This morning I went down to the shop to wait for the phone technician again... 20 minutes later THREE phone company trucks were there. Blog reader Aaron had forwarded a copy of my last blog post to a few higher-ups at the phone company, so that probably helped... either that, or I pitched such a fit on the phone Friday evening that they thought I might be violently unstable and needed to send enough crew to keep themselves safe. Thanks Aaron.
Interestingly enough, I'd ordered phone service a couple months back and was so busy I'd never plugged in a phone 'til the other day and found I had no dial tone. Turns out the number they assigned me had been used some time ago (not uncommon) and the number had been ported elsewhere (sort of like automatic call forwarding I guess) and the phone company either wasn't aware of that or had lost track of that. Essentially all my phone service was going to somewhere else. Apparently the previous technician had called the number and got a live person and had filed a report that the service order was erroneous. So now I have a shiny new phone number that I won't use for much 'til I'm manning the shop full time (my cell number will be my main line 'til then). I lucked into a real easy phone number - ends with "DIVE", so once I start using it for regular business at least it'll be easy to remember.
I'm now trying to spend as much time at the shop as possible, but basically that means I'm open by appointment as I need to be on the boat when it goes out. I'm trying to keep a "regular hour" (literally, not "hours") 4pm to 5pm after charters Monday through Friday as long as I don't have a night charter that keeps me from being available.
I had a class yesterday morning and a night dive last night.... 14 manta rays, whoohooo!!!.... so there was little time spent there yesterday. I'm in the shop all day today and whatever days I have off coming up - never know, I might get some walkins. There's plenty of little things to do to keep me occupied for now. I'm painting one of the closet doors today and tomorrow.
Later,
Steve
Here's a satellite photo of the shop and the harbor. As you can see, we're surrounded by about a mile of lava field in both directions so we're pretty easy to find.
The phone company came through...
