Wednesday June 4, 2025 Guerneville CA.
Two part authorization
Since cell phones don’t work much in my house and only a bit in my yard, I have been having a hard time setting up my VA account as it needs cell phone service to do it.
Messaging works in one spot in my yard, but that’s about it.
So, I decided to take my van up into the hells where I could get cell phone service and set up my office to get setting up two part authorization to work.
Dirty van
The van had been parked under one of the cherry trees and the birds eating cherries had really messed it up with cherry juice and dropped half eaten cherry stuff.
I moved it to the hose and washed off the side of it.
Office spot
Then I drove it up into the hills to this spot and parked to set up my office in the van.
The view from there was pretty nice of Guerneville with fog coming in up the river from the ocean.
Office
I set up my computer and phone and got started.
Not good
Things didn’t go well as I worked for a couple hours trying to set up the account. I couldn’t log in to get the account setup, because the two part stuff wanted to use my home phone. I tried to get around it every way I could but no matter what I did to try to get the cell phone to do it, nothing would work, but I did learn some stuff I could try when I got back home.
WIFI calling
Next I tried to get my cell phone, WIFI calling working but that didn’t go well either. After finally getting connected to the cell phone tech, he kept trying to tell me I needed to talk to my internet provider as it was a router problem which I knew it wasn’t as my WIFI at home works just fine. I finally gave up on him. Most of those guys don’t seem to be very helpful.
If I could get the WIFI calling to work, I could use my phone at my house, so I’ll keep trying.
Headed home
Eventually, I drove on home
Back home I worked on the VA secure sign in thing some more and finally got it to send a sign in code to my cell phone. I’d start the code thing on my computer and then run outside to the one spot the cell phone would receive a message and once that came in, I ran back to my computer and entered it and I finally got in so I could set up the rest of the secure account thing which required me to take a picture of my driver’s license and send it to them with my cell phone.
That pretty much was my day and really tired me out.
Otherwise, it was a nice day up in the hills.
Stopped paying for my cell phone. Don’t miss it. Yep, they keep pushing towards the cell phone necessity. People are amazed/confused when they ask for my cellphone number and I tell them it’s only a landline. Nobody wants to talk to you anymore, just text. How rude! I don’t even have caller ID. When the phone rings it’s always a surprise, like the old days and if a scammer calls it’s fun time. LOL
I hate having to use the phone! I’m still on the computer no smart phone yet, but I’ll have so soon
You mentioned sometime back of a transmission swap for the van … are you still considering that?
Hi Jeff,
I put the auto transmisson for the van on hold, at least for now. Not into doing that job right now. :O) The manual one works ok. The differentuals are a little high geared is mostly why I was thinking of doing the auto transmission as the truck I got the four wheel drive had a automatic and that is why the differentuals are a bit high geared I think.
Yep, eventually, everyone will have to have a cell phone just to do business.
Bob
Won’t be too much longer and it will be impossible to exist and function without a smart phone. They are wonderful gadgets, but I just hate using them except to control my big Samsung smart TV. That is a plus, but there are still a lot of minuses, at least in my cell phone world. We only get one or two bars at our house, although I think I saw 3 bars once, but then, it could have been the Margaritas.
Hi Kenny, I agree the cell phones are a wonderful gadgets when you can get a connection. A bad cell signal at my house makes it hard to use them and learn how to do stuff on them that makes things more complicated. I have a hassel every time I try to make something work on them.
Bob