(no subject)

Last October, I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile because [long, not particularly interesting backstory] and wound up with a one year contract. At the time, I suspected I would only be on T-Mobile for that year before switching to an iPhone, so I bought a refurbished phone that drove me crazy for about 6 months until I figured out how to change its predictive text dictionary from Italian to English. After that, the phone was fine until last week, when the battery appeared to have died.

Fortunately, I had a backup phone from spike, which I had tried to use as my actual phone last October, but there were a couple of things about it that made it significantly unsatisfactory for me for that (thus the refurbed phone). So, though there was no urgency about fixing the dead phone, there was motivation.

Yesterday, through a series of conversations and attempted solutions with Radio Shack (those people are so helpful), it became clear that the answer was going to be some combination of a $30 charger and/or a $30 battery to make the phone work.

I have 97 days left on my T-Mobile contract. Thanks to the sliding early termination fees instituted a couple of years ago by most carriers, if I wait a week, I can pay only ("only") $50 to end my contract early and switch to an iPhone three months ahead of my original plan. Though this makes sense from the money-I-spend perspective (only a difference of $20 to switch to an exciting new phone 3 months ahead of plan), there's still part of me that hates to pay $50 to T-Mobile for nothing.

Thus, a poll:

[Poll #1426821]

(no subject)

Gosh, I'm glad summer fell on a weekend this year.