The cell phone saga continues ...

Jeff predicted that my new phone would be delivered at 7 this evening. Instead, a delivery attempt was made at 10:30 this morning while me and the boys were at the park.

To boot, the Verizon Port Center called to inform me that my port request had been cancelled. They wanted to confirm the cancel request.

I returned their call and said that I did not initiate the cancel port request and that I still want my number ported from Cingular. They got in touch with Cingular and claim to have straightened everything out. We'll see.

Provisioning is such a kludge.

We always assigned our worst programmers to it.

I have mental images of ASCII files of pipe-separated, binary fields with no key getting sent to and fro. Somewhere in that mess is a single-line record with my mobile number and my life story ... which hopefully doesn't include my social security number!! This all goes beyond having an employee discount for seven years.

After five, I drove over to the indicated FedEx facility to pick up my phone rather than wait until morning.

I was only vaguely familiar with the area having delivered a hot meal to a convalescent there once. Sure, I looked it up on Google maps but the hard copy didn't print legibly. Besides, once I knew the general vicinity, I could reference maps in my car if I got stuck.

While waiting for a green arrow from Windsor Road to Old Trenton Road, a FedEx truck pulled up behind me.

"Oh, I bet he's going to the depot," I thought. "I wish he was in front of me so I could just follow him!" All I could do was watch him in my rearview mirror.

The intended route took me along the southwest corner of the county park and the FedEx driver ducked into the park!

"Oh, he knows a short-cut," I thought but following after him didn't seem necessary.

Maybe the traffic was lighter than usual due to the holiday, but for whatever reason, I managed to keep ahead of him when he emerged from the other park entrance on Hughes.

I drove past Youngs by mistake. Watching the FedEx truck in my rearview mirror turn in confirmed my error.

I turned around in a driveway, maybe Mary's house (Hi, Mary, it's been a while, eh?). Usually Hughes at rush hour is busy, but I pulled in and out in one motion without waiting.

I caught up with my FedEx truck lead and had him right where I wanted him, in front of me! And from there I just followed him into the facility on industrial drive and got my phone. It's charging right now.

So, it was almost a no-brainer, if only I could have gotten on the right side of that FedEx truck from the start!