TimBurman

In the United States, AT&T Wireless has an Office of the President, while Verizon has Verizon Executive Relations. Other companies might have something similar. I remember the Office of the President doing some amazing things for customers, mostly related to billing that were the customer's own fault, when nobody at any tier of the call center could help them. Even calling your own phone company, they may have internal contacts at the old number company if it is different. You could also try the executives at Google or their legal team, who almost always respond to certain types of requests. When I worked for government, other governments would bend over backwards to help us, maybe companies do the same for each other or would respond to someone from the FCC or another level of government. Just brain storming but you seem like the kind of person that will eventually figure this out.

You could try logging into Gmail just to the point before the SMS is sent, then phone the number you used to have and speak to the current owner. Apologize that you forgot to take the number off your account and so they are receiving text messages meant for you, but you would like to get one more message from them and they won't be bothered anymore. Then you will switch to a new number on your Gmail and they will not receive your messages. Many people will be happy to help a stranger if you are nice and polite to them.

The other option is to contact the phone company and explain, asking an open ended question if there is any way they could help you, with the permission of the current owner of the number, to get one more text message and move your Gmail to a new number. It doesn't sound in any way like you are trying to pull a scam, so they might help.

I bought this book in the early 1990s and still have it with the red cover. My favorite part that stuck with me all those years was this section:

"And right here let me say one thing: After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!"

I've been giving cash and encouraging them to put it into diversified exchange traded funds. I may offer to match any returns for a year this time, so they are less likely to spend it all. It's a tough sell for young people but I want to help them develop good habits early.

This is pretty fun! Zuck's pastey white face is a nice touch.

I've been running a 2080 TI with AMD 5600x on Linux Mint Cinnamon for three months 24/7 with no graphics issues. Previously ran the proprietary nvidia-driver-550 but now use the nouveau open source drivers. There are five choices for Nvida drivers either open source, closed or open kernal (up to 570/580 now). This was a complete switch off Windows 10, which I've only had to boot twice in three months, to transfer some data.

Every game I've tried on Linux was either gold or platinum on ProtonDB and ran fine so far. WINE worked for running a couple non-game apps. Lutris is another way to run programs but I haven't needed it yet.

Definitely try it if you have a machine sitting there. There is so much support for Linux and Mint on the web it was easy to answer any questions I had setting things up.

Fast Acting Humalog 1000 unit (10 ml) vials cost CAD $40.34 = USD $28.73 in Alberta. Anyone can get Blue Cross from the government which is CAD $720 a year. Then each 3 month supply of a prescription like insulin has a co-pay of $28 a quarter, for however many vials you need. I last used Lantus 24 hour insulin in 2020, when it was around CAD $60, but the government has been switching to biosimilar brands and providing free insulin pumps and supplies including test strips, which only use fast acting insulins. Lantus is most similar to this California insulin.

I would get out of the investment at the best possible price. Imagine you think your shares are worth $5 million right now, but you could only get out at $3 million. If you were not invested in this company, would you take $3 million cash right now and buy into half the company at a deep discount? If you really think there might be an 8 or 9 figure exit in the future, sell 90% of your investment and keep 10% as an option. Staying invested with shares heading to zero makes no sense to me.