Monday, April 28, 2008

I Hate Sprint

Okay, so last night, I get a text message from my boss. It was regarding a meeting I had with our worship pastor and our lead PA engineer at Crossroads Church. He simply wanted to know how the meeting went.  I sent a reply, but I got the ever-so-increasingly-familiar "The network is not responding now" message after I hit SEND. That was around 8:30 last night.

This is me at 9:00 pm, a half-hour after the first message...
...and this is me at 10:35 pm, two hours after the failed text chat...
...and this is me this morning at 9:59 am, 13 1/2 hours after my boss should have had contact from me, answering his simple question...
The culprit? My house's metal roof. It's aluminum, made to look like cedar shakes. Five years ago, during Hurricane Lili, other roofs in the neighborhood were pretty badly damaged, but not mine. Here's a pic of the roof right above my front door. Pay close attention to the white stucco wall just to the left of the doorstep area. I'll get to that in a minute...
Here is the only place in my house that my phone works.  When I get a call, I have to go sit in my kitchen. We have this little solarium area that overlooks my goldfish pond. Notice the wall and overhang on the left side of the pic? That's my front door area...
OK, so you might be saying, "Well, doesn't your metal roof kill all cell phones, regardless of the carrier?" and "once you try to send a text, if it doesn't go through, it's too late. Try re-sending it." I'm glad you asked, and I know that already. Here's a pic of me with my wife's phone. She has AT&T. Go back and look at the lack of bars on my phone then notice all those bars on hers...
So, where am I going with this, and what does it have to do with the relevant use of media in a church setting? I've been desperately trying to get my boss/pastor to switch us to AT&T. I successfully got him and our executive pastor to switch to Mac, so why not AT&T and the iPhone? And, if we're going to be relevant, shouldn't we have stuff that works?

I'll keep you updated. What about you? Which carrier are you on, and how's your service? Am I alone in this? Where are the devoted Sprint-ers?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have "we will control your whole cell phone world" Verizon.

We got our plan (actually jumped onto my in-laws family plan) right before making our move back home. We don't have a land line. Then I went a bought a house in a place where there is BARELY one bar of service.

Would you believe there is a building literally across the street (I think it's a warehouse) with a Verizon Wireless sign? ONE STINKIN' BAR!?!?!?

I feel your pain, bro...

Randy said...

I just love that you took the time to take all the pics and post them! I guess you had plenty of time while you were waiting on the text to go through.

I'm AT&T and pleased I guess. My service has been transfered 3 times through mergers so I'm on my 4th company without ever switching, so it's hard to remember who to blame for what problems I've had over the years. All in all I think I get pretty good coverage at a not excessively high price.

Unknown said...

Love that expression in the second pic!