WHAT THE HECK ARE BYTES?

Jeez..................ladies I have missed all of you! This has been the longest week of my life not communicating with all my online buddies. It was like I was captured by some outerspace aliens and locked in a capsule with no access to anything. Let me tell you it is not a good feeling to go five days like this and according to Verizon Wireless I have 12 more days to be in this closed capsule.

Sit back grab some hot chocolate and let me tell you what happened to me this past Monday. Last January I joined Verizon Broadband because living out here in the middle of no where dial up was like when I was a teenager waiting on a new Elvis movie to come to our small town theatre. It just was too slow coming. So I signed up with Broadband and patted myself on the back for such a smart move. Well ladies for ten months everything was fine and then I find out that I am not the smartest kid on the block and was actually told by a male friend of mine this week after discussing this problem that I reminded him of Forrest Gump. He could not believe that anyone could be so dumb.
It seems that on Broadband you are limited to the amount of Gigs you can use on a monthly basis. Mine is 5 gigs and was told by the Verizon saleman that it was almost impossible to use that many gigs in a months time. I never stayed on my computer that long so I never worried about the possibility of running over. Hold on to your cup of hot chocolate or whatever your drinking because ladies I not only went over 5 gigs but in November I used 10. I now owe Verizon not only my arm but both legs.
By now you have to be thinking what an idiot grandmayellowhair is because I know I have had that thought for a week now. In all honesty and I hate to admit to all of you but I thought my usuage was by how long I was on the internet not by the size of sites I visit and how many bytes are on that site or the amount of pictures you download to your blog site. None of this occured to me at all. It seems that just my site alone was 300,000 bytes. So if I opened my site several times a day to go into it and check your comments and then go to your sites I am using a huge amount of my gig allowance. Is this not stupid!!!!!!!!!!  The Verizon lady was laughing at me almost the whole time we were talking because I was freaking out over the amount I owed them. I guess she doesn't get to talk to alot of Forrest Gump grandmothers. I tried to explain to her that there was no way I was staying with a company that I could not enjoy visiting blogs because they might have a lot of graphics on them and therefore big bytes. It seems she is not a blogger because she actually told me well you will just have to limit your visit to your blog friends to maybe one friend a week. ONE friend a week are you NUTS lady. This is the only enjoyment in my life and I am going to limit it to one follower a week. I said with almost 200 friends on here you want me to visit one a week. Do the math lady! Its 52 weeks in a year that would be almost 4 years before I got back to the first friend I visited over three years ago. It made no impression on her what so ever so I called the next day and got someone that was a little more sympathic but not much help either. She explained my options and for $120.00 I could cancel my contract and go back to dial up.

My gigs role over on the 20th of every month and since I had already used 5 gigs by the 3rd of this month I have had to go through withdrawal of visiting with all of you and catching up on your sites.
The reason I am able to do this post and be on here tonight is I am visiting my daughter in Austin before her big trip to Barcelona, Spain on Sunday. She suggested that I take my laptop and the Verizon wireless thingee tomorrow to their store and have it checked because she feels like maybe this is a mistake or it has malfunction. Who knows all I know is I feel like Verizon can take their bytes and gigs and service and ............................................... oh dear Ms Pearl is coming out.
Anyway have any of you gone thru this? I went to my site tonight and took things off it making it smaller and I put only one post on a page and made my pictures smaller which knocked it down to 80,000 from 300,000. But still this is so ridculous. Next week I will check on Hughes net and see if I can afford them. I have to get with someone that is unlimited because I can not give up visiting with you guys.
So that is why I have not visited your sites or did a post all week. Hopefully this will get straigtened out tomorrow at the Verizon store.
Sweet Dreams
Maggie