Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

When Things Go Well

Today I had to make two phone calls one was to Northwestel, about my cable and Internet. The other to Rogers to cancel my iPhone, which does not work up here in Yellowknife.

I decided to phone NorthwesTel first as it was going to be the easy call and I was quite honestly afraid of what the Rogers people might say to me. After waiting on hold for only about 5 minutes I got through to a NWTel representative. I wanted to find out what my plan was. The plan itself is 5 years old and because I was out of town over September first when NWTel changed there plans I was unsure as to what I had anymore. Down south I was using about 30gb of my 60gb bandwidth limit, needless to say I was downloading a lot and watching hours of TV shows, so when I came back to Yellowknife I was a slight bit scared my heavy internet usage would kill my wallet. You see I originally thought my plan only had a 20gb limit and I was correct in thinking this, but when September came around and NWTel upped all the plans, my 20gb limit became 60gb. When the representative told me this I was highly relieved, as already in October I was at 21gb (The rest of the family uses it). So one down, one to go.

When phoning any big service company you normally have to enter in all these key codes to get the department you want, and that is exactly what I did.  And I was exactly where I didn’t need to be. So after waiting on hold for 10 minutes and speaking to the first Rogers rep who took all my information and why I was calling, determined she couldn’t help me, she transferred me to the next. The next rep, who I had a slight hard time understanding due to his accent, got me a little closer to my goal. They were all in good spirits and understood my situation, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to use Rogers, it was that they don’t have service in Yellowknife. He was able to verify everything and hand me off to the 3rd and final rep who quickly checked my account and told me that my phone would cancel after 30 days and all I would need to pay for was for the month of October, which was understandable. Once we finished I thanked her very much for her service and she once again apologized for the lack of service in the area.

There you have it the two calls that I thought would end up costing me even more money. I’m in a very good mood because of it. Cheers guys.

The Explanation

I guess I owe some the explanation of where I am and what I am doing.

Let us start at the beginning, where I was down at school in the little town of Dawson Creek, BC. School wasn’t going that great. I was there for business and even though I was finding some of it interesting, I began to feel it wasn’t what I truly wanted to do. On top of that the college’s campus I was at was not a very populated one. There were only 2 other people in all 5 of my classes and almost no student life outside of those classes. I think some of this lack of student life apparent to me was because I didn’t live in the residence. I lived in a nice, little, newly renovated apartment downtown only seconds from a very modern Cafe. The Internet was also 100x more reliable than what the residences apparently had, which I needed. So due to the lack of interaction with people I was starting to go nuts.

On to the other determining factor, which would be my other blog, YkOnline. It seems I have stumbled upon something and I am afraid of it! Turns out I love Yellowknife, who knew. Most of my life I have wanted nothing more than to leave the place, but that has all changed. Having lived in Yellowknife all my life I have gained a lot of knowledge about the place and am constantly seeking to find out more about it. So with that and my passion of Blogging I create YkOnline in May of 2009 and at the end of August of the same year it started to grow and fast. At that time I was just about to start school, which I was excited about and didn’t know what YkOnline could become. Thinking back now and I’m sure most people will agree with this that the turning point of YkOnline was the Municipal Election that just wrapped up. That and the Dump Fire links. The hits on the site went from 30 unique hits a day to 130 overnight and they haven’t come back down. In fact they have grown, I am now receiving around 200 unique hits a day with over 2000 this month. Granted more hits come when I post an article that day. At that point I knew I had something and I ran with it. I kept updating as frequently as I could from down south. I used Google Alerts, the local paper, CBC, and friends online as my sources of information and it worked quite well but it was still difficult not actually being there.

At the beginning of October I hit an interesting point. I was desperately lacking interaction with people in real life. Sure I talked to people everyday, people who were online Yellowknife and else where, but some would say I was border lining on depression. 80% of my time was spent hiding away in my apartment staring at computer screens. I had decided weeks before any of this to come back to Yellowknife over Thanksgiving, to 1. see family and 2. to attend 2 social media gathering and meet with a couple people about YkOnline. But when I came back I made the very tough decision to move back. Although in this post it seems pretty clear but it definitely not.

I feared people would think I was giving up and would think less of me. That and I, myself thought I was giving up and if I couldn’t handle this, how would I ever get anywhere in life. I also had to amazing friends who lived 45 minutes outside of town. They had once lived in Yellowknife and I really value their friendship and knew going back to Yellowknife would mean I wouldn’t be able to see them very often.

On the flip side here as some positive reason for coming back. Family would be one and I guess I’m obligated to put that in here, as I know my father reads this blog. One of the others and a big one would be YkOnline. Like I explain above, that little site I created because I’m passionate about this place grew and gained momentum. I have so many ideas and am so excited about the site I felt I couldn’t continue it unless I was back in Yellowknife and the majority of that is true. I hope to explain more about what I have in store for that site in the next couple days.

So here I am in Yellowknife, ready for a fresh start. I should maybe reread this and make sure it all makes sense but I’m just going to “Go with it” today.

More will be uncovered about what I will be doing over the days to come. Just need to make that clear, haha. Smile.

Must be Friday

Here I am again, so that must mean it is Friday.

Seems every week that passes by I do less and less. Lets start with last weekend, where once again I ended up out at East Pine. Go figure. All day Saturday we tried to clear a football field behind the house.  We were hoping that when people come out to visit we can have a full on football match. No, don’t believe me. Smart, you have learned well. We were clearing trees though, lots of tree. What we were trying to do was strengthen the satellite Internet signal. Did it work? I have no idea.

On Sunday we had plans to go quading but do to an incorrect part for one of the quads we were unable to go. So what did we do instead? No really, I can’t remember. I am trying to think about it very hard and I just can’t seem to pull it out of my memory. All I seem to be able to remember from Sunday is that I drove home late in the evening. Lets just move on to Monday where I had my first economics class. Ugh. That is all I have to say about Economics, ugh!

The rest of my school week went swiftly. I am enjoying most of my classes. Although it may take me a bit to understand Accounting I really enjoy listening to the instructor. He has definitely been around for a while and has many stories to tell and wisdom to share and is also my Principles of Management instructor. For years he was a local journalist and I would love to pick his brain about what that was like.

I guess that brings us to today. I have once again found myself in Cafe Europa. It is definitely my new hang out spot, I seem to be coming here several times a week. The food is good, the service great and the atmosphere wonderful.

Until next Friday, have a good week. Remember if you want to read my more focused writing you can check out YkOnline and Dawson Online

Apple Morning

HaHa Success. I am online here at the College, in my computer class actually.

Did anyone else watch/follow any of the Apple announcements today? New iTunes, with all new redesigned iTunes Store. Touch/iPhone app arranging in iTunes now – really cool feature. Bigger iPod Touch. Nano with video camera capabilities. Flip Mino vs Apple Nano – Thoughts. New Shuffles.

What we didn’t get. Apple Tablet – Even though we didn’t think we would see one today, there was thought it might be mentioned. iPod Touch with video camera – There were rumors that there were technical issue as well as rumors they don’t wont to release it until iPhone update.

What do you think of all the new Apple Goodies? Good? Bad? Don’t Care?