Driving through northern North Dakota I saw a couple of trains on the track paralleling US-52. The small towns marked by tall grain elevators with big spaces in between reminded me of Nebraska with the exception that those spaces have bumps. In one area, many of those bumps are marked with mostly numeric graffiti constructed of white rocks. I'm guessing that the numbers identify graduating classes. The vertical letters next to 65 (That's my year!) spell out "STATE CHAMPS".

Mac stands outside the Moose Jaw Visitor Centre which offers free WiFi. My phone had lost service almost as soon as I entered Canada. I used the free WiFi to research motels then headed to one. There I used the motel's WiFi to tackle the phone problem. A few weeks back I had registered for a plan that would let me use the phone in Canada for an extra $2 per day. I first checked to verify that was in place then went looking for ways to contact Verizon customer service. I settled on Twitter and it wasn't too long before I was chatting with a technician.

Although this was the first time I've done it through Twitter, I have used the chat approach to service before and am generally happy with it. It allows one technician to simultaneously deal with multiple customers. It also, at least in the case of Verizon, allows multiple technicians to deal with a single customer. This is made possible by the full record of what has gone before being available to anyone entering the conversation. There is naturally some lag involved and in my case this was mostly in the 15 to 20 minute range but once was nearly an hour. I have no idea how much of that lag was from the techicians being busy and how much was from each new tech spending time to read up on the problem. In the end I did get my phone connected by changing one setting. I'm sure happy about that and certainly appreciate Verizon having this service available and reasonably responsive. On the other hand, reaching that solution took more than four hours which could have been a whole lot less if any of the first five technicians had known what the sixth one did or if the technicians response to each step had not taken many minutes. Not a great job, Verizon, but a good one. Thanks.