International calling card problems

About two weeks ago, my wife bought a great calling card online for her to talk with her family in Tehran. We've had a lot of trouble finding low rate cards lately because most have been raising their rates above 10-12 cents per minute. This one card my wife found promised 1.3 cents per minute. Even if the rate was four times that, it was a very nice card for us.

From the first they started charging more than they said. I called and asked for a listing of the charges to the card and the operator politely told me each call and charge. Then I did a little math, factored in the taxes and found that the company took about three dollars from our $20.00 card. I called and said that this was the case and they corrected the error. My wife and I were very happy.

Later that week, they were taking more money. This time, my wife had been logging each of her calls. I called their customer support again to get the run-down of the charges to do the math and get the real charges. This time, the customer support operator said that she was not allowed to give that information and I was supposed to log into the website to get it. I went to the website and the only accounts available are for distributors. I figured that I wouldn't win that battle.

The next time we lost actual money on the card after not using it for a few days, and it wasn't the weekly maintanence cycle. I called up and asked them to correct that. They did, and immediately after that my wife called her mother in Iran for a two minute call, and afterward 20 minutes were taken from the card.

I called customer support again to talk with a manager but the operators would not even let me wait for a manager in a phone queue.

Right now, I have put in a call with the corporate offices to see about resolving the case. Then I move go to the attorney general's office of that state.

Some cards may be wonderful, but be careful of greedy companies and their customer support departments.

High risk ob/gyn

My wife and I will be visiting a high-risk ob/gyn this afternoon. My wife has diabetes, so a pregnancy qualifies as high-risk. She is also very anxious about having a child after the age of 35; she is 34 right now. So she thinks this is the only time in her life to have a baby. We are ready for a child in our lives. We have issues with our marriage, but those will get ironed out and I, for one, know that a child won't solve those issues.

My wife does have a little trouble controlling her blood sugar, though. And that does worry me about an impending pregnancy. It also worries me that I haven't found a computer job yet. I hope soon.

How little is enough Farsi?

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Right now, I know enough to have a conversation with my in-laws for very few minutes. I’d like to be able to construct my own sentences. I know that I need to know a lot more vocabulary first, but I did learn quite a bit while I was in Iran for a month meeting my wife’s family.

Morning migraine

I woke up this morning with a migraine. This hasn't happened often since the beginning of my illness when I would wake up with a severe migraine because I had been dreaming about writing computer code in my sleep. I usually don't remember dreaming, so it is not surprising that I don't remember if I had a dream last night/this morning. But whatever it was, my wife woke me nicely and I was rewarded with a migraine.

Programming challenges

It has been just a little while since I've been out of the programming loop. I know that my mind has atrophied. I've started working on the web-published "Python Challenges." I've usually been inventive, but I've had a lot of difficulties with it. I'm not sure if it is because I'm not fully motivated or if I have atrophied. I'm hoping the former.