you. Then Call the business office, where they can merge both of ‘your’ accounts into one.

Her: The business office will create a new account for you with all three numbers on it, no problem.

Me: Awesome. Thanks.

So I called the Biz office, they combined the accounts into a ‘small business account’ and we are all set. The worry was this; I could no longer bundle Uverse or anything, they wouldn’t be able to save Tony’s rollover because the account was gone, and they could only save 4000 of my rollover, because that’s all the ‘system’ authorizes.