iPhone woes

So this iPhone exchange has become an ordeal that has me mad. I  came home the other day with Ruths new phone and used it to call tech support about my phone. My phone kicks into the mute mode every time I start talking on it. There is a sensor that is supposed to turn off the face of the phone when you pick it up and talk on it. This way your cheek won't activate the buttons on the front of the phone by mistake. Mine was not working and so I wanted to have the phone replaced. The new phone came today. That made me happy. As I was talking to the tech support on Ruth's phone I noticed that her external speaker didn't work.   Tech support and I also found out that her ringer didn't work as well. He finally told me to take the phone back to where I had bought it and get a new one. So this is a new phone with one call on it. That call is to Rogers tech support. Yesterday I took the phone back to the store in the mall. There is a 20 year old girl at the counter who I have to talk to. I tell her the problem and she says they don't do exchanges. Then she rolls her eyes at me. Now I am set off. She then tries to phone Rogers and can't get thru. She tells me to leave my info and she will take care of it later in the day. After about a 5 minute exchange that is much like the WHO'S ON FIRST skit I finally leave madder than I have been for years. I went out into the parking lot and called Rogers to try to fix the problem myself.  Problem solved. I'm not as pleased with how I have to wait 10 days for Apple to send me a new phone but at least I know that the problem will be taken care of. So the manager of this store could see how mad I was getting and he intervened saying that they would talk to Rogers and solve the problem for me. He also told me how they know how to talk to Rogers in situations like this and people like me don't. I found that statement interesting when he said it.  So they were supposed to get back to me yesterday afternoon with a solution to my problem and I still haven't heard from them. I am glad I decided to fix this myself and not wait for them. What a *#@^%! company. I'll never go back to them for anything. It amazes me how some stores can stay in business. Customer service is everything.

The iPhone is a fantastic invention

I love my iPhone. I've been an apple guy for a few years now. I got this phone when they first came out. It has logged thousands of hours of air time and helped close many many piano deals for me.

It almost seems like an antique when I look at it now that I have upgraded to the new iPhone 4. I had lots of apps on this phone. I could use a tuner app to help me at work. I had a GPS and a calculator. Lots of toys for the grand kids to play with and I even had an app that helped me find my car when I was parked in a large parking lot. It was a great phone. So when I got my new iPhone 4  I thought it would be nice for Ruth to get the old one. I love how easy it is to text on the iPhone because it has big letters that are easy to see. I knew that Ruth would like this feature as much as I do.  There is only one thing that the iPhone can't do that I wish it could.






                                                     SWIM ABOVE  WATER

My old business partner slipped off of the counter (Got knocked off ) this morning while the tooth brush was being replaced into its holder. I have to wonder if it was intentional or not. There were strong feelings between myself and this dear old phone and I do think Ruth was a little jealous of us. After all , she has heard my deepest secrets. Now she is gone and the new replacement has no ties to me. What happens in the iPhone stays in the iPhone.

Sunday Morning with our Friends

We all met at the pumping station in the north end of the city. It is blue sky and hot. A beautiful day. I walked with Randy for quite a while as we followed the lake along the path to Paul's Tomb. It is a beautiful walk. He is missing Carol as she has taken a contract in Yellowknife but is keeping busy doing a renovation in their house while she is gone.I think this hike is her favorite hike to go on. I know it is one of mine.  I asked Randy how many cats he has living at home . They just had kittens and I wasn't sure if they were all gone. They all have new homes and he said they only have the two adults left. I was surprised to hear this because Carol had let one of the cats out in the middle of the night 3 days before she left . As the cat walked out side she was looking at an owl watching the cat go thru the door. She said that it likely wasn't a good idea to let the cat out right then. That was the last time she saw the cat. We all figured that the owl  had munched down on it. Didn't happen. Randy told me that about  4 days later he was getting ready to store a lot of their things in the guest room while he did the renos. When he opened the guest bedroom door the cat came out. Not so happy either.  Neither was Randy when he saw the condition of the room  after the cat had spent 4 days locked up with no litter box. Sort of like a hotel room after Ozzie Osborne in his hay days. That is why I like dogs. They bark to get out.

                        We stopped for a photo opp near the tomb as we headed back to the cars.

                                               It was a small group this morning.

Breakfast was at the Harvest golf club. It is a beautiful setting.

                                              We saw a turtle sunning in the pond.

                                                    Pretty nice place to hang out.

Fastest week ever

I don't know where the time is going. It's Friday already and it feels like I didn't accomplish anything this week. There was one day I drove past my friend Gus's house on the way to Penticton to check out a piano. He is one of two guys I know who can extract a dollar out of something worth .10 cents. I wish I had his financial gift. He was busy polishing up a truck he took in on trade last month. He decided to sell it as he already owns about 8 vehicles and he has a parking problem. Two of his cars are a couple of beautiful Rolls Royce's. He only wants to keep one of them. I all wish I had those types of problems.  Hmmm. I wonder which Rolls I will drive today?

After I left Gus's place I did a service call on a mouse infested piano close to Penticton. This could be a very nice piano with all the felts replaced. It always amazes me on how much damage mice can do in a very short time. I am not too keen on fixing this piano so if I don't hear back from the people I won't be too sad. The Mice ate every bit of felt inside this piano except for the hammers. That was lucky.

I am not a Yamaha fan but this piano was one of their better ones. It was made in the 80's when they still used real wood instead of particle board and the action was made out of maple instead of plastic.

I wonder if a person's insurance would cover this?

Yesterday I got a call from a fellow who wanted to come and look at pianos. He lives in Edmonton and has a condo here that he uses as a getaway. He showed up with his Mom who is visiting from Edmonton. We hit it off really well as soon as we met. We both laughed so hard all thru my sales presentation that I was almost crying. We kept trading stories for about 1.5 hours. The funniest one he told me was about his cat .  He named it  Dudley when it first came into his home but then after a few months he gave it a second name. The cat is quite a hunter and likes to bring his carnage up onto the deck and lay the mice he catches out tail to nose. He says it was really something to see. When the cat started catching rabbits he renamed it Hannibal. Dudley by day and Hannibal by night. Sounds like quite a cat. If all customers were this much fun I would likely want to keep the store. After I showed him all the pianos I have  I turned on the player piano he looked at his mom and said "this is what I want".
Music to my ears. So Ruth and I are loading this piano into the trailer in a few weeks and dragging it out to Edmonton. This has been my demo piano for the last 3 years. It has spent months between the mall and home shows. I'm really glad to see it move on.

My reward for a job well done was a nice BBQ'd dinner cooked on my new lava stone. Very tasty.

So Jack came over this afternoon to hang out for a while. I took him next door to visit Inga and to see how his gold fish was doing in her pond. Dorothy is getting huge with all the new found space she has to swim and play in.

He was intrigued by all the action in the bird feeder. He is so cute.

Monday is Delivery Day

So I sold my rental grand piano to a young man who I am quite impressed with. He came into my store for the first time 3 years ago and said he wanted to buy a piano. He was only 19 then and had just hitch hiked from Toronto to live in B.C. He had just arrived the day before and had no money and no job. I told him to come back when he had both. He came back the next day with $1000. from his dad and he had a job at Tim Horton. He asked if I would finance him for more than half the piano. I took a chance on him and did a no interest loan for the balance of the piano. $1200. . He paid it off  in less than one year and then moved up to a $4700. Roland.  Same deal. Interest free loan and he paid it off perfectly. Twelve months ago he told me he had been accepted into the Music Program at UBC and needed an acoustic piano.   He now is living with his Grand mother in Vancouver. I took the Roland electric and he bought a $7000. acoustic piano from me. Same deal. Interest free loan on the balance . He paid me off last month.
I got a phone call last week saying he wanted a Grand Piano. We did a deal where he bought my 3 year old rental piano which is worth $22000. Same deal. It will be paid off next year. The only problem is that the only place in his Grandma's house is his bedroom. It isn't a large enough room for a bed and a grand piano so he sold his bed last Sunday and we delivered the piano on Monday. He is some kinda kid.We got it into the room and started to unpack it.

I had brought a polishing cloth with me but there was some type of oil on it and it was streaking the piano when I tried wiping it down. Only his sister was home and she was busy with her boyfriend somewhere else in the house .I needed to improvise so I had noticed his nice flannel pajama bottoms crumpled up on his desk chair. Yup. They worked great. They made a nice shiny piano. On the way home I started to think about if he will be wondering why his PJ's smell like almond 's. That is the smell of my piano polish.
I guess I should have thought of that before I sprayed them down with the polish.

So the piano got set up in his bedroom and polished to look like new. I wonder how long he will leave my decal on the side of it.

He is a nice kid. He left my money and post dated cheques in a very unique envelope. It was tied with a string and then sealed with hot wax. I am thinking he might not have trusted his sister.

It was a long day. We were on the road at 7:45 this morning and got home just in time to enjoy the most unusual sunset I have ever seen. It almost looked like there was a fire happening somewhere close. Smoke gives a sunset that orange look.

a nice Sunday evening

It is getting close to dusk and the rain is moving in. I was just sitting on the deck sipping a nice glass of Cedar Creek Merlot thinking about how much I like it here. There are two eagles dancing in front of me about 150 feet off the deck. What a show. There are two squirrels screaming at me in a Ponderosa Pine just in front of our pool area and I am witness to a fantastic light show with close thunder courtesy to Mother nature. What more could I ask for.

I know.  Our friend Anita is over here making us dinner. Apparently her landlord won't allow her to BBQ at her house and she has this fantastic Prime Rib that she wants to cook. This is our gain . She and Ruth are busy in the kitchen tonight. Ruth made a wonderful salad to compliment Anita's Prime Ribs .

I did some veggies on the grill that turned out the way I was hoping. sorry for the fuzzy picture. I should have held the camera in my right hand.

It was a nice way to end a busy weekend.

Why one should never borrow a friends piano

So the symphony borrowed a Roland Electric Grand from one of my old customers to use for their Gala event last night. I picked it up at their home on Friday and returned it this afternoon. It wasn't as easy as one would hope. We checked the piano closely for damage when we picked it up. It was perfect.  When we delivered it to Mission Hill for the event on Saturday it was still perfect. When we picked it up Saturday night around midnight it was damaged. I told Judy (The person who had arranged the loan) that there was damage done to this piano and it needed to be polished out. That surprised her because she hadn't seen anyone near the piano during the evening. These black finishes are so delicate when rubbed that they scratch up quickly. People don't realize how easily they can get damaged.
Dale came over to my house this morning (Sunday) for 11:00. We both worked steady on this cabinet until 1:10. That is 4 man hours worth. Once again the piano looks like new . It was a busy morning. I wonder how the owners would have reacted if  another moving company had picked up and returned their piano. No one else would have bothered to do this much work to it for free.  These are pictures of the music desk. Obviously they had something on the piano last night.

It is hard to believe that someone can do this much damage to an instrument in one evening.

I like to think that they just don't realize what they are doing. I would hate to think that they know and just don't care.

The lid of the piano was just as bad. I wish I had taken a picture of it as well.

Here we had to remove the piano from the trailer and unpack it. Set it up in the entrance to my shop and spend a few hours polishing to get it back into new condition.

After 2 long days of dragging pianos around I don't think Dale was too excited to also have to do this. I sure do appreciate his expertise.

We got back to the customer with her piano around 1:45 .

It looks great sitting back where it belongs. We never told her that it had gotten damaged while being used at the Gala but I sure hope she never loans it out again. I know that we will never do the moving  for a private instrument that is being used at a public event again. I fully expect things like this to happen to my pianos that we rent out for events. That is why I charge for them to be used. Their value is decreased significantly every time someone uses them.

Okanagan Symphony Gala 2011

This was a busy weekend. I'm going to try to keep this blog positive. It was difficult to supply pianos for the gala at Mission hill .  Mission Hill wouldn't let us deliver them all at once and we could only get in after the event to pick them up. Two of the pianos were mine and the third piano was borrowed from one of my old customers who had purchased their Roland Grand piano at a Symphony event 2 years ago. Friday afternoon we picked up the Roland from the lenders house. It is a difficult move  because of stairs. We started at their place around 2:00 and then went back to my store to pick up a grand piano and an electric upright that was needed for the event. We got to Mission Hill around 6:00 but had to wait till 6:30 before we could get into the Barrel cellar and set up the Grand. Once we got down there the stage hadn't arrived yet so we had to wait some more.

It is very dark and humid down here. The stage did get there eventually but it wasn't complete and was also very unstable. I was a little unsure on if I wanted to set the piano up onto it but I did. It was fine. They brought the rest of the stage the next day and also got some clamps to make it more stable.

We couldn't set up the other pianos today because of the tours that happen daily at the winery. We left the Roland Grand in my trailer and had to put my Roland upright into a small storage room. We got home a little before 10:00 Friday night. I was told to be back on Saturday afternoon around 2:00 to set up the other pianos and tune the grand. I was there with Dale just before 2:00 but was told we now couldn't start work until 3:15. That was fine . It just made the day a little longer. I finally was allowed to get into the Barrel Cellar to tune the piano.

We got the other 2 pianos set up by 5:30 and were now off until 9:45 so I was told. Dale and I got back to the winery at 9:30 and Bill the security guard came down and unlocked the ring road gate so that we could drive around to the Barrel Cellar loading door and get the 2 pianos that were there. He called ahead to get us permission to enter but was told that the party was still happening down there and that we would have to wait. Bill had us park the truck and then took us up to the winery thru their manufacturing area. It was quite interesting to see the insides of their operation. Dale and I hung out in an empty part of the property waiting for permission to go and start work. Dale is dwarfed by this massive cement hallway . Everything here is oversized.

We finally were allowed into the cellar and got the pianos loaded into the trailer. It was about 12:00 midnight when we started to disassemble the Roland grand upstairs in the visitors centre. My good friend Keith from Winnipeg was the brains and the expertise on lighting and sound for the evening event. He and Lisa moved here to Kelowna about 10 years ago and he has developed a sterling reputation as the valley's go to person for anything to do with sound. He is the only person I would trust if I needed any type of sound advice. They use to own a sign company in Winnipeg called Vital Signs. We all thought that was a great name. I think he should rename his sound company to Sound Advice. That sounds good to me.  So I had on a Hawaiian shirt that looked a lot like his. I had Dale take our picture and then told Keith that we were like brothers. Than I called him MINI ME.  I laughed but I'm not too sure what he thought of that.

He had a tough job this weekend. Not only did he have to set up a ton of gear , he also had to stay and operate it for the event. This venue is all cement with high ceilings . A nightmare for a sound guy. Dale and I left around 12:45 and Keith and his 2 helpers were a little more than half done. This was a long day.

I do nice work

I spent the morning working on my retaining wall. It is going to support the garden beside our new path that goes downstairs on the north side of the house. I think it will look great when the wall is complete on both sides of the path.  I was taking care of Jack for a while this morning. At one point I needed more landscape ties. He made me laugh cuz he knew that I had run out of material. He climbed into the backseat of my truck and started yelling for me to grab my keys and drive him to Home Depot for more wood. That kid sure has a loud voice.

We got back and I finished the landscape ties on one side. It is hard to make an outside curve look good with these ties but it turned out fine. The other side will be easy to do.

The elevation drops by 14 feet when going from main floor to basement. I love how this path is turning out. I am looking forward to doing the other side and getting a cement  walkway poured.

The inspector came by and was complaining about me killing a few of the plants that had been growing  in the garden.

Upon closer inspection she realized the plant was a volunteer and was not that important.

After I cleaned up from my hard day of labour I came inside and made a wonderful dinner using my new wok that Ruth bought for me 2 days ago. I love to cook and I have been asking her to find one of these real hand pounded woks for a while. She found this one for $4.50 in a thrift store the other day. It was brand new . Never used. A real score. I learnt on google how to season it properly and have spent 2 days doing that over an open flame. It is fantastic to cook on when properly broken in. I can't believe that having a properly seasoned wok makes me so happy. This is our first meal being cooked in our new wok.  I started with onion and lots of garlic.

I marinated a couple of chicken breasts in a wonderful sauce after they were thinly sliced . They took a few minuets to cook. Next I added mushrooms , peppers and hot chillies. I finished it off with a tangy hot sweet sauce. We threw it on a bed of noodles that Ruth made up and added some crunchy veggies in a sweet oyster sauce. I wish I had taken a picture of the finished dinner. It looked and tasted great. I love to eat good ,  fresh food.

Non Eventful Day

So Ruth hit the sack early tonight because she has an early morning planned for herself. I am bored so I decided to have a hot tub earlier than I usually do. Daisy dog always makes me laugh. I have been sitting in the tub for about 20 minutes watching her stare at the little hole that the electric cable use to come out of. She saw a mouse run thru this hole 2 years ago and now she fixates on it whenever we come out here. I left the tub and came into the house to get my camera. She followed me in and back to the tub. She also sat in the exact spot and stared into the hole in the exact same way. I love this little dog. I never thought I would say that about a dog that weighed less than 100 pounds. She's a mutt.

Old Sweetpea loves laying on any mat available as long as she can see me. She is a great friend. I can't believe she is 10 already and that we got her Mom for Carrie 19 years ago. Where does the time go.

I spent the afternoon working on the irrigation that was damaged  when we did the new walkway. I should be able to finish with about one more hours labour.. All this time spent and there is only one small leak. I'll get it fixed tomorrow. You can hardly tell there are 4 lines going under the walkway.

I broke the manifold on this station so I had to dig it up and rebuild it this afternoon.  I am now an irrigation specialist.   looks and works as good as a pro could do. A 2 minute service call from Nash where we wanted some advice on  digging a ramp into the hillside has ended up creating 2 days work and lots of Google questions and answers for me. Its turned out fine.

I'm sitting by the pool watching the sunset now. We live in paradise. Doesn't matter how busy it gets around the old compound. It is always great here. What a great view.

We Removed the Ugly Stairs

We have had a really ugly set of stairs going down to out lower level on the north side of the house since we built the house. The turned out that the guy who built them was just learning how to build stairs when we hired him. Once again it was just my luck. So Ruth wanted to replace them and had talked to a professional last week. When we looked at them together I said that I would really like to have a gentle ramp going down to the lower level instead of stairs. Ruth called Nash Collie to come and look at the hillside and let us know if it was feasible to do. When it comes to moving earth I think he is a genius. I trust what he tells me. We hired him to build all of the stone walls on our property and they turned out perfect. He looked at the hillside this morning and said it wasn't a big deal and would I like to do it right now. He happened to have one of his machines with him that was on its way to another job. Ruth and I said sure. He was on the digger within 10 minutes moving the hillside. He's great.

I had to laugh. Nash asked me if there were any lines such as power or gas in this hill. I said no . Go for it. On his very next scoop he pulled up 4 irrigation lines. I had to cut them and hold them out of his way. I had forgotten that we had put them across the walkway.

I spent a few hours this afternoon replacing them after he left. I plan on finishing the job tomorrow. Hopefully it is going to rain tonight . I don't want these plants drying out.

Sweet pea gave her approval to the job. I love how it turned out. Tomorrow I will start building retaining walls on both sides of the new path and once that is done we are going to get a cement company in to pour a new walkway going downstairs.