Tips

Tips are pouring in (well, maybe dribbling, but still terrific) for contacting a real human when needing customer support. Several people suggested hitting "0," even though that is not one of the options. Might need to keep hitting "0" every time you are greeted with a new prompt. Try it. Apparently another trick might be to say something into the phone that is not requested -- try that too.

Another friend, Dale, provided the following link for gethuman.com. This is cool. It provides tips for reaching humans at all sorts of companies, including average wait times. Looking at the list, VerizonWireless is not bad at 5.1 minutes, beating out T-mobile and AT&T. The whole thing though is crazy if you think about it. There are 6+ billion people on earth and we have to go through these convoluted steps to reach a human!

Regarding my fall that bruised my elbow and ego -- tips are arriving for that too. Relatives offer the useful tip to be careful and avoid frozen rivers. Friends Dale and Lisa offered an equally useful list of gear to bring along on my outings. These include 4-point crampons, Yaktrax, and Kahtoola microspikes. I was thinking that my beaver-chewed walking stick would suffice.

Since I am on the topic of "Tips." Here are are few of my own that I recently discovered, with the help of others:

Readability: go to this link and enhance readability of web pages

Snipping Tool: On your start menu, go to "Programs," then "Accessories. Find "snipping tool," Right click and choose "add to quick launch." Any time you want to capture and save a part of a screen or document, select the snipping tool. With this tool you can also use a pen or highlighter on the clipped document, which can then be saved as a jpg. Here is an example: