Good Morning

The Writer, Vernon Wade

Vernon Wade is a poet, author and freelancer. He has been published in The Gorge Literary Journal, Dualsport Rider Magazine, Hack’d Magazine, The Sidecarist, ROB Magazine and The Hood River News.

The world fills him with wonder. When he looks at the sky he is lifted into flights of fancy, when he stares at the earth he is drawn beneath its surface. He is delighted to find the macrocosm and the microcosm equally mesmerizing.

8/29/26 5:45 55F (12.7C) AQI 18

Cloudy with no wind on the ground.

First world problems resolved; the hot tub is working and internet is restored.

I tried T Mobile a couple years ago and it was terrible. Very poor coverage and long waits for tech service to fail to address the problems.

I got bounced to T Mobile again last spring, when they absorbed US Cellular.

I wish I had called tech support much sooner. Wait time was minimal, and they haven’t shopped their tech service overseas. It took a couple of calls, but each time the friendly, local technician patiently walked me through the test sequence and transparently explained regional issues they were working on. They found a work around which restored my service while waiting for engineers to update the infrastructure.

My experience with Century Link, who provide our landline, house internet and Wi-Fi was the exact opposite.

They have obviously outsourced tech support. While I am certain her English is much better than my Pakistani, the language barriers added another layer of frustration, as she attempted to trouble shoot the connection remotely.

Deciding that an on-site technician was needed and inferring the problem was at our end, she set an appointment for over a week later, on a Friday, with a nine hour arrival window and a $99 fee if we missed him.

She never said a word about the regional outages which were occurring or what efforts were being made to correct them, so we were left in the dark as far timelines or reasonable expectations for restored service.

We received a message from Century Link last night informing us service had been restored and did we want to cancel the tech visit? There is a $99 fee if the tech finds no problem on arrival.

The problem is, last night we were still without service. It was restored sometime this morning. If it still works a little later, we will need to call and cancel.

I was pleasantly surprised by the coverage and support from T Mobile.

Century Link, not so much. We will replace Century Link at the first opportunity.

Currently, we are negotiating with Hood River Electric Co-op who expect to have fiber optic available at our corner in a couple of months.

Rant off and good morning.