6 July 2001
Last year: Because I can remember being ten.
On Sunday, I ordered a Predator CD-RW from Iomega. On Tuesday, I checked the order status and saw that it had not yet been shipped, and I called them to ask what was holding it up. I was told that they were out of stock, and that I could expect the Predator to be shipped on the 17th. "Since you paid for two-day shipping," the chirpy customer-service chick said brightly, "that means you should have it by the 19th!"
I managed to refrain from explaining to the chirpy chick that I could perfectly well add two to just about any number she cared to name. I grumbled a lot - that being one of several disappointments for me Tuesday.
Yesterday, because I am a masochist, I logged into Iomega's site to see if - by some miracle - my order status had changed. And it had. It had changed to "Complete"
For about half a second, I was furious. I told her I didn't want to cancel the- Then my brain registered the tracking number.
Shipped? They'd shipped it? But... what about... Don't ask dumb questions, my brain advised me. Very good advice, I complimented my brain. I fired off an e-mail to Matt, rejoicing.
Matt - bright fellow that he is - actually went to the shipper's website and plugged in the tracking number, something I had failed to do. He wrote back and said, "Does "delivery attempted" mean they didn't leave the package?"
I checked the shipper's website. Sure enough it, said, "Delivery Attempted." I called the number that was on the screen and talked to a very nice customer service chick who had three options for me:
1. I could change the package's delivery address to my office, which would cost an extra $10.
2. I could wait until I got home and sign the little door-hanger thingy, and that would suffice for a signature when they tried again to deliver it the next day.
3. Or I could run home for lunch and sign the thingy, then call them back, and they would try to re-deliver in the afternoon, though she couldn't promise that would work out for me.
Well, duh. I ran home and signed the thingy, and called them back right away. I must have spent half the afternoon checking the shipper's website to see if my package's status had changed again. It never did. Alas.
But when I got home... There it was! And a sleeker, prettier, cooler CD-RW you will never see.
I didn't get to play with the Predator until fairly late. Just as I was leaving work, I got a phone message from K.T.: Her doctor had decided that she was sufficiently healed not to have to continue wearing casts, so both the leg and arm casts had come off! So she wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate. (Obviously, since the phone messages are limited to about 100 characters, she summed up much more briefly. I want you to appreciate that I didn't make you try to decipher her actual message, which was, I is free! I is unencasted! Want to go to dinner?)
So Matt and I drove down to Newport News and admired her scars, then we went to T.G.I. Friday's for dinner. She's still using both crutches (for very short walks) and the wheelchair (for anything further than, say, the bathroom) but is no longer required to keep her leg elevated, so she can actually sit facing the table and eat with her proper hand, which are both enormous improvements in her life.
In case you're wondering, she's starting physical therapy on Monday. I'm sure sympathetic and encouraging e-mails would be appreciated. I can tell you right now that e-mails about therapy you've endured probably won't be appreciated, so just try to resist that urge.
After dinner, Matt and I went to Sam's Club. I wanted to pick up some blank CDs to play with, and I've had my eye for a while on some CDs at Sam's which are in very prettily-colored, half-thick jewelboxes. But Braz had mentioned, when we'd told him we had ordered a Predator, that it had problems writing to 700Mb CDs. So I told Matt that if the pretty CDs were 700Mb CDs then I wouldn't buy them until I'd done a test run with the 700Mb CD that had come with the drive.
Naturally, they were 700Mb CDs. Le sigh. But right next to them was a smaller package of 650s, in the same pretty cases! I felt happy, until Matt pointed out that their speed, for some reason, was listed as much slower than the normal speed. We frowned and waffled and ho'ed and hummed until I realized the smaller package was of CD-RWs! Oh, no, I didn't want those. Not yet, anyway.
So we left Sam's without buying anything. I'll try to burn the 700Mb CD that came with the Predator tonight, and then make a decision on the CDs at Sam's Club depending on how that turns out. (And heck, if it doesn't work, we'll call Iomega's tech support. It's supposed to.)
Yup. It's going to be a fun-filled CD-burning weekend!
Word of the Day:
shaggy-dog story - a long drawn-out circumstantial story concerning an inconsequential happening that impresses the teller as humorous but the hearer as boring and pointless; a similar humorous story whose humor lies in the pointlessness or irrelevance of the punch line
Currently Reading:
- nothing
Current Projects:
- drawing
- Hall stuff
- garden