OK, I'm officially home bound today after the overnight storm, which dropped about 5 inches of snow. It's bitter cold outside, 2 degrees. I kept the house at a balmy 64 overnight.

Because I need to be "at my desk," working at home, I can't go out and shovel til around 5:30 pm. I may just leave it til tomorrow, when it will reach a high of 26.

I have a conference call at 1 pm but otherwise am free.

After a long hold and a fair amount of wrangling with 2 reps, I was able to get AT&T to remove a $110 charge for work done by one of their technicians when I complained that I kept losing my Internet connection. I think I had a pretty strong case. I had just switched over to UVerse phone and Internet. I'm already paying for their Internet service with a monthly fee, so why should I pay extra to fix the problem? It had just been installed a month earlier. He said rather than deal with someone else's wiring, his preference would be to run a new line and install a new jack. He didn't tell me it would cost me anything. I didn't tell him to do all that work, that was his decision. All I wanted was for my Internet to work properly.

If you ever want to dispute a fee or charge with AT&T, be aware it's a lot easier to do if the charge is under $100. If it's over $100, they have to pass the call on to someone else and get special permission to waive the fee. It would have been penny wise and pound foolish to lose me as a long-time customer as I know they'll jack up the monthly phone charges in March when the promo is over. If I can't get another promo at that time, I'll be looking into Magic Jack or Ooma. Right now I'm paying $30 for phone (4 hours free monthly talk time) and $15 for Internet. That seems reasonable, and I don't want to pay any more. They send me promos for UVerse TV on a weekly basis,incessantly.