TracFone update: Fucking dead zones

So I went out to hang out with friends today. A couple blocks away from my house, I had full signal. I had full signal all the way to their house, full signal while there, and full signal all the way back until I drove over the 250 Bypass when it promptly went to shit.

I live in a dead zone.

Which really sucks since the main reason I got the phone is so I could communicate better with said friends about said hanging out. For whatever reason they don't seem to like signing onto one or another IM service where I'm readily available at home, so I figured a prepaid phone would be a cheap way of getting in contact with them. But since I have no signal most of the time and a really shitty strength signal with no reliability the rest of the time, it won't work.

While discussing my predicament T-Mobile prepay was mentioned, but apparently their best offer (which you have to buy a "gold" membership for) is 15% extra minutes when you add minutes, whereas TracFone has a "double minutes for life (of your current phone)" card, and it pays itself back very quickly since it halves the cost of all the minutes you buy after that. Plus if I go on T-Mobile then I want a G1, which probably won't work with a prepaid plan because they probably hate to actually give out decent phones to people who have the gall to want to save money and not enter a restrictive contract with tons of exploitative fine print.

I guess what this means is I need to move out. Signal is awesome everywhere but here. I'll need to remember to test the signal wherever I look for a place to rent, just to make sure.

Kind of related: I love having none of my actual personal information associated with this phone. When you go to activate a phone on TracFone's site, at first they prompt you to surrender the goods, but waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down at the bottom there's a small link that says "Skip this step". I clicked it and completed activation, no account registration necessary, no private information surrendered.