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There has never been a time in my life, that I can recall, where I have not been a voracious reader. Normally I spend my time reading things that make me laugh, a good romance novel can work wonders on a stressed out mind (or at least this stressed out mind), but with the onset of COVID and the many discussions we've all had in the last.....my gosh is it really coming up on two years? Well anyway, with all of those discussions front and center in my brain, my reading has taken decidedly different turns. 

I have a lot of family in the many fields of healthcare and medicine, so we've had a lot of cause to chat about other vaccines. Polio is one that comes up again and again, after all the Polio vaccine has kept our children safe from paralysis of the limbs for decades, right?

Check it out, I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

​Ty

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There's a whole boat load of stuff happening in the world right now that is 100% out of my control, but my weight and health aren't one of those things, or at least not insofar as my weight affects my health. I've already been down the overweight path, I got the plus sized t-shirt, ordered bigger pants, all that jazz. If you've read my post about how I lost 25 pounds (and another ten since then) you know what I'm talking about. Basically, I don't do overweight, I don't like how I look, I hate how it feels, making my entire world sluggish and ill. So I'm going to tell you all about how I got back on track with exercise by purchasing a Peloton, from day one to day thirty, here's the skinny. (read more)

Before I get into the nitty gritty of how I came to Peloton, let me tell you a little bit about myself so you know what to expect.

I am NOT a part of the body positive movement. I do NOT believe you can be healthy at any size, and I really dislike how sensationalized it has become to think that asking your joints and organs to deal with a bunch of extra pounds of fat is just totally fine and good.

Exercise allows me to be in the best shape I can be for the amount of effort I am willing to put in. I track my calories, I keep my weight in check, this is just another step in that staircase. 

With COVID happening, and with my whole family contracting it in April, I knew who was most at risk and I didn't want to be that person. We all recovered fine, but it was a wakeup call to get back on track with moving more and pushing myself so I can hopefully keep this healthy body thing going for years and years to come.

I'd exercised before, I was a Beachbody coach for four years (this is likely why I have zero empathy for people who want to complain about their weight but not do anything about it), so I knew exercise felt good and helped me stay in a good place physically. I'd been out of the habit for so long (a solid five years) that I didn't quite know where to start to get going again. I'd gained 35 pounds and lost that same amount in the past couple of years, so my weight was good, but that didn't mean my fitness was good. I wanted more, I wanted to progress, get some muscle tone back, build up my stamina, sweat, work for something, feel alive! 

Jumping around, doing pushups or plyometrics, all that stuff is off the table for me. I broke my arm quite badly back in February of 2020 while taking a snowboarding lesson, so I've got one arm that doesn't straighten all the way. I get by, it's good enough, but using it to hold my body weight is 100% out of the question. That and I just don't enjoy any of the things I listed above. 

Running was also out, I've done that as well. The more I added to the list of things I wasn't going to do, the more narrow my choices became.

Then I saw that Peloton commercial, you know the one where everyone got angry about the dude buying his wife a Peloton for Christmas? Then everyone lost their collective minds about the Patriarchy? Yeah, that one. That commercial was the first time I'd really heard of Peloton. I figured if people were getting that bugged about it then it might be something I'd like to try.

​Good job angry people, you got Peloton a customer, I'm sure they thank you. ;)

The first thing needed for me to get back into exercise was a sense of community, the more cult-like, the better. I'm not on social media, so I don't mean that kind of community, but rather the classes, the immersion, the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself. Like I said, I'd been a Beachbody coach for a long time, so I knew for certain that I did NOT want to be a part of a community like that again. Nothing against Beachbody, they're a great company, but in every online group I did there was always the underlying push of "Have you considered coaching? You'd make a great coach!"

It's a business model, that's how it goes. 

I wanted fanatical love for a program, but I wanted nothing at all to do with anything that "Could make you some extra money each month!"

Been there, got that t-shirt, too! 

Peloton offers live classes, and after a little research I found out that they also record all of those classes and add them to their library. There are something like 14,000 classes in the Peloton library right now (it might even be more) so I could ride every day for years and never repeat a class. 

At the time of writing this post I have ridden more than fifty times and have only done two of the classes more than once, just because I enjoyed them. 

Variety is the spice of life, and variety is the spice of keeping me committed to a program. I don't want to know what the trainer is going to say next, I don't want to realize there's a hard part coming up that I'd rather just skip. I want to feel like each class is fresh and new, even if the only things changing are the cadence, resistance, and intervals. 

So, my decision to get a Peloton was born.

The video of this blog post is below. If you want to watch it on YouTube you can do that here.

MY BOOK RECOMMENDATION - THE MOTH IN THE IRON LUNG

Is the Peloton Bike Plus worth it, or are you good getting the Bike?

I'm going to tell you what I know, and what I know is that you can't go wrong with either Peloton Bike. I watched a lot of videos comparing the two, but for every video that ended with "get the Bike +" another video would say "get the regular Bike".

I don't think you can go wrong either way.

I ended up with the Bike + only because I liked the idea of a bigger screen, a better sound system, and I really liked the idea of Auto Follow. 

If you don't know what Auto Follow is, it's basically just the Bike + triggering a new resistance based on the cue of the trainer. Instead of you turning the knob yourself, Auto Follow makes the change for you so you can keep riding instead of focusing on something else.

In actual use, Auto Follow isn't super amazing. Yes it does exactly what it's supposed to do, it lets you ride without adjusting, but that doesn't mean you never adjust. 

For example: You start a ride where the warmup resistance is between 20-35. After a month of riding, my resistance on warmup is pegged out, so I'm warming up at 35. I click the Auto Follow button, turn the knob to make my resistance where I want it to be, and then I ride. BUT...when the warmup is over and we get into higher resistances, let's say the new resistance is between 45-60, the Bike + will automatically move your resistance to the same range as your old resistance, which means my new resistance is 60 since my old resistance was the top of the range.

I can't do that. It's one thing on the warmup, something else entirely on a steep climb or high speed interval. I'll say that Auto Follow works half the time, but the other half of the time I'm making small adjustments, just like anyone without Auto Follow.

MY VERY FAVORITE LAWYER LED COMMUNITY - A GREAT WAY TO STAY UP TO DATE ON YOUR RIGHTS

Another consideration when deciding between the Bike and Bike + was the bigger screen. No doubt about it, I love the big screen. I feel like I'm in the class, it's extremely immersive. The smaller screen isn't much smaller, though, an inch or a bit more? So maybe it's the same on the regular Bike. I also don't know how responsive the touch screen is on the original Bike, but I would imagine it's the same as the Bike +, which is to say VERY responsive. It's not like back in the day when you'd buy a knock off iPad and the screen was difficult to navigate. The Bike screen is just as good as any high end phone or laptop.

Now, the sound system is one place that all the videos said really stood out. The Bike + has more speakers and the sound is clear and crisp. That said, if you're working out with headphones on, this isn't going to matter to you at all. I think the headphone jack on the Bike + might be in an easier spot (it's right at the front of the handle bars), but I know the original Bike had a headphone jack, and I can't imagine it would be in a place that wouldn't allow the cord to reach your head, which is all that matters.

Resale value might be another consideration, but when I looked on Craigslist to see if I could purchase a Peloton discounted from someone using it as a clothes rack, I found that the bikes hold their value very well. You could save $100 buying one used, or spend that $100 and get the warranty that comes with a new Bike. 

The warranty isn't transferrable, just in case you were wondering. 

I chose to buy new, and of course I got the Bike +, no regrets there, but I think I'd have been equally happy with the regular Bike. The only thing I can think of that might have been a drawback is the sound system. I do not ride with headphones on, so I like that the sound is big and bold, but also leaves my ears free to hear my kids if they need me.

Peloton does also have a buyback/trade in program, so that might be something to consider when you make your purchase, but I haven't done much research on it. I can't see the point right now since I hope to have my Bike + for many, many years.

You can also find a Peloton coupon code pretty easily by using Duck Duck Go, Dissenter (or your chosen search engine) to look up "Peloton Coupon Code", "Peloton Coupon Code 2021" or even narrow it down further with "Peloton Coupon Code September 2021" or whichever month it is when you're reading this post. I'm pretty sure I used the code that I found on Retailmenot, it was simple and saved about $100.

TY WRITES BOOKS FOR KIDS WHO LOVE ROBLOX AND MINECRAFT

When you get your Bike delivered it will be set up by some technicians, but they don't fit you for placement. You will have to do that on your own, but it's not hard. The first time you turn the Peloton on it will trigger a series of videos that show you how to adjust everything. It'll walk you through changing the height and distance of the saddle, adjusting the height of the handlebars, and even helping you click in for the first time. 

Using those videos I was able to get very close to my ideal seating arrangement, but it didn't feel quite right so I went looking further and found this other video from Pelobuddy.

I got my husband to come out and help me get everything adjusted correctly. It made a big difference even though the adjustments were rather small in each place, seat height, seat distance, and handlebar height. The end result was less fatigue in my legs and just a better riding experience overall. 

If you've got someone who can help you out, I recommend that, but you can certainly do it on your own, it's just a little more difficult.

Not hard at all.

There are so many classes in so many styles and lengths that it's very simple to find a class you want to do each day. 

I started out with the 20 minute beginner classes, added a warm up or cool down class, and even threw in a quick arms class while still staying on the bike. 

On Sundays I started taking guided tours through Hawaii or California with one of the instructors, just to kind of chill out a bit. It was way more enjoyable than I thought it would be and has become one of the things I look most forward to each week, even though those classes are one of the few I repeat. I do wish there were more guided tours, but at the moment there are only a half dozen or so. Hopefully more will be made once COVID allows the US to open up and start moving again. 

I've moved on from the 20 minute rides for the most part, but I still do an occasional short stint if I feel the need to recover from a tough ride the day before. 

I've taken themed rides (Carnivale, EDM, Bass Drop, etc.), arms and interval rides, advanced beginner rides, climb rides, zone rides, and that's just the tip of the iceberg! There is so much I haven't even delved into! 

For one whole week of my first 30 days I came down with a cold and chose the "just ride" option while watching episodes of House Hunters. I still burned about 350 calories per 40 minute ride and I didn't feel like I was overdoing it. I did PURCHASE a nifty little desk that inserts into the Bike+ handlebars, so if you're going to be watching a show on a portable device, I recommend checking it out.

The possibilities are endless. If you want to ride, there's some combination in the Peloton library that will suit your needs for the day. The Peloton filter even lets you filter out classes or instructors who swear. I don't want to hear that stuff, so I turn that filter on, it works great!

Some of my favorite trainers right now are Hannah Frankson (in the video I keep calling her Hannah Parkson, sorry!), Dennis Morton, and Leanne Hainsby. If you're looking for some suggestions, those three are amazing, but Hannah Frankson is most definitely my spirit trainer!

I rode Peloton for 30 days in a row, and I'm definitely going to tell you about my weight changes and measurement changes, but before I get there I wanted to mention a heart rate monitor. This really isn't necessary, but if you're like me and you track your calories then you might want to know how many calories you're burning in each workout.

The heart rate monitor is important because riding without it vastly underestimates your calories burned (or at least it did for me). I did my first week of classes without a monitor and it was showing that I'd burned somewhere around 200 calories per class. When I got my heart rate monitor in and hooked it up I found that I was actually burning more like 350 calories per class. 

That's a huge difference. 

I don't eat back my exercise calories, but I do still like to know how much I'm burning, it makes me happy.

If you are looking for a good, easily paired, cheap heart rate monitor for Peloton, I recommend this Wahoo Tickr Fit. I charge it once every few weeks, use it just about daily for at least 30 minutes, and toss the arm bands in the washing machine once a week. It's very simple to use and gives you a whole other window on your Peloton screen that will show you your heart rate, your zone, and your Strive score. 

MY FAVORITE SHORTS FOR BIKING ON THE PELOTON

If you watched the video you know that I said I didn't lose any weight. That's no longer true. I guess it just took more time to come off. 

After gaining 35 pounds a few years ago I did lose that weight solely through tracking my calories. I have maintained a steady 125-130 pounds for about two years now, and I know that getting below 125 is just something that doesn't happen for me very easily. I tend to hover right around 127-128. 

After my first 30 days I weighed myself and found that I was still 127-128, no big deal. But as I kept riding (at this point I am 55 rides in) I have lost a couple of pounds and gotten under 125 for the first time since high school. Since my goal wasn't to lose a lot of weight (if any) I need to reevaluate my calories, but I'm perfectly fine eating more each day to make up for whatever I'm losing. I'm okay with being under 125, but not much under, after all, I like my curves and I want them to stick around! 

The best part is that I don't feel like I'm doing anything extraordinary. I'm not taxing my joints, hurting my lame arm, or jumping up and down for a half hour at a time. It's exercise I can keep up with as my needs change. I can keep riding and adjusting as necessary, in perpetuity. 

So while weight loss wasn't my goal, I did want to mention it. However, the big thing for me was just overall fat loss. I was hoping to tone my legs a bit, maybe lose some belly fat, and possibly lose some of the curve from my hips. 

Here are my 30 day changes:

The smallest part of my waist was 26.5" when I started, and 25.75" 30 days later.
The area right over my belly button was 31" when I started, and 30" 30 days later.
My hips were 39.5" when I started, and 39" 30 days later.

Can you lose inches with peloton? Yes

Can you lose belly fat with peloton? Yes, and I lost way more than I anticipated here.

Is Peloton a good way to lose weight? I didn't personally see a ton of weight loss, but I'd taken care of that a couple of years ago, so I wasn't expecting to. I would think that if you have some weight to lose, riding Peloton for 30 days will definitely help you get that done.

So for those of you looking for "How to lose weight on the Peloton", my suggestion would be to start slow, track your calories, and commit to it, because after all, it's not cheap!

Oh! I also wanted to show you a quick picture of a ride I repeated, so the top is Day 1, my very first ride, and the bottom picture is Day 14 where I repeated the exact ride two weeks in. What a change!

Good luck!
​Ty

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If you've read my previous post about whether or not the Seaworld San Antonio Quick Queue is worth the money, you'll see a similar theme happening here. Mom and I recently went up to San Antonio for a long weekend to hit the parks now that they have dropped their mask mandates. We already knew we weren't a fan of theme parks while wearing masks, having done that for a week last September when we went to Disney World during COVID. Since we were only going to be at Fiesta Texas for one day we went ahead and splurged on Flash Pass, which lets you make reservations for rides and skip the bulk of the lines. (Read More)

I know that sounds odd, me (the penultimate pre-planner) recommending that you NOT book the Flash Pass tickets before hand. Crazy talk! 

Hear me out.

When I booked our tickets, I also booked the Flash Pass reservations at the same time. There are three different tiers, each costing increasing amounts of money and decreasing the length of time you'll have to wait for your reservation. Don't worry, we'll talk about how to make those reservations a little further down this post.

Six Flags Fiesta Texas Flash Pass Prices:

Bronze Tier is the cheapest and advertises that it will save you about 25% of the time you'd normally wait in line.
Starting price - $50.00

Gold Tier is next (and the one we went with) that advertises saving you 60% of the time you'd wait in line.
Starting price - $80.00

Platinum Tier is the most expensive and advertises that you will save 90% of the time you'd wait in line.
​Starting price - $115.00

Those prices are per person. It's not cheap, even the cheapest one isn't cheap. But, there are a lot of rides at Fiesta Texas, and that brings us to the next part of the post. Which rides are included with Flash Pass Six Flags Fiesta Texas?

I'm going to get to why you shouldn't buy at the start, but this part bleeds into that, I promise.

CHECK OUT OUR PACKING LIST TO KEEP THINGS LIGHT AND HANDS FREE IN THE PARKS

According to the Six Flags website, the following rides are included with Flash Pass:

Batman: The Ride
Boomerang
Bugs' White Water Rapids
Fireball
Goliath
Gully Washer
Hurricane Force 5
Iron Rattler
Pandemonium
Pirates of the Deep Sea
Poltergeist
Road Runner Express
Scream
SUPERMAN: Krypton Coaster
Sky Screamer
Wonder Woman Golden Lasso (Coming Soon! Single Reservation)

That looks like a lot of rides, right? I'm going to add here that when we went you could also make a single reservation for The Joker, but we didn't ride it because, frankly, it looked terrifying. We did ride The Sea Swinger at Seaworld, kind of like The Joker's much smaller sibling, and that was scary enough.

With all of these rides, if you rode each one once at the lowest tier, your cost per ride to skip the line would be $2.94 per person, per ride, if you were able to buy the Bronze pass at $50. If you're going in the off season that might be the case, but if you're going in the summer or during a holiday, plan on more, so about $3.00 a ride would be the bare minimum if you rode all the rides including Joker.

If you get the Gold Pass like we did, you're bumping $5.50 per ride and that's if you ride every ride available, which probably won't happen.

Here's the thing, when you get to the park, the offerings for the Flash Pass can be QUITE different than what you booked online, as we found out.

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When you enter Six Flags Fiesta Texas with a pre-purchased Flash Pass ticket you will be directed to a building in the park where you'll need to turn in the paper ticket and get a wrist band that will both allow you to book your rides and will act as a visible signal to show the staff that you have purchased this addon and are in the right line. 

The thing is, the rides you purchased the Flash Pass for aren't necessarily the rides that are open on the day you visit, which is the main reason why I recommend waiting until you get to the park to make that decision. 

When we went in June and presented ourselves at the Flash Pass building there was a board on the wall which showed us the rides that were included in Flash Pass that day.

It looked nothing at all like what we'd paid $90.00 apiece for.

Instead of 17 rides that we could ride, there were six. 

Yes, six rides.

I almost asked for my money back right then, but decided to go ahead and keep it mainly because I wanted to see how Flash Pass worked so I could write a thorough blog post. So I got the arm band/watch thing, learned to use it, and headed out to book our first pass, from which I could choose:

​Boomerang
Bugs' White Water Rapids
Iron Rattler
Roadrunner Express
Scream
Pandemonium

I made a reservation for Iron Rattler and headed in that direction. I'll talk more about how to make the reservation further down, but want to take a moment to talk about the Flash Pass changes throughout the day.

OUR FAVORITE MONTHLY SNACK BOX IS UNIVERSAL YUMS

When we started making reservations for the day there were just six rides available. The other rides were running, I could see them running, but each time I tried to make a reservation on the Flash Pass watch the ride would come up as "Closed".

Once in awhile a new available ride would pop up, and we ended up being able to ride most of the available rides using Flash Pass, but there was no rhyme or reason to it and the "not knowing" what we were actually paying for would prevent me from purchasing this addon again.

I should state that clearly here, I wouldn't pay for Gold Flash Pass again, possibly the Bronze, but not the Gold. It's too much money to risk having rides that aren't open at all, or are open and closing all day long because of malfunctions.

The one thing we could not ride all day long because it was down was Batman. It was down the entire day which was a real shame because it was the ride we were most looking forward to, having never been on one like it.

​In the middle of summer you would expect that Fiesta Texas would have all of its rides up and running, maybe not the whole day (we do understand technical difficulties) but at some point during the day.  This is peak time for a theme park, not the time to embark on refurbishment. 

I read many reviews before I made our Flash Pass purchase and saw a recurring theme of rides being down and people being frustrated. Just know that when you go this is not just a possibility, it's a likelihood.

By the end of the day, when we went back to return the Flash Pass watch, there was a new board up which listed all of the rides available, bringing the total from six at the start of the day, to 13 by day's end. 

So, my recommendation is that you wait to buy Flash Passes until you get into the park and see what's running and what's down. It probably will change during the day, but at least you won't spend a ton of money only to not be able to ride the rides you purchased the Flash Pass for in the first place. 

They can run out of certain tiers of Flash Pass and they even have signs outside which can be flipped to say, "Due to demand, Bronze is no longer available." So if you're going at a heavy time (a weekend or a holiday) you might want to buy in advance, but even then, it's a whole lot of money to spend without an assurance that the rides will be available. 

​Let's talk about how you book your ride reservations.

CHECK OUT OUR DISNEY ULTIMATE DAY OF THRILLS TOUR REVIEW

I'm going to admit that I was more than a little skeptical when the employee handed over my Flash Pass watch and gave me a quick rundown on how to use it. Since it involved a touch screen, all I could imagine was me accidentally bumping it on a ride and making (or cancelling) our next reservation. 

Turns out, it would be exceedingly difficult to mess it up.

In order to book a reservation you first have to open the selection screen. You do that by swiping left and THEN swiping up. You have to do both, just one swipe won't open the process.

Once you have it open you then swipe up and down to scroll through the rides. Each ride will be indicated with either CLOSED or with an estimated arrival time if you make the reservation. 

Let's say you want to ride The Joker. The watch will show you that you can make a reservation for 12:45 and it will tell you how many minutes it is from your current time. If you make the reservation at 12:30 for 12:45 it'll show both the 12:45 arrival time and the 15 minute count down.

When your arrival time arrives the watch will buzz, alerting you to the fact that you can enter the ride queue, in case you forgot. 

You can enter the ride queue at any time after your reservation is ready. It's not like Disney where you have to be there within an hour. You can show up whenever, but you cannot make a new reservation until the park attendant has scanned your watch and cleared the current reservation. 

There were times (many) when the ride attendants did not have a scanner. We showed them our watch and rode the ride, but it didn't clear our current reservation. I guess you could always use that reservation again, but if you want to ride another ride you will have to go through the process of replacing the reservation.

Once again you'll swipe left and swipe up to open the watch, then you'll scroll through the available rides. When you choose the ride you want (by swiping to the right or left) it will tell you that you are replacing your current ride reservation. 

In order to replace that reservation you will be asked to swipe up THREE TIMES to confirm. You can't accidentally replace a reservation, it would be all but impossible.

IS DISNEY'S ULTIMATE NIGHTS OF ADVENTURE TOUR WORTH THE COST?

I'm going to write a post soon comparing Fiesta Texas and Seaworld, but basically they share the most confusing part of any reservation or line bypass system, though Fiesta Texas is more confusing, at least it was for us. 

The Flash Pass line entry area is not always clearly marked. Sometimes it's a huge sign, like the top picture in this post, but more often there isn't a sign at the entrance and you might instead be looking for stickers on the ground or a small sign beyond the entrance. On more than one occasion we stood in line waiting to see a Flash Pass sign, but never found one. 

At one point a helpful employee opened some gates for us and let us change lines, but had he not we'd have stood in line for much longer than we paid for, negating the extra dollars spent on Flash Pass. 

Fiesta Texas really needs to work on this. If you're not familiar with the park you will likely find yourself wandering around at some point looking for an entry line that should be there, but is not at all clearly marked.

I had visions of myself walking in the exit of a ride only to be told that the ride didn't have a Flash Pass line, or something like that. It didn't happen, but the fact that most of these lines simply go in the exit means it's a very real possibility.

My advice would be that you first look for a sign at the entrance. If you don't see one you should then turn your eyes toward the ground and look for stickers on the pathway. Failing that, go in the entrance and keep an eye out for any signage within the line that tells you to branch off for Flash Pass. 

We also asked other people in line, but most were not local and had no more idea about where they should be than we did. :) It was a bit like I felt when I was riding Dare Devil Dive, confused and disoriented.

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I'm glad we purchased The Flash Pass so we could see how it worked, and I can see a benefit to it, especially if you will only be in the park for one day or are traveling during a holiday. 

Having been to Disneyland, Disney World, Universal Florida, Knott's Berry Farm, Seaworld San Antonio, and Seaworld Orlando, I have used a lot of Flash Pass type products and have a firm favorite. I prefer to purchase the option as long as it allows me to ride the rides without scheduling them in advance. 

Seaworld and Universal excel at this, the others relegate you to a schedule that you have to adhere to. Granted, Fiesta Texas doesn't let your pass expire like Disney does, but it detracts (for me) from the experience when I know that I have to be at a certain ride at a certain time if I want to be able to use the pass again and not "waste money". 

As much as I am a planner, theme park trips are a vacation and I want them to feel that way when I'm in the parks.

The Fiesta Texas Flash Pass, for me, was more miss than hit. I think if all the rides had been up and running it wouldn't have felt so stressful, but the fact that they kept going up and down all day really gave the entire day this edge of, "I'd better book this right now because the ride might not be open in an hour."

The next time I go I'll plan a full day in the parks and just develop a good Touring Plan instead of paying for Flash Pass.

Whatever you ultimately decide to do, I hope this post has helped you make a decision, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

​Ty

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If there's one thing Mom and I love, it's vacation. However, since COVID fell upon the country like an invisible tsunami, we've been staying home instead of traveling, unwilling to pay the same money for slashed amenities and service while having to wear masks. To us, it's not worth it, a lesson hard learned when we went to Disney during COVID. That said, when theme parks in our area dropped their mask mandates, we were all in and ready to go. For one of our first forays out since late 2019 (aside from Disney) we hit up Seaworld in San Antonio and we spent the money on Quick Queue to see how much it added to our experience. (read more)

I'm going to take you through the process just in case you aren't sure how it works. 

I purchased the Seaworld tickets for Mom and I, so I handled everything with Quick Queue. It's quite simple to log into the Seaworld website (make sure you pick the right park so you don't end up with tickets to Orlando or another city) and add your tickets to your cart.

Seaworld (like many theme parks now) sells tickets based on the date. You can buy an open ended ticket, but they cost more, so if it's better if you know the date you want to go. I'm not even sure you can purchase Seaworld San Antonio Quick Queue without selecting a specific date, unlike a general admission ticket.

Purchase your ticket and then it should direct you (below your purchase) to addons you can purchase. These addons will include things like all day dining, shark experiences, dolphin encounters, and of course Quick Queue. 

The prices start at $19.99 and go up from there, but you're generally not going to find the $19.99 price unless you travel in the off season. Even with us, homeschooling since before the pandemic made it a normal thing, our off season travels aren't quite off season enough, so we paid $24.99 per person.

This is in addition to the park ticket price, which for us was $69.99 per person. 

That's a total of $94.98 per person. 

Once you've completed the order online you can print your tickets and carry them with you to the park.

One question I've gotten a lot is "Can you buy quick queue at seaworld?" The answer is yes. You can buy park tickets and Quick Queue passes at the park when you arrive. There are kiosks at the front and lots of people to help. The only thing I'd say is that, if you're going during a busy period (holidays or during summer vacation), the number of tickets and Quick Queue passes sold will be limited and could sell out before you get there. So, if you are going at peak time, I recommend purchasing online, in advance.

TY WRITES BOOKS FOR KIDS WHO LOVE ROBLOX AND MINECRAFT

Since I was so used to going to Disney and using their Fast Pass system I hadn't had a lot of experience with other forms of the same thing. We had been to Seaworld Orlando a couple of times, but normally just for a single day visit in between hitting all the Disney parks. 

When we went to Disneyland in California we didn't go to Seaworld at all, instead opting for Knott's Berry Farm, who had their own version. 

We quickly realized that they are all very similar, and also all a little bit different. 

The first thing to know is that you will need to have your Quick Queue pass printed out and on your person at all times. This is different that Disney World where your Fast Pass is loaded into your Magic Band.

Your Quick Queue paper will have a barcode on it and you will need to show that to the line attendants so they can scan it. Often times the scanner machines will be down though, so you'll need to be able to quickly show them the printed pass with the date clearly visible.

I recommend grabbing a lanyard with a clear laminate card holder. It's easy enough to fold your Quick Queue paper and slip it inside the holder so you can just flash that lanyard whenever you need to, and you can tuck it into your shirt on the wilder rides.

We used something like this, cheap and simple.

I highly recommend going the "wear it on the neck" route simply because there are a few rides where you will not even be allowed in line if you have any bags on your person at all. So, while I was walking around with my lanyard looped through my fanny pack (yes, I wear one, it's simple, if not fashionable), I had to take it off and put it around my neck for these rides. This isn't a huge deal unless you forget that you have it on your bag, rent a locker, stuff all of it in, get in line, and then realize that you don't have your Quick Queue on you. 

After doing that once I started wearing it on my neck, period.

If you need a fanny pack recommendation let me offer the advice that you get one with a built in water bottle holder, it helps a lot! You've got to stay hydrated in the parks, so don't skip keeping a bottle of water on you at all times. The last thing you want is heat exhaustion ruining your day.

Once you've scanned your Quick Queue pass at the Quick Queue entrance (we'll talk more about this later) the attendant will let you in and direct you to sit wherever you want. It's not at all like Disney where they assign you places. So if you want the very front or the very back, have at it.

​Time to find the line!

GOING TO DISNEY? HERE'S HOW WE DECIDED BETWEEN DISNEYLAND AND DISNEY WORLD

This was the single weirdest thing to deal with when purchasing the Sea World San Antonio Quick Queue Pass, finding the line.

As I said, it's not like Disney, and that's because, for the most part, the lines for the Quick Queue are not separate from the regular line. 

On some rides you simply go in the exit (I'd say this is a majority of the rides) and it feels very odd walking against the flow of traffic as you encounter people getting off the ride you are trying to get on.

On some rides you go in the general line, but then split off early on, following a different path.

And on a few rides there is a separate entrance altogether. 

Basically it feels very haphazard, though I'm sure you'll get used to it quickly, especially if you've been to the park more than a few times in the last decade. I'd gone once about ten years ago, but I had my boys with me and they were very small so we didn't plan to ride many coasters, and I'm not even sure Quick Queue was a thing.

Something else to note is that you're going to be climbing a lot of stairs if you use Quick Queue. It's a bit of a shock to the system when you realize just how gently climbing the regular lines are. They need to wind you around in line to make lots of room, so there's plenty of space for gradation. With Quick Queue you are just getting to the front of the line as quickly as possible, and that means stairs. 

Follow the signs (look sharp, they aren't always at the entrance) and go where it tells you, even if it feels really weird, and climb those stairs, a lot of them.

WHEN WE CAN'T TRAVEL WE GET SNACKS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES WITH OUR UNIVERSAL YUMS SUBSCRIPTION

In the picture above the line up top is the Quick Queue entrance, literally right there, no waiting. The people on the bottom were the ones (like Mom and I) who had to go rent lockers when they realized this ride wouldn't let them on with anything other than their hat and glasses. 

I'm not sure why some rides let you on and allow you to place your bags in bins for the duration of the ride and others don't, but there is a difference, so if you see a locker near the ride you want to ride, it means you need to put your stuff in there because the only things you'll be able to store in the bins are your hat and sunglasses.

My theory is that some rides that run more than one set of cars will have people exiting the ride while the new riders are still riding, leaving two sets of bags in the bins. It would take only a few times of someone accidentally grabbing the wrong stuff for this policy to need changing.

So, if you see lockers by your ride, rent one and put your stuff inside unless you have a non rider who will be able to hold your things. They are not very good about marking these particular rides and we did witness a woman get all the way up to the ride with her young daughter only to get told that she'd have to leave the ride and re-enter the line without a bag. Thankfully the woman in line behind her offered to hold her items, and then that woman passed those items to the woman behind her so that woman could give the original rider back her stuff. 

Like I said, more than one train of cars on the track means you aren't leaving your things in the bins.

CHECK OUT OUR DISNEY ULTIMATE DAY OF THRILLS REVIEW

Something to factor in when you decide whether or not purchasing the Quick Queue is worth it for your party is how many times you plan on riding each ride. 

Here are the rides available for Quick Queue as of June 2021:

Texas Stingray
The Steel Eel Roller Coaster
​The Great White Roller Coaster
Journey to Atlantis
Rio Loco
​Wave Breaker: The Rescue Coaster
Abby's Rockin' Wave
Grover's Round Up
Super Grover's Box Car Derby

You can ride each of these rides as many times as you want, so if you're like Mom and I and you're going to go more than once then it makes sense to take the total cost of your Quick Queue and divide it by the number of total times you are riding. 

We didn't ride any of the kid's coasters, but we did ride the others twice, though we were never able to find the Quick Queue entrance for Journey to Atlantis (like I said, they don't do a great job of making these entrances super visible). So at our $24.99 pass price we ended up paying about $2.50 per person, per ride, to skip the lines.

For me, that's worth it, but it would all depend on how many days I was going to be in the park and how many times I wanted to ride each ride. 

I'm not counting Atlantis in there since we didn't find that entrance and just went in the regular entrance. 

We made two loops around the park to ride the rides, but if you found a coaster you loved and wanted to ride it over and over, you can. You'll have to get off each time, but since many of the rides simply have you get back on the exit I do not see any reason why you couldn't get off, walk to the end of the Quick Queue line (of which there might be none at all) and wait right there for them to let you back on.

CHECK OUT OUR DISNEY ULTIMATE NIGHTS OF ADVENTURE REVIEW

When Mom and I went in June we rode all of our favorite rides twice, ate lunch, browsed around, had a drink, meandered and were still at the entrance waiting for an Uber by 3 p.m. That's with all the rides not even opening until 11 a.m.

The park itself opened at 10:30, but it doesn't mean the rides are running. We asked an employee about this and he just said that the rides open at 11, but some even open a bit later than that. For example Sea Swinger and Riptide Rescue weren't open when we got off the Texas Stingray around 11:15, but were open when we wandered back in that direction around 2 p.m.

I think we could have ridden all the rides in one day had we not had the Quick Queue, but I don't think we'd have been able to ride them more than once and I don't think it would have felt very leisurely. 

I pay for the Quick Queue because I don't want to feel rushed off my feet. Theme parks are stressful enough if you're only going once in awhile and want to fit everything in, so having this pass took some stress off.

Here's an example of one of the lines, comparing Quick Queue to the regular line. This is Wave Breaker, which is a heck of a lot of fun!

The regular line winds around on itself, heading back into the distance and zig zagging around. This was almost noon, so the lines weren't very long yet, but you can see the space where they'd fill in with more people. 

The line continues behind some foliage where it leads up to the loading platform.

And here was the Quick Queue line.

A quick comparison would be perhaps 100 people waiting in the regular line, and approximately ten people waiting in the Quick Queue line.

It was very fast, the most we waited for any ride was 10 minutes and that was because every few trains they would stop everything, clean all the trains for COVID and then resume operations. 

KEEP YOUR HANDS FREE IN THE PARKS WITH OUR MUST HAVE PACKING LIST

Since we are no longer in easy (one day there and back) traveling distance of any theme parks, we want to make the most of it when we go. This means we enjoy the Quick Queue option and will pay extra for it when we plan a vacation. 

I would not use it if I were going to be at the park for more than one day unless it was a very heavy time of year (like the holidays) and not even during the summer unless it were in a large city (Orlando, not San Antonio). 

If you've only got a day and you want to enjoy the rides many times, I think it's a great way to make the most of that trip.

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Happy Thrilling!
​Ty

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here.

When COVID started popping up in the USA last year, I took note. The more we heard, the more nervous we got, not so much the family as a whole, but me for sure because my son and I are both asthmatic. When we finally caught COVID a year later, in April of 2021, I made sure to keep track of my symptoms so I could share them with other people when I was feeling better. Here's how it went. (read more)

I'm going to be honest with you, I felt a little silly typing that title. I did it anyway though because it was a very real concern when my son and I came down with COVID. I don't watch the news a whole lot, I get that fear sells and "if it bleeds it leads", so I tried to stay away from the screen and look at the overall survivability rates. I knew they were high, something like  99.98% chance of survival in my age range (43 years old) and about the same for my ten year old son, if not a bit higher. Still, in the back of my head I couldn't help but feel afraid. What if we were different than other people? What if it was worse for us? What if it didn't feel like it was going to be bad, but then it got bad and....and.....and....you get the idea.

In case you're wondering and you don't want to read this whole blog post, we're fine. It was basically a mild flu that lasted about two weeks for me, and about three days for him. I'll get into all of that below, but I figured I'd help you out if you just wanted the end of story part right at the beginning.

So, while I don't know the official chances of surviving COVID with asthma, I do know that we survived just fine, and I doubt my son even noticed he had it at all.

DOES PONY O WORK FOR CURLY HAIR? HERE'S A REVIEW I DON'T GET PAID FOR.

As always, I made a video. If you'd like to watch it instead of reading, feel free. It is only on Rumble. I have no faith in YouTube not removing the video and penalizing my entire account for it, so I didn't want to take any chances. I just know they're all about that censorship, especially on a few topics, COVID being one of them. My videos are not my main income stream, but all the same, I'd rather not test the waters.

I have two kids, both boys, only one has asthma. The first one in the family to come down with COVID was our 13 year old. We believe he got it from his MMA class, which he takes four nights each week. 

He woke up on a Monday morning and said he didn't feel well. He was sleepy, which for my kids is always a sure sign of illness. I took his temperature, it was around 101 F, so I had a hunch he might have COVID, but we went ahead and got him tested just to be sure. 

The test came back positive, so at that point we called his MMA class to let them know that he was positive, and to also let them know that he wouldn't be back for two weeks. No matter how good or bad he was feeling from that point on, we were going to quarantine.

Over the next few days he slept a lot, didn't eat much, stayed hydrated, and ran a fever between 101 and 103. On Thursday morning he woke up and acted like he'd never been sick at all. Just like that, he was over it. He had no other symptoms and no lingering issues. That was three weeks ago, so I don't expect anything else to pop up.

​We kept him out of his MMA class for the full two weeks, but life is pretty much back to normal at this point.

ARE YOU ENTERING THE DARK PORTAL? HERE'S WHY I LOVE ZYGOR GUIDES.

The second person in the house to come down with COVID was me. It was about five days after my oldest son got sick. I have had asthma my entire life, so when I started to feel bad, I knew what was likely going on, and I knew that there was a chance my reaction to COVID could be very different than his because I do already have breathing issues.

I have tried very hard not to get caught up in the doom and gloom COVID stories, but since that's all you see when you do any searching for COVID stuff, I couldn't really avoid it. I knew from the overall survival rates that I would likely be fine, but, as I said at the start, it gets hard to believe that you'll be okay when all you hear is that you will NOT be okay. 

It really does have an effect on your brain, at least it did mine.

I got sick on Friday, enough that I was tired, not feeling well, a little nauseous, headachy, and just sort of blah. Saturday morning I woke up with a fever of around 99.7, and I ran that fever for three days, never going over 100. I did a lot of sleeping, took a lot of naps, and waited for the really bad part to start. 

For me "the really bad part" means it has gotten into my lungs. Back in 2019 I got the flu and ended up in the ER with walking pneumonia. That was a month of exhaustion, steroids, z packs, nebulizer treatments, the whole nine yards. 

I did get a cough and waited for it to become gunky, but other than being sort of productive for a day, nothing came of it. Two weeks later I do still have the occasional coughing fit, but it's a dry cough, more irritation from coughing than anything else. 

After three days of a fever, I could feel myself getting better, and while I did need to sleep quite a lot for 10 days or so, each day I felt stronger and less tired. I did use my inhaler as a precautionary measure a few times, but I never had a serious asthma attack and never felt like my lungs were in any real danger. 

​Still, when my ten year old came down with it, I worried all over again.

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I GOT BOTOX IN MY BUNNY LINES.

My 10 year old son was the last in our house to get COVID. He was a very bad asthmatic for years, finally getting an official diagnosis when he was 8 years old after going to the doctor four times and getting, "He has bronchitis" as a diagnosis, despite my efforts to explain that he wasn't sick. Unfortunately his asthma attacks presented as severe coughing fits that would last hours on end. It wasn't your typical wheezing. Finally I got a doctor who listened and sent us on to an allergy doctor who did all the tests and....of course....he was asthmatic. 

We did weekly allergy shots for a year, then another year of monthly allergy shots, finishing only in February of this year. So when he got sick, I was VERY concerned. I knew his lungs were prone to issues, especially since at the peak of his asthma he was having attacks several times per day, even with a preventative inhaler being used daily.

He woke up late a few days after I'd gotten sick. It wasn't like him to sleep in, so immediately my spidey senses started tingling and I took his temperature. He was running a low fever, not over 100, but insisted he was feeling fine. He ate fine, didn't seem to require any more rest than normal, and didn't even miss a day of school (my kids have always been homeschooled, so online school is what they're used to and I let them go at their own pace since there's no option of truly skipping a lesson). 

After running away from me a few times when I tried to take his temperature again, I left him alone and just listened for that tell-tale cough that would indicate he was having an asthma attack. Thankfully, it never came. 

Of the four of us, he had the least issue with COVID. He never acted sick other than the one morning he slept in, he never required any medicine, and he seemed totally unfazed by the low fever. He was over it and back to being fever free long before my husband I were back to normal.

IS DIPPING YOUR NAILS AT HOME MAKING YOU SICK? IT DID ME!

There were some things that I think are notable, stuff I would not have associated with COVID, and a few things that we'd heard about COVID that proved to be 100% true for us.

1. Smell/Taste Loss - This happened to my husband and I, but not the kids. About three days after I got sick, after the fever was done, I started to smell horrible things. Everything stunk! Since I wash my clothes with Vinegar (I'll have to write another blog post about that), I was initially concerned that I'd spilled that vinegar in the house, but since my husband couldn't smell it, we realized it was COVID. After four days of everything smelling terrible, I lost my sense of smell and taste altogether. My husband did as well and we both spent another four days eating the bare minimum because it all just sort of tasted like sand. 

2. Viral Rash - My ten year old got a rash on the tops of his thighs. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a viral rash because both of my kids used to get these when they were little. It was a pre-sickness sign in our house. Get a rash and sickness would follow a day or two later. The rash lasted a few days and disappeared just as quickly as it came. If you have kids who get viral rashes, you know what I'm talking about.

3. Stomach Issues - This was all me, no one else experienced it, but for me it is still going on. I wake up in the morning and my stomach feels uncomfortable. It lasted about 20 minutes the first day, but has since shortened in duration. It's been about a week, so it's definitely been longer than I'd like, but I can only guess that COVID messed with my gut flora. I've been eating yogurt to get those probiotics. Either that is helping, or it's just sorting itself out with time. I'll never know for sure.

4. Headache - This has been something all of us other than my 10 year old have experienced. We had bad headaches for a week or so, but they seem to be lingering for my husband, though they are happening less and less. Again, I guess it's just going to take some time. 

5. Nausea - My husband and I both dealt with this at the start of our symptoms, though his was much shorter lived than mine, and it's also why I am making the assumption that my gut flora was messed up a bit. 

To date I have had too many family and friends with COVID to count on all of my fingers and toes. Every single one of those people is totally and completely fine. 

Even knowing this information, and knowing the incredibly high rate of recovery, I was still extremely nervous when my family got sick. 

There's nothing wrong with that. 

You know your body better than anyone, so if you feel like you need to see a doctor, definitely do that. I'm not a medical professional by any means, and I didn't even sleep in a Holiday Inn last night. 

All that said, if you have any questions about my specific experience, I'm more than happy to help, just ask below and I'll be sure to reply.

Ty

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here.

As a rural area living, World of Warcraft playing, raid healing priest, finding a solid internet connection is something I feel like I know a little bit about. We've lived in our current house for more than ten years, and in that time we've been through as many internet companies, all who promise gameable speeds and latency, few of whom actually delivered. Hopefully my trial and error can save you some time and frustration. I'll also be covering four specific companies that I believe everyone reading this will have easy access to. Here's what I know about finding the best internet for rural areas for gaming. (read more)

I'm going to break this down into three categories, satellite, radio, and SIM card. I'm eliminating any form of wired internet simply because if you had access to wired services, you wouldn't be looking around for rural internet options for gaming. We actually have wired internet services a half mile from our house on two sides, but neither company has extended their lines and many calls to both Verizon and AT&T have assured me that, yes, they do service "close" to us, but no, they will not be coming to us. One company says it's because there aren't enough houses to warrant the effort (the houses average a few acres of property per house), and the other company says they don't want to run the wire across a small creek. Either way, it means we're out of luck for wired services. 

When we first moved out here, we went with a Satellite service that we bundled with our DirectTV. You've probably heard of Hughes Net. I'm not going to give this section a lot of time or energy because there isn't much to say. Of the three options I laid out, Hughes Net was the worst, hands down. They had high latency, slow speeds, and very low data caps. And while World of Warcraft doesn't take up a ton of data, the latency was an issue, making the game pretty much unplayable, and definitely keeping me from holding a spot in a raid. I recall one fight in Zul Gurub where we beat Hakkar and my game kept playing the fight for a full two minutes after the rest of the raid was out of combat. I don't even know how I lived through that fight, let alone how my tank lived. It was a matter of mashing buttons, praying, and hoping that my toon wasn't doing anything that would give anyone else any clue as to how bad my connection really was.

Maybe satellite has gotten better since then, but I wouldn't try it again. It's too much set up, too much money, and too much of a commitment, even with an excellent return policy. If I have to drill holes in my house/roof, I'm going to give it a hard pass. 

MY TIME IS PRECIOUS, SO I USE ZYGOR AS A LEVELING GUIDE. MORE TIME LEVELING, LESS TIME TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHERE I LEFT OFF.

Radio internet companies are going to be companies near you that supply your service from one of their radios connected to a tall tower in your area. This is likely going to be a cell tower and will function in the same way, only (in theory) without the choke point that comes when a bunch of people use their cell phones at once. 

The downside to using radio to try and get fast rural internet for gaming is that the radio internet company is the one deciding how many users they hook to one radio. 

As an example, let's say a radio internet company has 1G of data at its disposal. They hook up 10 people who all use 100mb of data at any given time. (This is a lot of data, but I'm trying to simplify). If those 10 people all use their 100mb of data (like if they're all home at night watching Netflix or whatever) and the radio internet company signs an 11th person who also uses 100mb of data, all of the sudden that company has exceeded it's 1G of available data, and everyone's internet gets throttled down.

When you're calling around to local radio internet companies, ask them how much data they have available, and whether or not they have room for more customers. Ask what the company believes the average use per customer is. If they're only allowing each customer 5 or 10mb of data, chances are you are going to have basically useless internet, possibly good during the day, but terrible at night when people are home. Heck, in the age of COVID, it might even be useless during the day.

If the radio internet company you are looking at has plenty of data on their own plan, it's now time to figure out whether or not you can get a strong signal at your house. Have them come out and do a site survey, ask them what the signal is, ask them in plain terms whether or not they believe that signal is strong enough to meet your needs. They will absolutely come out and hook you up with a sub par signal, hoping you won't really care, or that you won't notice. We used three separate radio internet companies and had the same issue with all three. Our house was simply located in the exact wrong place. There were trees in the way, we couldn't get line of sight enough to supply a good connection, and the internet companies knew that, but hooked us up anyway. 

If the company is good, it won't oversell its data, you'll get very low latency (sub 20) and the speeds and latency won't change in the evenings when everyone is vying for use. 

I've had many companies hook us up during the day, show off their 20mb download speeds (which is absolutely great out where we are), only to have that speed plummet to .17 (yes, that decimal point is intentional) at 8 in the evening, while the latency shoots up to 300+ as their network gets clogged with users. 

A few months in, after having them out numerous time to fix an issue they couldn't fix, they'd take their equipment down and be on their way. 

If you don't have good line of sight, don't do it, it's not going to work and you're wasting your money. Make sure you have a company that is going to give you a trial period so you can put it through its paces at night, because that's when you REALLY get an idea of the speeds and latency.

Still, we ended up with radio internet, and I'll talk more about that below, but for now let's move on to the internet type I believe you will have easiest access to, SIM Card service.

STUCK ON BENEDICTION? IT'S NOT AS COMPLICATED AS YOU MIGHT THINK.

We'd been living in our house for almost seven years when I heard about the possibility of cellular internet for rural areas. It made a lot of sense since I was already in the habit of hot spotting to my phone whenever I logged in for a raid. The speeds were always good (30mb download or so) and the latency was great (definitely sub 20).  So when I got in touch with a company called Cyberonic and they told me how their service worked, I was intrigued. ​

The idea here is that if you can get a solid cell signal at your house, you can use internet that is based on a SIM card. We have AT&T for our cellular service, and we always get good speeds on our phones (if we turn off WiFi) so I figured it was worth a shot. 

US cellular internet for gaming isn't a new thing, Cyberonic has been around for awhile, so I signed up and had them send me their equipment. 

A side note here is that gaming on fixed wireless internet is the easiest of all the options as far as set up. You don't have to hook anything to your house or roof, you don't have a ton of bulky equipment to mail back if things don't work, and you aren't turning your house into a lightning rod by installing a metal pole so you can get better line of site to a radio tower. 

In a nutshell, if you can get good cell service, you can use wireless internet for gaming. 

So, Cyberonic sent their equipment which included a router, a SIM card (that had already been installed) and a booster antenna that you could attach to your roof if you weren't getting a good signal.  I feel the need to note that the booster antenna didn't seem to do much. It did boost the signal, letting us go from one bar to three bars, but it didn't increase the speeds. If you've got a good router, you likely have no need for a booster antenna, it's most likely just going to be cosmetic.

Set up with Cyberonic was easy. We plugged the router into the wall and we were done. The speeds were fantastic, at two in the afternoon I was getting more than 20mb download speeds! 

And then the evening came. 

I have two kids, myself, and my husband. We can all be counted on to be doing something online around 8 at night. My kids are homeschooled and always have been (before COVID made it a more widespread phenomenon) and do their school work online during the day, so thankfully that wasn't an issue (yet), but at night, it's entertainment, videos, Rumble, gaming, etc. 

The speeds were so bad that our internet was basically useless. I would hot spot to my phone to play WoW, the kids would sit and try to watch whatever, but it would buffer so much that they'd give up, and my husband would hot spot into his phone if he had to do any work from home at night. 

And it was expensive, $140 a month for garbage internet. 

I called Cyberonic and told them what was going on. They explained that there was nothing they could do, the cell providers (in this case AT&T) give priority to certain devices and all others get deprioritized. Our cell WiFi was great, but the home internet on the same tower was terrible. 

It was a lesson learned with fixed wireless internet for rural areas, those SIM cards are not going to have priority unless you find a company who has it set up so that they do.

The next SIM service we tried was OTR Mobile. I was prepared when I called them, making sure to lay out what it was that we needed, asking them about priority, latency, etc. They assured me that since the map said I had good coverage from T-Mobile in my area, I would get good coverage and low latency from them.  This was known as the OTR Mobile Pink Plan. You'll see this with a lot of fixed wireless internet providers. Pink = TMobile, Blue = AT&T. 

The upside was that it was sort of easy to talk to someone via customer service. They had an online chat ability. You would have to wait in a digital queue, but eventually you'd get a helpful representative. (Note that the chat line is also how you sign up, and that wait is MUCH shorter than the line you wait in if you need help once you've made the purchase). OTR also offered a two week trial, which was important for me. I had already had a half dozen terrible internet providers and had no wish to pay full price if it wasn't going to work. 

They did the same as Cyberonic, sending out a router and SIM card. I plugged it in and the speeds were great, wow! Then night time came and the speeds went way down, again. Not only did the speed plummet, but the latency was also an issue. Even during the day it was very high, around 200-300, making it unusable at night. I did try to talk to customer service about the problems I was having, but ultimately they told me that the T-Mobile towers just weren't ideal in my area and there was nothing they could do as they didn't have any AT&T SIM cards available. 

This is important. If you know that you only get good service with AT&T, don't try to get a fixed wireless plan from a T-Mobile tower, it won't work out.

We sent the OTR Mobile stuff back and got a refund, no problem. 

UNIVERSAL YUMS IS OUR FAVORITE MONTHLY SNACK BOX FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD

Our next attempt at fixed wireless internet for gaming was GotW3. This service was different than the others in that it was not unlimited. They capped your service at 300mb per month, which we thought would be pretty much okay since we seemed to average about 10mb per day. I figured I could do without watch shows a couple of nights a month to make sure we stayed within that allowable data limit. 

Two of my neighbors had the same service and were getting around 30mb down, which was better than anything we'd ever had, and the price was right, around $120 a month, typical of what we'd already been paying. 

I signed up, and once again they sent their router and SIM card, only this company told us the router was ours to keep, no need to send it back if we decided to cancel. The downside to this was that there was no trial period, so if it didn't work, oh well...

Thankfully the service did work, and it worked really well. We still had some lag spikes and a bit of slowness in the evening, but we were all able to do our things, no problem. That lasted for about three months, and then GotW3 had to change something, they had AT&T create an APN (I really don't know what all of this means) just for them, and they had to migrate the service of their existing customers. 

For a lot of their customers (like myself and one of my neighbors) it meant that our internet got throttled down to almost nothing for an entire month. Searches for "GotW3 Internet Outage" and "GotW3 Internet not working" basically autofilled themselves on Google, the issue was so prevalent. Customer service was terrible, it was all but impossible to get a call back, and I ended up calling the new customer number, getting ahold of someone there very easily, and then telling them my issue so I could try to get some assistance. 

Six weeks of that and I was totally done. Whatever went on with their APN and AT&T meant it messed up their system for me permanently, despite them sending me a new SIM card, a new router, and having me go in and make a bunch of changes in the router itself. 

My neighbor still has the service, but his speeds have greatly decreased since the APN change, which tells me that they were being prioritized one way, but are now being prioritized another way.

With SIM internet service it really is all about the priority and the load on your local towers.

MY HAIR IS NATURALLY CURLY, AND IT CAN BE TOUGH TO TAME. HERE'S HOW I DO IT.

I'm including this section even though I wasn't the person in question. Slow internet is a way of life in our area and my neighbors have all tried different things. We share our knowledge when we find something good (or bad) to help each other out.

One neighbor purchased wireless internet off of eBay. The seller listed the service as belonging to a tablet that was "never going to be used". Supposedly you'd get unlimited, unthrottled, no cap data for just $20 a month! The seller would provide you with the IMEI number of the tablet, you would provide your own SIM Card (easily purchased on Amazon) and they would send you the steps to hook up the service. 

They made it plain in the listing (which my neighbor sent to me and I will link to here) that the service could be cancelled without notice, so don't buy it if you weren't willing to take that risk. My neighbor bought the service, the seller sent over exact instructions for hooking up the SIM card, and my neighbor got it all set up. 

It was something like $20 for the SIM card, $50 to set up the service with AT&T, so $70 total. The service worked great for them for about a week, and then, out of the blue, it stopped and they got a notice on their AT&T account that the service had been suspended. 

Now, they started a NEW AT&T account to do this, so definitely don't do it on an existing account because if your account gets suspended, you will lose all of your cell plans, gone. 

What happens in cases like these is that AT&T runs scans on the SIM cards in use, matching those cards to the IMEI numbers on file. When your SIM card number doesn't match the IMEI number on file they shut off the service and suspend the account. You've just spent $70 for a week's worth of internet.

I definitely do not recommend this route.

DOES PONY O WORK FOR THICK CURLS? HERE'S MY UNBIASED OPINION.

Our final attempt at finding rural high speed internet for gaming was going through a company called RV-4G. I will say that this was the best customer service/overall experience I had with any of these fixed wireless companies. They are different in that they only supply the internet service, it's not a bundle type of deal. 

They *can* supply the SIM card and router, but if you've already got an unlocked router on hand, you don't have to spend that extra money. I would recommend getting your own router if you decide to try any of these fixed wireless internet companies, just because what you purchase is likely going to be a lot better than what they provide. It'll give you better coverage and you can just swap out SIM cards until you find a service that works for you. 

I would recommend something like this Netgear Nighthawk. We saw this particular router recommended time and again by the SIM card internet companies we researched. It is a hot spot that's compact enough for you to take it anywhere, but it also has an Ethernet cable port so you can easily attach it to a mesh network to extend the service all over your house.

We purchased a prepaid SIM card through AT&T (we just picked on up at the store) to have on hand for whenever the service got really slow or when we were between services, and having this router made it easy to pop the card in with no downtime, especially important when my kids were needing to get their school work done and our service had taken a dive.

RV-4G had great customer service and explained everything to me. They were easy to get in touch with when I had questions, and they would have been the company we stuck with had we not found a better alternative locally. Their speeds were not exactly fast, and we did see throttling at night, but they were the most reliable of the companies we'd used. 

You have to also understand that you need higher speeds than what you think you do. Having a 20mb download during the day when no one is using any data is very different than having 20mb download at night when everyone is doing something. Couple that with throttled speeds at night as your local towers take on all that extra usage, and you just can't do the same things in the evenings. 

That said, RV-4G was the best compromise of speed, service, and the ability to get help when needed. If our new internet doesn't work out, we'll be going back to them, no questions asked.

HOW MANY ZG COINS DOES IT TAKE TO LEVEL FROM 58-60? I TRIED IT OUT.

In the end, we did what we should have done when we moved out here ten years ago. We knew that we had line of sight problems, we knew we had big trees in the way (and we knew we weren't cutting them down), but we weren't ready to make any big changes.

However, after ten years and thousands of dollars spent on garbage internet, we bit the bullet and installed a tower, rather, we installed a 46 foot tall telephone pole beside our house. 

A new internet company came to our town about six months ago and advertised high speeds, low latency, and good customer service. I got in touch with them right away, but when they came out to do the site survey they told me what all the other local internet companies SHOULD HAVE told me. There were trees in the way, we couldn't get high enough clearance to see over them, and the signal would be too weak to get good service. 

I talked on and off with that company for a few months, discarding a few ideas along the way. We didn't want a 15 foot metal pole on our house, we didn't want to spend the money to install a ROHN (a tall, metal structure to mount the radio on), and without those things we just couldn't get good service. 

So when the guy called and told me that they'd purchased some telephone polls for their more rural customers, and that he thought that might work for us, we decided to make it happen. He set it all up, arranging for the contractor to come out and install the pole, climbed up, got a GREAT signal, ran the wire down, trenched it to the house, etc. 

Yes, we have a telephone pole in the yard, but....we have great internet. It actually hit 73mb download while I did the test, but I didn't catch the screenshot in time. 

It does slow down at night some, when my kids and husband and I are all online, but the only reason I know that is because I run speed tests like a fiend, waiting for it to bog down like all the others. The provider swears it won't happen, and he was very clear about how many people he would put on each tower and how much data he has at his disposal, but after years of terrible internet and bloated promises, my faith isn't quite there yet. 

Still, I don't regret the decision. We have the pole now, we are invested in a company that is invested in our community (and therefore has a real desire to give us good service) and if for some reason this provider doesn't work out, we'll have great line of sight to anyone near us that provides radio internet. We've also offered to share our pole with out closest neighbors, should they ever have happen to them what happened to us while using GotW3. I figure it's the least we can do for making them stare at this thing for the rest of their lives. 

They suggested we paint it red and white, like a giant candy cane. We definitely do things a little differently out in the country. :) 

I'M ENJOYING AUDIBLE PLUS, CHECK OUT "THE PARASITIC MIND" BY GAD SAAD.

I hope this post has helped you out, but by all means feel free to ask questions if you have any. Finding the right internet for our area has take a long time, and I wish we'd just pulled the trigger years ago to get good line of sight to a local radio provider. 

We are in an especially bad place as far as line of sight, so I am hopeful that some of you who live in more accessible areas will be able to get good LOS to a local provider, or, barring that, will be able to get good service with a fixed wireless provider on local towers that don't get a ton of traffic in the evenings. 

Also, because I always get asked about this, if you've got another nod for a great rural internet service provider, let me know. I'll add it to the post if you'll take a few minutes and tell me a bit about the provider, the set up, and the customer service.

Thanks!
​Ty

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here.

I thought about writing this post in chunks, separate entries for each part of my "journey", but in the end I've decided on a single post with distinct sections. You can scroll down to find a specific thing you'd like to know about, and you are certainly welcome to ask questions. I will post the videos separately so you don't have to try to navigate a half hour of me talking about all the different aspects of surgery/recovery/therapy/medication, etc. All right, let's dig in! (Read More)

A little backstory on how I broke my elbow. I was snowboarding, it was my very first lesson, I was at the bottom of the hill and caught my downhill lip. I was going fairly slowly, being very cautious, but when the lip caught and I got flung backward, I put both arms out behind me to catch my fall. Very bad idea. The bottom of my arm pushed up into the top of my arm, my Humerus cracked into several pieces right at the elbow, and that started a year of surgeries, physical therapy, and medication. Here's some of the images from my broken elbow.

When I broke my elbow, I'd been on vacation with my family. We were there for a week, and it was our last day. The break happened around two in the afternoon, and since I was on the bottom of the slope I was able to get up and walk to the medical area. 

They removed my jacket so they could see my arm (I did have long sleeves on, so they couldn't see much) and then they wrapped a box around it and asked if I wanted to call an ambulance. I elected not to because the medical personnel at the mountain couldn't tell me if the paramedics would give me pain medication. I was in A LOT of pain. Since medication wasn't a sure thing, I saw no reason to mess with an ambulance. My husband drove me to the local hospital where I was admitted immediately. 

Funny side story - We originally drove to the local Urgent Care, not realizing they weren't the same thing. The people at the front desk gave me paperwork to fill out (mind you I am standing there with a severely broken arm) and then told me "Take a seat, someone will be with you soon." It was literally the most surreal experience and those people seemed extremely out of touch with reality. I asked if there was a hospital nearby, they told me that there was, and that they'd need to send me there anyway since they didn't have an x-ray machine. (I am internally rolling my eyes right now).

We left to go to the actual hospital, which was not very far away at all.

I walked into the emergency room and explained what happened. The staff was fantastic, no wasted time. The hospital personnel needed to get an x-ray, but before that they needed to get my arm free of my clothes. I begged them to just cut the clothes off instead of removing them like normal, but they wanted to make sure I had clothes to leave the hospital in, so I suffered through it. They did try their best to make it as easy as possible, but it hurt, it hurt a whole lot. 

Once my arm was bare and they could see the lumpy bumps (I tried not to look at it, so I can't describe it very well) they went ahead and gave me something to help me get through the x-ray that was coming. I'm not sure what the medication was, but they shot it up my nose and it didn't so much help the pain as it made me feel like I couldn't concentrate on the pain. 

I was wheeled to x-ray and the techs did a great job of not making me move a whole lot. They placed the x-ray plate beside my arm while I lay on the gurney asking if there was any way it could just be dislocated. (This makes me laugh now, but at the moment I was very hopeful it was just a dislocation).  They told me that they weren't trained to read he x-ray, but they didn't think it was just dislocated.

Here's that picture.

The hospital in the small town where we ski said they weren't equipped to do surgery on my elbow since the break was so severe. I needed an Orthopedic surgeon. Thankfully, since the small town was close to some big ski towns (Vail, Breckenridge, etc.) they were easily able to transport me via ambulance to Summit Medical Center out in Frisco where a very good surgeon would be waiting.

I got to Summit around 6 p.m. and was moved to a room within a couple of hours. I was fine with the wait. By this time I was very medicated and not feeling much pain. At one point they did need to get me in an MRI machine. They told me I'd have to raise my arm above my head for them. Thankfully they pulled out the big guns for pain medication (Morphine) to get me through the MRI. I have never been so glad for a needle in all my life. That MRI was awful.

After seeing the MRI, the surgeon decided to delay the operation until the next day to let the swelling go down a bit, so I told my husband not to worry about coming up there since I'd just be sleeping. Like I said, this was our last day of vacation and they still had to pack up the VRBO and clear out early the next morning. 

My surgery took place at around 2 p.m. the following afternoon. The surgeon explained everything to me in detail, including the types of things I could expect going forward:

Arthritis
Limited mobility
Nerve pain
A long recovery
Physical therapy

None of it was shocking. I knew by then that it was a very bad break. The surgeon said it was normally the type of break he would see when a passenger in a car puts their hands out to brace against the dashboard before they rear end someone. 

He took me back to the OR, worked his magic, and when I woke up, my arm was in a half cast from my wrist to my armpit. That half cast was wrapped in miles of cotton batting and gauze. I couldn't move it at all and wouldn't be able to for a couple of weeks. 

​It made for a very fun seventeen hour ride home!

HERE'S HOW I GOT OVER MY GABAPENTIN ADDICTION AFTER SURGERY

Since my humerus was shattered so severely, the surgeon wasn't able to go in and make the repairs without making some room first. What this means is that he cut off the bottom of my Ulna (where it would meet at the elbow) where my triceps attached, then pulled it up toward my shoulder. This gave him room to work on my Humerus, making the repairs as needed. Once he finished, he put the Ulna back in place, screwed it down tight, and closed up. 

That big screw was one of the most irritating parts of this surgery. I could feel it all the time. If I leaned my elbow against anything, that screw hurt. I couldn't even rest it on my mattress at night, it was too sensitive.  I did eventually have all of the hardware removed, but I'll get in to that further down. 

After two weeks in the cast, my local surgeon removed it so that I could start showering without wrapping my arm in a trash bag. I had to put it the cast and bandage back on whenever I wasn't in the shower to keep it protected, but he did let me take it off if I was someplace very safe (in bed before I went to sleep) so I could make tiny micro movements, but for the most part it had to stay on.

​I didn't realize what an impact this would have on my range of motion later on.

TY WRITES BOOKS FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL READERS

Broken elbow surgery recovery time isn't just about the bones mending. As you can see in the video, my range of motion after elbow surgery was very limited. I could basically hit 90 degrees and then move another 30 degrees toward an open arm. This was probably the biggest shock to my system. I had no idea just how limited that range of motion would be, nor did I have any realistic idea of how long it would be before I began regaining range of motion after elbow surgery.

How long does it take to regain range of motion after elbow surgery? It's been more than a year and my range is still limited, though not by more than 10 degrees on either open or close, so I'm okay with it. I do not expect it to get any better at this point.

There were some things I did at home to help myself gain more range of motion, so I'll go over those, but I want to be very clear that I'm not a medical professional and I am not handing out medical advise. Talk to your surgeon/physical therapist before you do anything.

​I went to physical therapy for a few weeks, and for me it was a complete waste of time and money. I needed help closing my arm (hand to shoulder flexion) and opening my arm (extension). They gave me some very basic pointers on opening my arm, but weren't able to offer any help closing my arm. I spent most of the time doing wrist rotations with very light dumbbells. It was all stuff I was able to do at home, so I stopped going after six weeks or so. 

I recommend going to PT at least so you can see if they can offer you some knowledge you don't already have. And I definitely recommend it if you aren't going to work on any of this yourself at home. For me, I'm a doer, no one wanted my range of motion back more than me, so I researched, watched videos, and tried various things to find out what would help me the most, with the least amount of discomfort.

UNIVERSAL YUMS IS OUR FAVORITE MONTHLY SNACK BOX SUBSCRIPTION

About a week after I had surgery, my hand started to swell like crazy. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but a call to my surgeon assured me that it was just edema, fluid traveling from the surgery site down to my hand, likely because I wasn't keeping it elevated enough while I slept. It looked terrible, but it didn't hurt.

You can see just how swollen my entire hand and arm is. I felt like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow wo(Man).

How do you rehab a broken elbow? Very carefully. 

In order to help get my arm straight again, I employed some basic techniques. The first of which was holding something very light (a soup can) while resting my elbow on a folded towel on the edge of my couch. I'd watch TV, hold the can, and let gravity slowly pull my fist toward the floor. I feel like this helped a lot, though it was slow going. Bending my elbow after doing this for awhile was uncomfortable and I did end up tearing a muscle or something, but the surgeon wasn't worried about it and said that it sometimes happens when your elbow has been contracted for so long.

Another variation of this, which I really liked, was using a Urias Air Splint. It sounds weird, but it really worked for me. 

You put your arm in the splint, blow it up to your comfort level, then leave it. I have heard people say that they would sleep in it, but I didn't do that. Instead I would use the splint at night while watching TV, letting it straighten my arm while I did something else. I liked it because I didn't have to hold a weight or soup can, and I could even fit a small heating pad inside the air splint to use heat to help my mobility. 

I made that part up, so if you do it, do it at your own risk, and please be careful of the heat. The heating pad I used was something like this, and I made sure to put something between my arm and the pad. I'd wear a sweater, wrap a towel around my arm, etc. Basically my arm wasn't coming into direct contact with the heating pad while I had it inside of the air splint. 

This, for me, was the most effective means of getting my arm straighter.

Range of motion exercises after elbow surgery - for flexion.

Working on flexion after elbow surgery was a little more difficult for me. I needed it to bend, but I wasn't getting anywhere by just flexing my muscles over and over again. It would reach a certain point and stop, and no amount of me gritting my teeth was making a difference.

I had heard that some people would lay down on their backs while holding a weight. They would let that weight drift toward the floor with their elbow in a bent position, allowing gravity to bend their elbow more. 

This didn't work for me. I found it almost impossible to firmly grip the weight while still letting my elbow relax, it felt wrong and I didn't like it. 

What did work for me, and what I highly recommend you talk to your doctor about before doing, was bending my arms beneath me while I lay on them on my stomach. I'd put my hands just below my collar bone, palms on my shirt, open and flat, then lay down on my stomach, forcing the elbow to bend.

Doing this made a lot of progress, but certainly you could do some damage if your bones aren't healed enough to take the weight, so talk to your doctor first.
​
How long does it take to get range of motion back after elbow surgery/how long does it take to regain range of motion after elbow surgery/how long does it take to get full range of motion after elbow surgery? Everyone is different, but it's been a year, and I think it's as good as it's going to get for me.

I had my six weeks of physical therapy under my belt when my doctor and I agreed that it would be okay to move ahead with having the hardware removed. The large screw in my Ulna was really bothersome, and I could also feel the plates on either side, both being very prone to getting sore and tender when my arm rested on one side or the other, especially during sleep. 

My bones had mended for almost 9 months at that point, so they were well healed and he wasn't worried about anything being broken again if the hardware was removed prematurely. The idea was to go in and remove all of the hardware in one fell swoop, but as things panned out, it got a little more complicated and he decided only to remove the large screw in my Ulna and a few of the smaller screws holding the plates on.

I remember waking up in recovery and him telling me that he just wasn't comfortable removing the hardware without once again elevating my triceps, which would have meant cutting into the Ulna again, raising it toward my shoulder, removing the plates, putting my Ulna tip back, and putting the big screw in all over again.

I wanted to cry.

Instead of crying, I gave it a few weeks and reevaluated the situation. I had been having serious nerve pain in my hand and fingers (I'll talk more about that later on) and that pain seemed to double after the second surgery. I wanted the hardware out, I was convinced it was part of the reason I was still in so much pain from my nerves, so I decided to seek a second opinion from a well known Orthopedic group in Houston. 

What I actually did was go on their website and look for a doctor who had a specialty that seemed to fit my injury. Then I emailed them, explained what I'd done, and asked if the doctor I was thinking of seeing would be the right fit. They actually called me back almost right away and said they'd spoken to their doctors and thought that another doctor in the practice would be a better fit. I made an appointment to go in and see him at the end of November. 

He had me do another MRI and a nerve study to make sure there was no nerve damage, but felt confident that he could remove the hardware completely without having to elevate my triceps again, and he could get it done before my insurance deductible wiped out in January. I scheduled the surgery for the end of December and made it very clear that if he could not remove the hardware without elevating my triceps then I wanted him to go ahead and elevate them. I wanted the hardware out.

I figured it would mean I'd have to come back for another surgery in 2021 to back out the big Ulna screw again, but that would be nothing compared to what I'd already had done, so no big deal. 

Turns out, he was as good as his word and removed all of the hardware (except one screw that had broken off during the second surgery). 

I followed up at one week (during which time my arm was again in a half cast), lost a lot of mobility all over again and had to work to regain it, but having all of the hardware removed was definitely worth it. 

He did say I had a lot of scar tissue compressing my Ulnar nerve, so he was able to clear that out and clean out scar tissue (which was also causing me pain and making a horrid grinding/clicking sound). 

I was set up for a good recovery, but I was still having bad hand and finger pain, so I stayed on the Gabapentin for a couple more months. I'll talk about that next, but I'm still going to cover the clicking/grinding/snapping I had in my elbow prior to this final surgery.

I've already written an entire blog post about dealing with an addiction to Gabapentin after I started taking it for nerve pain, so you can read that post if you want a whole lot more information. 

Right now I'm just going to give you the broad strokes. 

After the first surgery, I had limited feeling in my pinky. If you touched it, it almost felt (to me) like I was rubbing my hand across rubber. It had an intermittent, muted, sticky sensation, like parts had feelings, but other parts didn't. That got better over time, but was replaced by pain.

It wasn't the kind of pain you could relieve with a pain pill, it was this shooting, burning, aching pain that never went away.  I couldn't sleep through it, it was that bad. It didn't stop at my pinky, but spread to my entire hand, focusing on my pinky, thumb, and the back of my hand. 

My doctor prescribed Gabapentin. It worked very well, but after a year of taking it I tried to stop taking it, and...I couldn't. I had become physically addicted to it. I did wean myself off and I'm all done with it now, but it was an eye opening experience, and definitely not one I'd like to repeat. 

If you've broken your elbow, you're likely going to be prescribed an abundance of medication. Be careful with it.

Once I'd gotten my cast off and had started physical therapy, I began to notice a clicking/grinding/snapping noise in my outer elbow. I'd flex, it would go "snap snap snap", I'd extend, same thing. If I put my fingers on my outer elbow and then flexed or extended, I could actually feel the grinding beneath my fingertips. 

I had done enough research to know that any sort of grinding could be a problem (especially since my doctor asked me specifically about grinding every time I saw him for a followup appointment) so I was extremely worried something had gone wrong.

Turns out, it was just scar tissue that had broken loose as I regained my range of motion. 

That's not to say it wasn't an issue, because it was. The scar tissue bits weren't going to dissolve or go away on their own, and they were large enough (small enough?) that they were getting jammed in my joint when I'd move, causing a lot of pain. 

The good news was that my bone wasn't grinding, so if you're hearing a grinding in your elbow after surgery, it could be scar tissue. You'll definitely want to get it checked out, but if I can give you a little peace of mind, it might not be anything really bad.

Thankfully, if you're not really having any troubles aside from the clicking in your elbow after surgery, it's something that can typically be taken care of in an outpatient procedure where they just make a little hole, flush the joint, then close it back up. 

I had my surgery almost three months ago and the grinding is gone for the most part. It came back just a tiny bit as I've gained more range of motion, but the loose scar tissue isn't enough to bother me at the moment so I'm just going to leave it alone.

I went into this blog post with a list of concerns I'd had after I broke my elbow. Lots of things I couldn't find on the internet, so I decided to sit down and type it all out in the hopes that it might help someone else. I realize that if you're going through this, you might be after even more specific information. So if I don't have it here, feel free to leave a comment below. I'll do my best to answer it, but remember, none of this is medical advice. 

When in doubt, consult your surgeon. You really don't want to mess around with not getting the most out of your elbow after your surgery, so don't leave it to chance.

I hope this helps, good luck!
Ty

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here.

If you're reading this post looking for reasons why your Google Adsense ad serving has been limited, I don't have any answers for you. I do have theories, my own story, which you might like to read, and an alternate provider to get you back up and running. All of this happened to me in quick succession, so I can say for certain that if you're getting a notification about Adsense invalid traffic concerns, there is hope to get that revenue stream going again and you can even get customer service to go with it. (read more)

If you'd like to watch the video, here you go.

You've built your website, you've written great content, you've done everything right, and you're starting to earn some money from the ads you're running with Google Adsense. Then you wake up one morning, go check your earnings from the day before, and....you get this notification.

There's a link to the Policy Center to the right of this notification, so you click on it and see the picture below. (Note that I couldn't even click this link for a full 10 days, I just kept getting an error.)

My first reaction to the notification was that it must be a mistake. I've had my Adsense account for more than two years and have spent that time writing what I hope are solid, helpful articles. I don't do click bait, I don't do gimmicky stuff. I write about things that matter to me, in the hopes that they are things they matter to someone else.

Since I wasn't actually able to click on the Policy Center link (it would bring up an error and ask me for my patience) until today, I figured it must be something on Google's end, a glitch, not a true concern. 

Still, I searched for things, everything I could think of in every variation: adsense limited ads, adsense limited ads serving, adsense ads limited solution, adsense invalid traffic, etc. 

I watched a ton of videos as well, but the longer the ban went on, the more I realized that, error or not, I was completely and totally helpless to do anything at all about this. 

Not only can I not do anything about it, I can't talk to anyone about it, I can't message and get answers. I can't do ANYTHING!

It's frustrating.

After searching, reading, and watching, I did come up with some theories, so I'll share them with you below. I'm going to totally disregard the idea that this is based on me buying traffic or somehow paying for people to come read my posts or click on ads. That's stupid, I have worked too hard to build this up from nothing, and I wouldn't risk it. If you have purchased traffic or engaged in any of these things, you probably know why you've gotten the Google Adsense limited ad warning.

If this isn't you, I've got a few ideas, but again, we'll never really know. However, there are other options, quick options, and I'll go over those at the end, but for now let's move on to why I THINK I got hit with the ban hammer.

WHY WE LOVE THE ZYGOR WORLD OF WARCRAFT LEVELING GUIDE

I've come up with a few reasons why my Google Adsense account might have been limited:

1. Accidental Clicks - If you use Auto Ads (which I was), you aren't controlling where the ads are placed. Google places them for you wherever they think it will be most beneficial, but it's a computer making that decision, not a person. If an ad is placed too close to a clickable link on your site (for example, if you are an Amazon Affiliate and use Amazon links) the user might accidentally click the ad instead of your link. This could be especially true on mobile devices where the screen is small and a tiny touch is all that's needed to accidentally click a link.

2. You've experienced some website traffic growth - This would be something to celebrate, but maybe not if you're Google Adsense. I noticed in January that my growth really went up in Adsense, growing by 84%. My page views didn't really go up, but I guess my site was quality enough that more advertisers were bidding on placement, so I made more money. A normal amount of growth for me over the past six months was anywhere between 6% and 25% per month, so this 84% was high, but it was also in January, a full month before I got the warning on my Adsense page.

3. It's random - Based on all of the searches I've done and things I've read, this happens to A LOT of people. Also based on these searches I don't have high hopes for Adsense coming back online for me. Many people report that their account has been choked, only to be let up in a few weeks or a month, and then choked down again.

Since I didn't pay anyone to visit my site or click links, none of the reasons I could have legitimately been limited really matter to me. What does matter is that they did it and that there is no recourse. You aren't contacting anyone about it, period. 

What I needed was a new place to align my site with, a place that has actual people who will actually talk to me when something happens. It just so happens that I found a place and was able to talk to them about all of these issues and even get a little insight. What a NOVEL idea!!

Let's talk about Ezoic.

WHEN WE CAN'T TRAVEL, WE PRETEND WE CAN WITH UNIVERSAL YUMS

The hardest part of trying to figure out where to take my site once Adsense killed off my revenue was researching the legitimacy of any potential advertiser. The reason so many people use Adsense is because it's so well known. It's linked to Google, the name brand itself inspires confidence, even if you go into realizing that you are a small fish in a big pond and you're not very likely to get any help when issues arise. 

I was only making about $150 a month (A MONTH) when I got choked, but I'd read stories of people who were making thousands of dollars each month getting the same treatment, and still having no recourse.

For me, no amount of brand name confidence changes the fact that my revenue was basically erased overnight. I wasn't even worried about going some place where I could make the same amount of money. It was far more important to go someplace where people would TALK TO ME if I needed help. 

All of my searches for advertisers eventually took me to Ezoic, where they put me in touch with an onboarding specialist named Ryan. Ryan has been in constant contact with me about my site. If I have questions, I email Ryan and he answers me in a timely (and helpful) manner.

It's a breath of fresh air.

I plan on doing a separate blog post about Ezoic, but I want to hit on a few highlights. First off, they have an affiliate program. So anytime you see me link to Ezoic, that's my link. I like affiliate programs and am happy to be a part of them when it's a service I currently use. If I'm going to be talking it up, getting a referral link is a bonus.

Second, they have real live human beings for customer service. Wow!

I messaged Ryan and talked to him about the issues I had encountered with Adsense. This was really important because I wanted to make sure any new company I partnered with was aware of what's going on. I'm all about transparency. It's doubly important in this case because Ezoic works with Adsense, meaning that you can have Ezoic put ads on your site, but you can also do "Mediation" with Adsense so they can also bid to put ads on your site. However, if you are going to mediate with Adsense, you need to be in good standing with Adsense. And while Adsense has NOT said I am not in good standing, I'm just going to assume that since they're treating me like I've got the plague.

Ryan was able to look at my traffic, verify that it was "high quality, organic" and allow me to continue my onboarding. It took a few days (mainly because you have to change a lot of ad code), but I've been up and running with them basically since a week after my Adsense revenue tanked. While I'm not making quite as much as I was with Adsense, I am at about 75% as much. I figure I'll make more as their advertisers get more comfortable bidding on placement on my site, and I'm good with that. 

The biggest thing is that there is customer service. I will gladly give up some revenue to have a real person to talk to.

And, since Adsense is an additional company you can add to Ezoic, I can switch mediation on for them if I ever get back to where they're not choking me down. If not, I just flip that switch off and go on with my day. It's pretty simple. 

TY WRITES BOOKS FOR KIDS WHO LOVE ROBLOX AND MINECRAFT

As I said, I didn't plan on going into great deal about Ezoic in this post, but I'll be writing one soon. I'll also update this post if and when Adsense ever brings back my revenue or gives me a reason as to why the revenue was taken away. Honestly though, I don't hold out a whole lot of hope that either will happen.

UPDATE - After more than two weeks, Google Adsense discreetly removed the notification from my site. I have not gotten any email or information about why my account was semi-banned in the first place. I am not going back to Adsense as my main advertiser, it's too risky. I am staying with Ezoic, but I have clicked the box to open mediation to Adsense, so they can bid to put advertisements on my site if they want. 

UPDATE 2 - I just got an email from Adsense letting me know they see that I've stopped using Adsense, and asking me to give it another try. This is obviously a form letter, something they send to everyone once they realize all the Adsense ads have been removed from a site. I thought briefly about responding, but in the end I can't see the point. I definitely will not be going back. That extra 20% (which Adsense claims users will get when they switch back) isn't worth not having a human being to talk to when something goes wrong in my account. It's simply too much work and effort to give control of my site advertising to a company that can't be bothered to speak with me.

Many things I've read say that, if Adsense does this to you once, it will continue to happen at random intervals and you'll never have anyone to talk to about it. So I have very little faith that the issue is resolved, but I'm very glad I found another place to work with.

I hope this helps you out, and I hope you get your Google Adsense back up and running sooner rather than later. If not, at least you know you have some options.

​Ty

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here.

In February of 2020, my family and I headed up to ski for a week in Colorado as we do each year. We're accomplished skiers, at home on the slopes, no worries. This particular year, because my son was interested in snowboarding, we decided to take a snowboard lesson as a family. That decision, and a fall that should have been completely unremarkable, led to a year of surgeries, heavy medication use, and eventually in early 2021, dealing with an uncomfortable physical withdrawal from Gabapentin. (read more)

I won't bore you too much with details of how I came to be on Gabapentin for a year, but since it is prescribed for both nerve pain and depression/anxiety (there might even be more uses that I am unaware of), I want to clarify that my use stemmed from nerve pain. I fell backward while going very slowly downhill on a snowboard, thrust both of my arms behind me to catch myself, and shattered my humerus into several pieces. It was a terrible break, the kind normally reserved for people who get into car accidents and push their arms out to brace against the dashboard. 

Basically my lower arm rammed into my upper arm, and that was that.  Still, I managed to walk off the slope (I was at the bottom anyway) instead of getting kitted up by ski patrol, so that's a win.

​I've made a video of the break so you can see it.

Here are some X-rays to showcase the damage and repair a bit better. This was just the first surgery. I ended up having two more in 2020 to try and fix the pain/mobility issues, and I would consider them a success.

As you can see from the images, the surgeon had a hard time reaching my Humerus to repair the damage, so he had to cut off the end of my elbow, lift it up (triceps attached) to my shoulder, repair my Humerus, then reattach the elbow, hence the large screw in my elbow. 

What all of this meant to me is that I was in a lot of pain. The problem was that it wasn't the kind of pain I could take pain medication for. It was a constant aching buzz in my fingertips that kept me from functioning in every day life and certainly kept me from sleeping. After about six weeks of having this pain I followed up with my local surgeon and he prescribed Gabapentin. 

It worked.

He gave me a prescription for 300mg twice a day. I found that it made me woozy and fuzzy, so I instead took both pills at night which was when I really needed relief from the pain so I could sleep. After a few months of this, I was able to taper down to one pill at night, just 300mg once per day. 

When I got to the point, about a year later, where I decided I wanted to try to stop taking Gabapentin altogether, I figured it wouldn't be too difficult. After all my dose wasn't very high. 

I never considered that I would need to think about how to wean off Gabapentin, not once. So when I stopped taking it cold-turkey, I figured things would be fine.

​I was very, very wrong.

TY WRITES BOOKS FOR KIDS WHO LOVE ROBLOX AND MINECRAFT

Does Gabapentin cause withdrawals? Beyond a shadow of a doubt, yes, Gabapentin withdrawal is a real thing. Depending on the dose you take, how long you've been on it, your weight, etc. Gabapentin withdrawal could look different for you than it did for me, but if you're reading this, you're dealing with it in some way, and that sucks. 
​
Hopefully I can help you get through it by telling you what I did. So no matter what you searched for to get here, I'm hoping to get you one step closer to kicking those little pills.

Let's talk about the symptoms and the timeline.

How long do Gabapentin withdrawal symptoms last? This is a tough question for me to answer because I didn't make it through the withdrawal. I stopped taking my pills altogether instead of weaning myself off slowly, which was a mistake. The first day after I stopped was pretty much okay, but by the second day I was starting to have what I now realize were symptoms of Gabapentin withdrawal.

Does gabapentin withdrawal cause nausea/can Gabapentin withdrawal cause nausea? - Yes, this was one of my main symptoms and the biggest reason I got back on Gabapentin to instead slowly wean myself off.

Can gabapentin withdrawal cause hot flashes/can stopping Gabapentin cause hot sweats/can stopping Gabapentin cause hot flashes? - Yes. As a 43 year old woman I had convinced myself that I must be going through "the change". It wasn't until I realized I was actually having withdrawal symptoms that I put two and two together, realizing that the things happening to me were 100% related to a medication I was no longer taking.

Can stopping Gabapentin cause headaches? - Yes. The three things I've listed so far are the main symptoms of Gabapentin withdrawal I dealt with. That's not to say there can't be more withdrawal symptoms associated with it, but these three, in addition to feeling irritable and anxious, were my major complaints.

While you're searching for things like: What are gabapentin withdrawal symptoms? Does gabapentin have withdrawal? What are the signs of gabapentin withdrawal? What are the symptoms of gabapentin withdrawal?  you're likely going to find a ton of symptoms that you don't have. You might also have symptoms that you're sure are related to discontinuing Gabapentin, but you can't find confirmation of in your searches. 

I'm not a doctor, nothing in here is meant to diagnose you with anything. I will say that when I was suffering withdrawal from Gabapentin I basically felt like garbage. I was nauseous, my head hurt, I was hot all the time, I was irritable, I couldn't sleep, I didn't want to eat, etc. I felt alien in my own skin and could NOT figure out why.

I've never been physically addicted to anything in my entire life, with the exception of having one cup of coffee each morning (and getting a headache if I don't have it), I had no idea what to expect and couldn't believe my life was cast into such a state of upheaval over one tiny, yellow gel cap.

Once I figured out what was going on, I made the swift decision to start taking the 300mg per day again (all of the symptoms abated within an hour of this) and began the slow process of weaning myself off. 

Now that I've told you my symptoms, let me tell you how I tapered my dose over a two week period to get over all this nonsense.

UNIVERSAL YUMS IS OUR FAVORITE MONTHLY SNACK BOX - HERE'S WHAT YOU GET!

If you'd like to hear me talk about my experience, and see my awesome surgery scar, here you go!

How long does withdrawal from Gabapentin last? If you do it like I did it, you don't really have to notice the withdrawal symptoms at all. 

By the time I decided to get back on Gabapentin to wean off of it slowly, I had already been off of it entirely for about seven days. I thought for sure the symptoms would go away at that point, and I probably was close to it, but waking up in the middle of the night and retching into the toilet for fifteen minutes disabused any notion I had of continuing on the cold-turkey route. 

Everything I'd read said that the ​Gabapentin withdrawal symptoms timeline could start anywhere from immediately, all the way to 10-12 days after discontinuing use. Since I was only seven days in and things were getting worse, not better, I'm inclined to think that it takes some time for the Gabapentin to work its way out of your system, meaning you won't feel the real effects of withdrawal for a few days at least. 

I was on what my surgeon called a "maintenance dose", meaning I needed to keep taking it to keep the nerve pain at bay, but I wasn't going to feel that relief all the way until I'd built up enough of the drug in my system to do the trick. Even though my maintenance dose was small, it was enough to be a real shock to my system when I went without. 

Since my medication was filled in a gel cap, it wasn't very easy to simply half the dose or whatever, especially when I needed to get down from 300mg to zero mg.

PUFFY UNDER EYES AFTER BOTOX? HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED TO US.

The first thing I did after searching for how to deal with gabapentin withdrawal, how to get over gabapentin withdrawal, and how to help gabapentin withdrawal was to give my surgeon a call, let him know that I was trying to taper off, and asking him to fill the prescription in a smaller dose. 

He was happy to do so and quickly called in a prescription for 100mg gel caps. 

While I waited for that prescription to be ready, I started cutting the top off of my 300mg tablets and pouring half the tablet into a cup of orange juice (the powder is foul tasting). I did that for a few days, staying around 150mg for that time period before hitting the pharmacy.

Once I had the 100mg tablets at home, I started adjusting my time frame for ingestion. I wanted to be able to take the medication at night so I could go to sleep and hopefully sleep through any symptoms that might come with lowering the dose. 

There was a little nausea during the day, but not too much. Not enough to make me want to up the dose.

After three days of the 100mg dose I once again cut open the tablet and dumped half into a glass of orange juice. I followed that procedure, three days of a half dose, half it again, three days of that dose, etc. 

By the time I got to the 25mg point, I couldn't be bothered to half the dose anymore so I'd just cut the top off the pill. pour a tiny amount into some orange juice, and call it done. 

A week after starting the 100mg dose, I was just about finished. One night I walked into the bathroom, grabbed the bottle of Gabapentin, then shrugged and stuffed it back into the drawer.

I haven't taken any since, and I honestly hope to never again.

WHY WE LOVE ZYGOR FOR LEVELING IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT

My last surgery was three months ago. The surgeon was able to remove all of the hardware. It was invasive, there was a lot of swelling, and my entire hand hurt for quite awhile. Now that I'm off Gabapentin I do have bouts of nerve pain, but it hasn't been severe enough to make me want to get back on it. 

I am not the type of person who does well with "having" to do anything, so being addicted to Gabapentin was a frustrating experience, and not one I want to repeat. 

If the pain gets really bad again I'll probably just call my doctor and ask him for something else, but hopefully, this far out, I'm no longer in the danger zone of shooting pain and buzzing fingertips. 

Again, I'm not a doctor and none of this is meant to diagnose or advise, but if you're taking Gabapentin for anxiety or depression (or dealing with these things while trying to wean off), contacting your doctor can only be a good thing. 

One of the reasons I was most wary about staring Gabapentin was that it said on the bottle that it could cause feelings of anger. I don't like that. I want to know that if I get angry, it's because I'm angry, not because my brain is being chemically altered into anger, if that makes sense. 

Things that mess with my emotions or psychological well being are a bit scary to me, and while I could not have dealt with the pain of the past year without Gabapentin, I do not take lightly the changes in my attitude it was causing. 

So, let your doctor know what you're doing. He or she will be able to help you get off with as little interruption and discomfort as possible.

I hope this helps, but if you have any questions be sure to let me know. I'm more than happy to answer, and after a year of being on this stuff, I feel like I know a little bit. :)

Good luck!
​Ty

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here.

I've been playing World Of Warcraft for 15 years, since roughly a few months after the first iteration came out. I've played every expansion except the most recent (it's 2020 now and Shadowlands is due to come out in a few months), and using Auctioneer has worked in every single expansion without fail. The best part is that making gold like this keeps you in epic mounts for all of your alts, good gear, pots, flasks, enchants, etc. and requires only about ten minutes a day at the most. It's really that simple. I started on the server in April of 2020. A friend gave me 4 Runecloth bags and 3 gold to get me started. From that 3 gold (which I paid back in a few days), I made more than 6,000 gold (I say 6000 because that's what I know I have on my characters now as far as mounts and gold, but it's quite likely much more, probably around 10,000) and have never stressed about gold in WoW at all. I'm leaving the game in October of 2020 and just gave away 3,000 gold to guildies, leaving myself with a few hundred gold, plenty to rebuild my empire when I come back in a few years. (read more)

This is one of those things that's easier to see in action, so I went ahead and made a video to help you out. I will also go in depth in this blog post from start to finish, but I definitely advise watching the video.

I say this later, but please note that the set up for your Auctioneer only has to be done once. After you save your criteria you are done unless you want to change that criteria later on.

No matter what you searched for, especially the funky ones like: auctioneer wow classic mac, how to use auctioneer resale, auctioneer wow classic how to use, or auctioneer wow classic tutorial, you are in the right place and I'm going to do my best to get you set up right.

Before you start scanning, I'm going to recommend a few things: Make an Auction House toon. If you're Alliance, choose a human and run her to Stormwind. If you're Horde, choose Undead and run her to Undercity. Do not sell anything from your other toons. Funnel it all to your bank toon, have her buy and sell things, then just send your other toons money from your bank toon as needed. I also recommend keeping your bank toon out of your guild and giving it a name that no one would associate with you. You're going to have a lot of auctions on the AH at one time, and you don't want to be in uncomfortable situations where people who know you start to ask if you can give them items you're selling, etc. 

Alright! Let's dig right in so you can get started. You are going to need about two weeks of scans on your particular auction house before you can start buying and selling, so the sooner you download Auctioneer and start scanning, the sooner you can start making that gold. 

I recommend two weeks of scans because you need Auctioneer to have a good baseline for the items commonly bought and sold on your server. If you try to buy and sell after only a couple of days your prices are going to be all wrong and you run the risk of losing gold and getting taken advantage of. 

Think of this like you'd think of investing in the stock market, it's the long game that matters. This is NOT a get rich quick scheme. Yes I have made more than 6K in the few months I've been playing, but it takes time and you have to be willing to wait it out, especially at first. 

So the first thing you're going to do after you download Auctioneer is to go to the AH and open it up so you can do your first scan. It's super simple, just click the SCAN button and let it go. Depending on your internet speed it'll take about two minutes. Once you've done the scan, go do something else. I would advise not going any further until you've got those two weeks of scans under your belt.

CHECK OUT OUR COMPARISON OF ZYGOR VS JOANASWORLD FOR FAST LEVELING

Once you've done your two weeks of scanning (once in the morning, once at night), it's time to set up your Auctioneer so you can start making some gold. 

There are a few things we're going to focus on here, and I'll go through them step by step. 

First: You're going to need to decide how much of a discount you want the items to be posted at. Let me give you an example. Let's say a ring normally sells for 100g. You tell Auctioneer that you only want to bid on/buy items that are listed at a 60% discount. This would mean that ring would need to be listed at 40g before you'd be okay purchasing it for resale. 

When you're just starting out I would recommend you use a larger discount, something like 50%. Once you get used to your server's market you can change that. I personally use a 30% discount now, but for years I used 50% and I was very happy with it. 

Second: You're going to need to decide if you want Auctioneer to look for a "Seen Count". This means it'll only show you items that it's seen a lot of. I always use this. Basically I don't want to bid on or buy anything unless it's been on the auction house at least 50 times, so my seen count is always 50. This prevents me from purchasing an item that's only been up two or three times. Items that have only been up a few times are easily manipulated and you can end up paying a lot of gold for something that doesn't warrant the cost. 

Third: You're going to need to decide if you only want to buy items that have a buy out price, or if you're willing to bid on items to get a better price. I use both bids and buy outs, but for a long time I only used buy outs, instant gratification and all. Now I'm happy to bid then sit back and wait to see if I get the item. If I do, great, if not, no big deal, there will be other items another time. 

Fourth: Decide how you want your market valued. There are several options in Auctioneer, but I only use the Market Value. It has always worked for me, I know what to expect, so I stick with it.

Fifth: Do you want to subtract your auction and deposit fees? I do. I want to know that my profit is pure profit, so I don't want any additional fees taken out of that gold. I let Auctioneer take it out on the front end and just leave off any auctions that wouldn't garner me enough gold with those fees removed. 

Sixth: How many times will you relist the item on average? Since many items charge a fee each time you list, I find it helpful to tell Auctioneer to estimate that I'll relist each item ten times. That way, if I do have to relist ten times, I have still made my original profit. If I have to list less, I've made even more, yay!

***NOTE - You only have to do these steps ONCE! After that, set it and forget it.***

Seventh: Once you've entered your search parameters and decided on your purchases, just go check your mailbox and collect your loot. Head back to the AH, then use Auctioneer's "Batch Post" function to post all of your items. You will have to go in and tell it that it is okay to batch post, and you will have to do this once for each item, but only once. After that you don't have to mess with deciding on prices at all, Auctioneer does it all for you!

TY WRITES BOOKS FOR KIDS WHO LOVE MINECRAFT AND ROBLOX

I had already sold or mailed all of my auctions by the time I added this next part, so I stripped my bank toon of her starter clothes to illustrate a few things. First, here's a great example of someone trying to inflate the price of an item. I took off my starter boots and went to the Appraiser tab in Auctioneer. I was shocked to see it telling me I should use a market price of over 100 Gold! (Also, shame on you, Dusting)

You have to watch out for this, know your items, don't get swindled.

In order to make your posting very easy, simply click that little box in the upper right hand corner that says "Enable Batch Posting". You only have to do it once for each item. Click the item on the left, then click "EnabIe Batch Posting", click the next item on the left, rinse and repeat. I recommend doing this when you buy new items, just click that box so you don't have to mass click it a bunch of times when you have fifty auctions going.

The way you batch post will likely vary by whatever computer you're using (I game on a Mac), but it's easy enough to hover on the Batch Post button to see the specific instructions for your machine.

Once you've got all of your search criteria set up AND you've done your two weeks of scans (do not skip this step), you're ready to start bidding on or buying out items. 

Just click the RESALE button and let the search populate. You'll see your screen fill up with items that Auctioneer has decided are selling at prices that are too low for the market. 

Now it's time for you to look at these items and decide whether or not you want to purchase them so you can resell them at the correct market price.

Before you click on everything on the page and snap it up, let me tell you about some things to look for.

1. Do NOT buy any items that come out of new content for at least a few months. AQ40 recently came out on my server. The idols are all over the auction house and Auctioneer is always telling me that I need to buy them. However, because I've been down this road before, I know that the AQ40 items will only become more plentiful on my server and therefore any price right now is going to be too high, and any auctions I purchase will likely not sell for the profit Auctioneer says they will. 

I would sell coins and Bijous from ZG right now since it's been out awhile. I would also sell gear from Molten Core, but I will absolutely not touch things from AQ40, not at all.

2. Look for items that have a 0.0.0 deposit price. These are great items to sell. There is no hard and fast rule about which items will have a zero gold deposit, but it's easy enough to see by hovering over the item. If they have no deposit you are so much less likely to lose gold. Enchanting material, ZG Mudskunks, recipes, buff turn in items, coins, Bijous, etc. All of these things require no deposit, making them a great long term investment for resale. 

3. Do not buy Darkmoon cards or decks, just don't do it. Cards and decks always have a high deposit price and that deposit will eat up your profit quickly. For example, every Darkmoon deck sold has a WHOPPING 6g deposit price. The Faire comes to town once a month or so, and even if you only list that deck for the week of the fair, you are out 42G if it doesn't sell. 42 gold!! 

Just don't buy and sell the decks or cards, it's a bad idea.

4. Don't buy gear before an expansion. For example, the people playing retail right now are expecting Shadowlands to come out fairly soon. If I were playing retail I would stop purchasing gear totally about a month before the expansion comes out. I would keep scanning each day, but would probably not start buying gear again for several months after the expansion. You can still purchase enchant material and stuff like that, but even then, expansion time throws things into chaos. All lower level items are now easier to get because they can be farmed much easier, even raid items are easier to come by because what used to take a group of 40 can now be done in a group of 5 or less. 

Basically, be wary during an expansion and pay special attention to what you're buying. Look for things with an even deeper discount and expect to make less gold for a few months, just until the server economy gets sorted out again.

5. Check and see if the item you want to resell is sold by any merchants. If it's not there will be a note that says "Sold by no known merchants". If you don't see that note, I'd advise against buying the item. Sure there are a few exceptions, some items only pop up once or twice every few hours, but for the most part these items aren't going to make you much of a profit. 

However, people can and will buy items from a merchant (the starting water is a good example), list it at a crazy high price, have their buddy purchase it at that price, and do this a hundred times so that when they put that starting water on the AH for 5g a stack, Auctioneer goes "Hey, buy this, you could make 1000g!". 

Scams do happen, so use your smarts and don't get taken in. Speaking from experience here, much as I wish I weren't.

6. Sell items in stacks for turn ins. If you see an item on the AH for sale and you don't know what it is, but Auctioneer is telling you to buy it, go look it up on Wowhead or something. I did this with Winterfall E'ko, realizing that melee dps needs it for a buff from Winterspring. Now when I buy it I make sure to sell it in the exact stack size necessary for the buff. It's so much easier for someone to buy that exact amount, and I'm so much more likely to make the sale. 

The same goes for the Mudskunks for ZG. They need 5 to fish up the boss, so I sell them in stacks of 5, easy peasy!

7. Check the Moving Price %. See it at the bottom of the picture below? The 10% by the price for Zulian Mudskunks indicates that they sell at that price 10% of the time (at least that's as near as I can figure). I don't know the actual math behind this, but I will tell you that 10% moving price is about the highest you can hope for, and those items typically sell the fastest. The higher the %, the better an item sells. Items with 0% or even - (negative) % will take longer to sell. Unless it's a really good deal with a 0 gold deposit, I'd try to only buy items that have at least a 10% moving price.

DON'T GET STUCK ON THE BENEDICTION QUEST, HERE'S HOW TO GET IT DONE

I hope you've got a good idea of how to use the Classic WoW Auctioneer addon after reading all of this. I realize it's a lot of information, but really once you get started, it'll be so much easier. 

Start small, don't spend a ton of gold, let your wealth and confidence build, and then aim a little higher. Before you know it you'll have thousands of gold and you'll be wondering why you didn't start doing this so much sooner.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm more than happy to help if I can.

​Ty