The Squamidian Report - Nov. 16/02

Hi All,

As you might remember from last week, my Internet provider went belly up. That left us without access to the net and without Email. Sue's lap top worked as she dials into the bank system, so I could at least send out last week's issue.

I'm not out any money as Mountain Internet debited my Visa each month. My next payment was due the day after they went down. However, to be safe I wanted to block any possible future payments. As there is no way to reach a company that is out of business, I called Visa to see if I could put on a stop at that end. Well!! Dealing with Visa is like dealing with the government. In fact, the woman I was talking to must be practicing for a government position somewhere. To make it even harder, she didn't speak my English any better than I can speak her Asia dialect.

Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi there, I'd like to block any future automatic Visa payments to a company that seems to have disappeared. They currently debit my account once a month."

Her: "You can't do that, you must contact them and arrange to stop the payments with them."

Me: " I can't, there is no way to reach them. Their office is closed and when you phone any of their numbers, the operator comes on and says that the line is no longer in service."

Her: "Well, you have to contact them and make arrangements. Have you tried phoning?"

Me: "I just said, their lines are no longer in service."

Her: "Then you should go into their office and speak to them."

(Now I'm getting a little steamed.)

Me: "There is no way to reach them at all, they are out of business."

Her: "Then there is no way to stop the debits."

Me: "Can I simply close out that Visa account?"

Her: "Yes, you can close that account, but we don't want to loose you as a customer."

Me: "Can I close that account and open a new Visa Gold account with a different account number?"

Her: "Yes."

Now I ask you, isn't that the same as blocking any future attempts at debiting my account as that account would no longer exist?

I wish there was some way that I could properly describe out 3D weather. It's quite fascinating and very interesting to see. The only time that a rainy day is dreary is when it's too foggy to see very far. Any other time we have an endlessly changing vista.

The high stratus clouds are thousands of feet above the mountains. They are the ones that give the high overcast conditions. There is a second and third layer of clouds that you don't notice back home as there is no backdrop to see them against. The mountains here give us a backdrop for viewing these layers.

The second layer covers the mountains from about half way up to over top of them. They tend to open and close back in as they are cumulus in nature. This give ever changing views of the high country and mountain peaks. These are the clouds that open to show us fleeting glimpses of trees high up the slopes.

It is really neat to look up through the clouds and see trees. Sort of turns everything up side down.

Then there is that third layer. They tend to be nomadic clouds that serpentine their way through and around the lower slopes and valleys. We watch them slide up, over and down the lower hills. We look down on them as they float through the valley below us. When they are below us it is like living in a tree house.

As our landscape is also 3D in nature, we drive though different weather zones as we travel up and down the Sea to Sky highway. This is why we have put good snow tires on the vehicles. As we get into winter, we will be continually driving into and out of winter as we climb and descend along the coastal regions. Living here is sort of like having a giant, endlessly changing toy to play with.

The streams and rivers have shrunk down to almost nothing due to our dry summer and fall. Now that we are a week or so into the rainy season they are raging mountain rivers. Rolling white water can be seen in even the smallest stream bed. Shannon Falls covers it's whole cliff face area and Brandywine Creek has standing wave that are higher than the roadway it runs beside. Cool.

I've had some minor configuration conflicts between my network connection, Email program and my firewall so if any of you have had multiple copies of something from me or got nothing at all, that should be cleared up by now. So it's open for business as usual again.

Have a good one.

the doug