11 October 2002

"Hi, this is Elizabeth Brooks. I'm calling about my computer, that I left with y'all yesterday?"

"Oh, yeah. It's running okay."

"I'm sorry?"

"I've had it running since I came in this morning, and it's on the network and everything. Went to lunch and came back, and it's still running."

"The problem is intermittent. It comes and goes."

"Well, I left Internet Explorer running."

"Did you leave it on a page that automatically refreshed periodically? It could cut out and come back, and if you weren't watching, you wouldn't even see it."

"Well, I can't watch it all day."

"I know. AppleCare just wanted you guys to check the antenna, because I couldn't get it unplugged from the card, and maybe try a different card to see if it's the card or the computer that's broken."

"I don't want to put a good card in until I've seen it break. I booted into 9.2 (the old operating system) - did you know you had two copies? When I went to boot into 9.2, there were two system folders. I combined them. Anyway, I booted into 9.2, and it works fine there, too."

You fucked with my files and folders without asking first? You asshole, if you've screwed up my 9.2 preferences... "Yes, I know. It's an intermittent problem. The card could be out for only a few seconds at a time, and then it could work fine for hours or days - or it could go out for days. It's been like that. Do you have any idea when I'll get my computer back?"

"It'll probably be a while."

"What?"

"Well, there's not much I can do until I've seen it fail."

...Mind you, that's a much shortened version of the discussion. And I left out his dialectal drawl.

I love AppleCare's phone support. Really, I do. They've always been very good. This shop, however... Gah. If I don't have my computer back by Monday, I'm going to call Apple back and raise high holy hell.

We're back to only having one Sanriel! Yay! Now I can play Tarri again!

Which is good, because Ashby's gone and gotten himself a girlfriend - which is great, really. Very cool, and he seems very much enraptured of her, which is how it should be, of course... But it's going to eat into the amount of time he can spend Halling, and while I can accept that (for a good reason, like a social life, as opposed to a bad reason, like emotional withdrawal) I don't want my characters to be paralyzed just because he's not around.

So now I can play Tarri again as a student healer, and she can make occasional references to planning the wedding, and eventually we'll get around to having the wedding - but I won't need Ashby around in order to play her. Whew!

The fish are funny. They have distinct personality. The blue-green one, which is a little larger, is definitely the dominant one. When they both happen to drift close to the wall that separates them, so they can see each other, he spreads out his fins and goes into this elaborate little dance, body-slamming the separating wall until the smaller fish drifts backwards away from the wall again.

Of course, the smaller, blue-red fish, has this tendency to taunt. Don't laugh at me, he does! He'll drift up to the wall and make the bigger fish all upset, then dart backwards, and then immediately come back to the wall. And if he comes up to the wall and (by some strange circumstance) the bigger fish isn't already there looking for a fight, he'll spread his fins, just enough to get the bigger fish's attention.

I need to think of names for them, so they aren't forever "bigger" and "smaller". No, I don't imagine I'll be telling too many fish stories (I'm pretty sure I've bored you all to pieces just with this much) but still, I think they need names. Suggestions would be welcome.

--Liz