Cajun Corner – Vol. 3, No. 46 – November 18, 2011
Bon Jour! Welcome to Cajun Stitchery’s weekly email and welcome to our family.
ΘΘΘΘΘ
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This week has been spent with a new internet Wi-Fi system and new smart phones. All of which I’ve been tempted to throw out the window at least a couple of times this week. It all began when my friend showed me The Square. The Square is a little one inch square, plug-in mechanism to enable me to accept credit card payments. It plugs into the top of a smart phone. The phone has The Square App (program) and voila, I can accept credit cards. But you do have to have a smart phone. I can accept credit cards via PayPal but not all of my business is over the internet. Customers come to my house, or I go to them, occasionally. There is always the issue of craft fairs and the like. I rarely carry cash on me and expect others are the same. With The Square I just need to have a Wi-Fi connection and I can sell my wares on the go. I’ve never had the credit card machine because there is a monthly fee, a fee for the machine, and a fee per transaction. It is expensive. I’ve noticed in the past year or two more and more businesses, especially the government, accepts credit cards or debit cards but they charge you a fee to use credit. That is because of the fees charged to them. The Square is absolutely free and there is no monthly fee, only a small per transaction fee, similar to PayPal. I expect people will start seeing The Square often because it is just such a good deal all the way around.
The first thing was to get the smart phone. George and I still had the little Razor cell phones and our old Cingular phone plan which was grandfathered into our AT&T bill when AT&T consumed Cingular. Other than our cell phones, we still had our land line and our DSL for our computers. I held off getting rid of the land line for a long time. After Ivan hit in 2004, our cell phones didn’t work because all of the air waves were over loaded with all of the calls, but our trusty land line worked like a charm and I was able to call FEMA and our insurance company as the hurricane was passing by. It was time now to get rid of the land line. It has been seven years since Ivan and I’m sure the over loaded air wave issues have been remedied with all of the new technology. So, we called AT&T and got rid of everything we had and put in a new U-verse internet system and smart phones.
As the days went by waiting for the new hardware, we worried about what problems we would have setting everything up ourselves. We read the AT&T tutorials. When we first had the DSL installed, I ended up in tears talking with the AT&T tech that was helping us. It was pure exhaustion. This time I went ahead and called the AT&T tech before we even got the equipment trying to troubleshoot the “what ifs”. Finally, the U-verse arrived. We couldn’t install until Monday when a real, live person came to the house to do something with our wiring. As he left, he told us that we were ready to install the U-verse and to go ahead. He left. We installed. It worked. Unbelievable! We received the smart phones the same day and the box had a message to fully charge the battery before turning on the phone. We plugged them in. Then we needed to transfer our phone numbers from our old SIM card to the new one. Well, how do you do that? One way was to get online and read the tutorial. At that time, we did not have internet yet. The other way showed us a step-by-step set of instructions. We followed each step. We got to a point where it asked if we wanted to “override”. We didn’t know if we did or not but it looked like a good thing to do, so we did. Oops. We wiped out our numbers. So, if I had your number, I don’t anymore. Please call and give me your number – or email me.
We finally got the smart phones working. Not sure they are as smart as they claim to be though. The first thing we decided is that we needed to know how to place a call and receive a call. Amazingly, that was a monumental task. Once we figured out how to place a call to the other one, then we couldn’t figure out how to answer the call before it went to voice mail. And God only know how to locate voice mail. Luckily, that evening we were meeting with neighbors and everyone had to see the phone. I received so much instruction on that phone and it was all going in one ear and out the other. The more we played with the phones, the more we began learning. We still have a long way to go but we can place a call, answer a call, find voice mail, and insert contacts from numbers that call us. We can even get online via the smart phone. Hooray!
Then on Tuesday our computers showed a page that said our Wi-Fi was not working and that we need to put a filter on whatever is on our phone line such as a fax machine or security system. Hmmmm. The only thing on our phone line now is the Wi-Fi that is not working. The page on the computer suggested going to other websites. Hellooo, the computer is not working. We cannot get online to go to any websites. We called AT&T. These calls to AT&T are a minimum of an hour and sometimes 3 hours. We had to take George’s laptop upstairs and physically connect it to the U-verse box and type in a bunch of numbers and, I guess, reset the whole thing. “Mr. and Mrs. Henshall,” said the tech, “you should be good to go now.” Indeed, we were back online. Until Thursday, when we got the same page on both computers and we were, once again, down. Try as we may, we couldn’t get back online. So, we called AT&T, again. They got us back online. “Mr. and Mrs. Henshall,” said the tech, “you should be good to go now. Do you have any other questions?” At this point, I said, “I just need to know if we are going to have to call AT&T once every day or two in order to get back online. If that is the case, I need to include you on my calendar of things to do.” By this time, George began overriding me and telling the gentleman, “Thank you for all of your help.”
Yes, we have lightning speed Wi-Fi internet now – that comes and goes – and smart phones that are so smart we cannot always figure them out. For instance, when I open up the phone, there are several icons to press for whatever I want to do, such as, contact, phone, email, apps, browser, market, and other things. A friend of mine put a “gallery” on that page so I could see my photos. Did I mention the phone takes pictures? Well, now in addition to the “gallery” there is a “mini diary”. Where did that come from and why? I think the phone wants me to keep a diary. I’m thinking that phone is so smart that it just wants to know all of my personal stuff and laugh at me. No way am I keeping a diary on that phone. It’s probably the AT&T tech that I wised off to that wants me to keep a diary. Uh-uh, buddy. You are not going to see my personal stuff.
Alas, I did order The Square. The only reason we put up with AT&T this week was to get The Square. I now have an app on the smart phone that is awaiting The Square. I guess it will be arriving in the next week or two and I will finally be able to accept credit cards.
My embroidery tech friend who lives in Orlando
All of the AT&T interaction backed me up in my work significantly. I had planned, and paid for, a spot at Gallery Night. I needed to make Christmas stockings to sell and have been working on them all week. I was only able to make 5 or 6 stockings between everything else this week. Also, I created a new can wrap. This one has a pocket. Then came the can wraps with initials. In the meantime, I was filling various orders. Since I didn’t make Gallery Night, all of this is for sale. The stockings are $15.00 each, fully lined in red with “Merry Christmas” embroidered on the cuff. You are not going to find Christmas stockings like this anywhere else. The can wraps, of course, are $7.00 each. So, pretend that we are at Gallery Night and let’s start shopping:>)
I’m lined up to have a booth Perdido Bay Golf Club on November 26th. Don’t forget to buy from local small businesses on November 26th. It would be nice if there were areas set up all over town to spotlight our local small businesses.
Yes, we are still celebrating my birthday this week.
All cell phone holders in our Etsy store are half price ($5.00), so stop by www.cajunstitchery.etsy.com and get some cute cell phone holders as gifts for Christmas. Now I’m going to have to design a smart phone
holder.
holder.CHRISTMAS is around the corner. Get that Christmas shopping done now and enjoy the holidays.
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Thank you Marshall Larrivere for the following:
A Parish priest is driving down to New Orleans
from Alexandria
smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine
bottle on the floor of the car.
He says, “Sir, have you been drinking?”
“Just water,” says the priest.
The trooper says, “Then why do I smell wine?”
The priest looks at the bottle and says, “Good Lord!
He's done it again!”
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C’est tout, mes amis
Cajun Stitchery
(850) 261-2462
P.S. You are always welcome to stop by and look at all of the catalogs and pass some time with me, cher.
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