I live in Florida, work in Florida, earn money in Florida and pay taxes from Florida. There is no real reason why I should pay taxes to Washington DC, but my company erroneously deducted them from my pay check throughout 2008 and I was unable to prevent it. No matter. Reclaiming the money should be no problem, I think and besides – getting a check for almost six thousand dollars when I get back from vacation will be nice. Essential, actually.
So, I file an appropriate tax return and leave.
Five months later, after retrieving my mail from the address to which it was forwarded, there is no check. Instead, I find my tax return, sent back with a slip requiring additional information and requesting that the whole form be returned in their envelope.
I do.
Still, no refund check arrives. Nor does anything else. On their correspondence, I find a customer help line number….
I take lunchtime from work, set up on a picnic table outside and call. After a voice menu system requiring me to mimic an American accent wears me out simply by its very existence, I get connected to a human.
The voice on the phone cannot tell me anything about itself except her gender title and second name – let’s call her Miss A. I don’t want a personal history involving family size, tastes in music or details of her early sex life, but some identification more substantial than the semi-anonymous school teacher moniker would be nice.
Miss A listens patiently as I – under the false impression that my own patience will be rewarded – relate the tale of what has happened to date. It is not much but I limit it to the basic facts so as to not cause confusion. Miss A does not strike me as the Brain of America, 2009.
Omitting unnecessary information and including only what is relevant is a skill at which I am expert after many years of dealing with The System and its army of supporters. Some people would include everything imaginable and take so long that the listener’s ears would close up and their eyes crumble to dust.
It is not necessary, for example, to tell Miss A that I rode my bicycle more than five thousand miles across America, that I took four months from work to do so, that I had anticipated this refund to repay the Australian credit card used for motel bills, that my property investments were not as successful as I would like or that I need the money to avoid the spectre of work for as long as possible and finance writing a book.
Miss A asks for my social security number and confirms the spelling of my name. I supply both, in eager anticipation. What’s happening? What must I do? When will my check arrive?
After a wait of perhaps thirty seconds, she repeats what I have said, but with the dates seen from their perspective. After a further wait, punctuated by small sounds indicating that she is reading and digesting information, she tells me that Someone sent me Something during August.
Someone.
Something.
I cannot suppress a slight degree of sarcasm at this departure from informative reporting, as I request a greater amount of detail of both the Someone and the Something. True, knowledge of the sender’s name and position in the Washington DC tax organization would fill no special void in my life, but the nature of the Something would be of use as it may explain the lack of refund check.
Yes, Miss A confirms. Someone sent Something. She is quite specific and adds that I have not replied, so my case is on hold, awaiting receipt of Information. Consistent with the deficient explanation of the Someone and the Something, there is no detail of the required Information. When I ask, Miss A suggests that I may accelerate the proceedings by providing the Information at my earliest convenience, wishes me a nice day and hangs up.
It is difficult to assess the level of frustration that this break in communication has and, at this point, I have a small degree of empathy with postal workers who buy a gun and shoot people. It may take a warped and socially dangerous mind to notice a connection between situation X, person Y and bullet Z on the Long Island Railroad but there are times – and this is one – where I can begin to see it.
For a moment, the only course of action that occurs to be is to smash my head against the table, but logic makes me understand that this would have no positive effect on my case and would look rather silly to passers by – not to mention that unlikely result of not hurting myself.
Having the phone still in my hand and my papers open on the table, I manage to summon the will to call back. This time a Mr. Bates answers but my subconscious designates him as Mr. B. He has no knowledge of my previous interaction with Miss A and I have to begin my story again.
Only a small part of my brain is needed to repeat the tale and the rest of my consciousness becomes dedicated to whether Mr. Bates would have been referred to at school as master however I can’t stop myself from sympathizing and pondering what effect the resulting nickname might have had on his passing into adulthood. I am so engrossed by this and the quite unattractive image of whether he regularly jacks off to free sex web cams on the internet, that I miss what he says when the phone next squawks into my ear.
I get one more piece of information that Miss A did not relate. The Something that Someone sent during August was a Special Notice, but the system does not elaborate on its contents. He promises to send an email to the Someone and request that the now identified Something should be re-sent. This is the end of the conversation and I retire, exhausted, to the coffee shop.
The Special Notice does not arrive. After a month, I call again and speak to a Miss C, who promises the same as Mr. Bates but adds that she guesses that it concerned proof of my current residence and employment.
Guessing isn’t a particularly good method of dealing with the country’s tax authorities so, during the next few days I collect a packet of everything imaginable that might prove my Florida residence, including apartment leases, employment contracts and scans of driving license. I send it by certified mail to the same address as on the tax forms, so I have a record of its delivery in Washington DC.
There follows no reply, no refund check and no re-sent Special Notice.
After another month, I speak to Miss D, who informs me that the system has no record of any of my correspondence or my phone calls. As far as she can tell, Someone is still awaiting my response to the Special Notice. She adds that her office is on the 5th floor of the building and the Someone is located on the 6th. My suggestion that she physically traverse the distance between the two is met with such a degree of incomprehension that it makes me reconsider whether I have been flippant and absurdly impractical in raising the matter.
In a flurry of enthusiasm a week later, brought about by the passing into a new year, I call a fifth time and get Miss E, who goes no further than any of her alphabetically designated predecessors. Miss E assures me, with the level of glee often heard by female TV news reporters covering global disasters with thousands of foreigners dead, that there is no supervisor to whom I can talk, no other number to call and no other address to which to write.
It is a result that surprises me no little bit and I would have been more astonished to get useful information. I am beginning to feel that this will become a lifetime project. I can predict a time, when I am old, gray and toothless, when I might be called as a guest onto a TV reality show based on this very circumstance. All the participants will be named by letters of the alphabet and they can only talk to each other by cell phone – probably naked. I can’t see what they’ll win, but maybe the chance to jack off to web cams, live.
Hey – it’s just as likely as getting my fucking tax refund….
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, November 29, 2009
A Record
What was your longest relationship? A year? Two decades? A couple of months?
How would you define it? Where did it start, where did it end? It’s surprisingly easy to forget pertinent facts like those, especially when you reach the age where brain cells are important enough to count.
So, think. What would you say?
You’d probably scratch your head and look at the date on your watch, which is a pretty useless thing to do because what relevance has today’s date got to do with a question about the past? “Oh yeah,” you might eventually state, “We met on this date and we divorced on that one, so that’s fourteen years, three months, seven days and about twenty-three minutes.”
Very definite. I’d be impressed – but I wouldn’t believe it. I remember details like that because I’m anal, but I don’t accept that anyone else does. Old married couples will have you believe that they can. They’re always so precise with their memories, as if that’s all they’ve got left to hold onto.
Imagine this: you’re at a dinner or a gathering with some older folks and the subject of relationships comes around. A worn out gray husband, wearing a hard-knotted tie he should’ve taken off four decades ago, paired with a tired shirt that’s back in fashion for the third time, gets to his feet. He stares into a far away spot beyond the corner where the yellowed ceiling meets the wall and tells everyone he’s been happily married to Fannie Mae for the last seventy-eight years.
He’ll tell you the date they met, the time, what was on the radio and what he had for dinner. Within seconds he’ll have jumped to a diatribe on the changing of the times and you’ll hear how wonderful things were back then, how it’s all gone to hell in a hand basket since the war and how the kids don’t know they’re born today. After twenty minutes, he’s all misty-eyed and warbling an unknown song that was popular when the Queen Mother was a little girl and his equally aged wife’s nodding like a muppet on steroids. All you can do, through the fake smile that’s squeezing your face like a vice, is wonder about how best to place a person to person call to Doctor Kevorkian; for yourself.
My longest is about four years. I know when and where we met – on a Saturday night visit in 1985 to a Scottish fish ‘n’ chip shop in New Jersey - but the ending was rather vague. Longevity’s a non-starter, given that I don’t know when it finished. Besides, there was a year’s split in the middle when she got deported. Time off for good behavior, you might say, ha ha ha, although, I doubt that many people would accept an intervening affair with a married woman as evidence of good behavior. Let’s agree that the details are none of your business and move on.
What about shortness? What was your briefest encounter? Aside from financial transactions occurring in countries where restaurants serve a suspiciously high number of dishes tasting like chicken, mine was Deirdra and you might get a chuckle or two about a few choice facts from that escapade.
We met in a bar. I didn’t see her when she first came in, so I shouldn’t claim any credit for those moments when I was at the old Wurlitzer jukebox and my back was turned. I didn’t even know she was there until I ran out of change, but I’d set Sinatra playing and she knew it was my doing. I usually say we met when the first beats of Fly Me To The Moon tapped out. Maybe she heard it from outside and that’s what brought her in, to see who’d play it. Fabian’s had about as many people as you might expect for a dusty little corner saloon on a wintry Saturday just after dark, so it couldn’t have been hard to figure out who was responsible. Besides, I was still pushing buttons.
Maybe you’d disagree and say we didn’t meet until I turned around and saw her, perched on a stool like a leather-clad brunette goddess. I never knew non-mortals came with dolphin tattoos on their shoulders, but now I do. Pushing a red straw around an ice-laden drink and leaning back against the bar to thrust her chest forward, she stared at me, unblinking. I don’t know where girls learn moves like that, but my pulse went bip-bop-bop and she seduced me in a heartbeat.
So, if we agree that moment was the starting point, I’d say we could subtract a couple of minutes from the relationship. Another one or two if we advance it to the point when she said, “Nice tunes,” with just the hint a smile.
I did what you’d expect – walked over, talked, sat, drank, moved closer, talked some more and bought her a drink when she told me her name was Deirdra. Then the music ran out. She had change and pushed it forward, so I chose more Sinatra and some Chris Isaak. We got touchie-feelie at the bar, then smooched and slow-danced to Summer Wind, grinding around on the spot until my leg went numb.
Then we left, melded together as one - and you don’t win any points for guessing it wasn’t to go sight-seeing.
Now you know how we met. Not everything, but the pertinent facts. You know Deirdra was hot, you know about the music and you know it was early. What you don’t know is that I was there to meet a blind date.
It’s important to mention that it was the Sunday after the day when the clocks changed; the second half of the spring-forward, fall-back thing. Imagine how easy it would be for someone with the remains of a hangover and tired from a previous late night, to not know about the time change and to arrive an hour early to meet someone he’d not seen before. Someone whose name he’d forgotten. Someone whose partially-remembered description matched that of the dark-haired siren who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or, at the wrong time, depending on your perspective. Do I need to connect the dots?
Maybe you don’t do blind dates or, if you do, maybe you don’t have one almost every night of the week and keep their details in a black three-ring loose leaf binder in the kitchen; but that’s your choice and I’ll make no judgment upon you in that regard.
The personals columns in the newspapers were my new social scene and the fervor with which I approached this project could not be paralleled by any mission in history. At any one time, I had overlapping ads in the New York Times, the Village Voice and several local rags. Not only was I meticulous about recording details in that binder – because my memory has always been less than perfect - but I had analyzed, planned, plotted and mapped everything that could transpire between the first anxious meeting to the subsequent parting with a goodnight kiss and the promise of more to come. Such analysis had not extended into the gray area of what could happen on a second date or a third, which might then lead into a nocturnal visit, because no such event had yet occurred. There simply had not been a second or third date with anyone because I was so firmly entrenched in analyzing a series of firsts. Some mistakes are only obvious with the glaring clarity of hindsight.
On the short but chilly walk to my apartment, I began to suspect that my residence might not be quite the palatial lovenest expected by a goddess of the quality on my arm. That suspicion grew, along with an increasing ache somewhere within my inner regions. By the time I guided Deirdra under the dim porch light, across the aged mosaic tiles in the old hallway and through the back door into the cold outside air, down the steel steps and into what must’ve seemed like the centre of the planet, I was experiencing the kind of anxiety of someone about to lose his virginity. I was also suffering stomach pains of the proportions of a ruptured spleen.
I don’t actually know what went through Deirdra’s mind as I opened the apartment door and ushered her into a pitch-dark room, entirely devoid of furniture and reeking of the unmistakable smell of recently burnt paper and plastic, but I would guess that it wasn’t complimentary.
Sometimes, I try to put myself in her place and imagine Deirdra’s perception of the evening. One moment, you’re in a local saloon, dressed nicely for a Saturday evening and having a quiet drink by yourself, when a reasonably attractive Englishman, dressed like the Fonz and who’s been playing your kind of music on the jukebox, starts paying you plenty of attention and buying you drinks. You decide to go home with him – what harm’s a one night stand, after all – but then things take a turn for the worse. He leads you into a basement where there’s no light except a candle in the bedroom, no furniture and the place stinks of fire. Is it a trap? Is this man a recently released madman? It’s OK, you think, he has money and musical taste – but then you see that the lack of furniture isn’t confined to the living areas – there’s no bed, just a futon on the floor and a giant box of condoms. None of the lights work, not even the bathroom vanity. What kind of place is this? Are you going to get out alive or will the river police find what’s left of you floating somewhere upstream on the Hudson? Will your disappearance make the national local papers or just the local ones? One thing’s certain – you won’t be going back to Fabian’s in a hurry.
If asked, I could claim extenuating circumstances to excuse the lack of furniture, but I wasn’t and felt no need to explain myself. Anyway, who really needs more than a futon? Let’s say it’s a lifestyle choice and call it Bohemian. People are too soft these days.
As for the darkness and the smell of fire, I suppose you need a limited explanation if you’re to not think of me as a total waster. I’m really not, but sometimes a situation just occurs through circumstance and then gets worse by inaction – the snowball effect.
It was impossible to reach the ceiling to change dead bulbs without anything to stand on so, as each light breathed its last, the basement increased in darkness towards the level of a black hole. Eventually, the oven light found extra purpose and the stove top became a desk for reviewing details of the evening’s imminent date.
Domestic conflagration is not what we’re discussing, so I will say only that I was rushing and carelessly left the binder on the stove, directly over the gas pilot lights. That should be enough detail. Just remember that this incident occurred before I managed to read up on the evening’s meeting, which explains the lack of information, the misplaced barroom confidence and the mistaken identity.
The escapade taught me many things, including how difficult it is, naked and wet from the shower, to put out a fire using only the kitchen sink hose, trying to ignore the screech of the alarm above your head and with no light other than from the flames you are extinguishing. I would not recommend this method, should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.
Anyway, I digress...
You deserve to know a few more things; that the relationship wasn’t consummated, that Deirdra got the jitters and I got the giggles, that the ache in my belly overcame everything and that I had to leave her alone with the sole remaining candle and retire to the bathroom, where I promptly fell asleep on the toilet.
I emerged an hour later to find an empty bedroom, the candle burnt out and the front door wide open. Condoms scattered the floor like miniature banana skins and a dent in the wall, that matched the remains of the portable CD player, suggested that the machine had been kicked there with some force.
Whose fault was it, that insalubrious ending? Mine, for screwing up the music so Fly Me to the Moon repeated forever whilst I sat, comatose, with my head on my chest? Hers, for being unsympathetic to my inner plight, re-discovering a child’s fear of the dark whilst Frank sang and suffering a personal meltdown in a dark and unfamiliar bedroom?
Deirdra vansihed from the face of the earth, so I’ll never know. I retain the imagined vision of her leather-clad figure creeping up the fire stairs and into the street sometime after midnight on that frigid Monday morning, perhaps grateful that she had escaped with her life.
Maybe if I’d been a little more direct and said, “Hey, this is how I live, we all do it like this in England,” it might have added a degree of charm. Conceivably, we’d still be together today and I’d be that old geezer in the knotted tie and faded clothes, singing tunelessly into the ceiling after describing my Fannie Mae. Might leave out the diarrhea though.
So how long were we together?
When all’s said and done, stretching and un-stretching boundaries and calculating what might be longest and shortest span, it’s still a conundrum. Were we were The Real Thing for six hours, a little less than five and a half, or an indeterminate period somewhere in between?
Whatever the answer, it’s still something of a personal record.
How would you define it? Where did it start, where did it end? It’s surprisingly easy to forget pertinent facts like those, especially when you reach the age where brain cells are important enough to count.
So, think. What would you say?
You’d probably scratch your head and look at the date on your watch, which is a pretty useless thing to do because what relevance has today’s date got to do with a question about the past? “Oh yeah,” you might eventually state, “We met on this date and we divorced on that one, so that’s fourteen years, three months, seven days and about twenty-three minutes.”
Very definite. I’d be impressed – but I wouldn’t believe it. I remember details like that because I’m anal, but I don’t accept that anyone else does. Old married couples will have you believe that they can. They’re always so precise with their memories, as if that’s all they’ve got left to hold onto.
Imagine this: you’re at a dinner or a gathering with some older folks and the subject of relationships comes around. A worn out gray husband, wearing a hard-knotted tie he should’ve taken off four decades ago, paired with a tired shirt that’s back in fashion for the third time, gets to his feet. He stares into a far away spot beyond the corner where the yellowed ceiling meets the wall and tells everyone he’s been happily married to Fannie Mae for the last seventy-eight years.
He’ll tell you the date they met, the time, what was on the radio and what he had for dinner. Within seconds he’ll have jumped to a diatribe on the changing of the times and you’ll hear how wonderful things were back then, how it’s all gone to hell in a hand basket since the war and how the kids don’t know they’re born today. After twenty minutes, he’s all misty-eyed and warbling an unknown song that was popular when the Queen Mother was a little girl and his equally aged wife’s nodding like a muppet on steroids. All you can do, through the fake smile that’s squeezing your face like a vice, is wonder about how best to place a person to person call to Doctor Kevorkian; for yourself.
My longest is about four years. I know when and where we met – on a Saturday night visit in 1985 to a Scottish fish ‘n’ chip shop in New Jersey - but the ending was rather vague. Longevity’s a non-starter, given that I don’t know when it finished. Besides, there was a year’s split in the middle when she got deported. Time off for good behavior, you might say, ha ha ha, although, I doubt that many people would accept an intervening affair with a married woman as evidence of good behavior. Let’s agree that the details are none of your business and move on.
What about shortness? What was your briefest encounter? Aside from financial transactions occurring in countries where restaurants serve a suspiciously high number of dishes tasting like chicken, mine was Deirdra and you might get a chuckle or two about a few choice facts from that escapade.
We met in a bar. I didn’t see her when she first came in, so I shouldn’t claim any credit for those moments when I was at the old Wurlitzer jukebox and my back was turned. I didn’t even know she was there until I ran out of change, but I’d set Sinatra playing and she knew it was my doing. I usually say we met when the first beats of Fly Me To The Moon tapped out. Maybe she heard it from outside and that’s what brought her in, to see who’d play it. Fabian’s had about as many people as you might expect for a dusty little corner saloon on a wintry Saturday just after dark, so it couldn’t have been hard to figure out who was responsible. Besides, I was still pushing buttons.
Maybe you’d disagree and say we didn’t meet until I turned around and saw her, perched on a stool like a leather-clad brunette goddess. I never knew non-mortals came with dolphin tattoos on their shoulders, but now I do. Pushing a red straw around an ice-laden drink and leaning back against the bar to thrust her chest forward, she stared at me, unblinking. I don’t know where girls learn moves like that, but my pulse went bip-bop-bop and she seduced me in a heartbeat.
So, if we agree that moment was the starting point, I’d say we could subtract a couple of minutes from the relationship. Another one or two if we advance it to the point when she said, “Nice tunes,” with just the hint a smile.
I did what you’d expect – walked over, talked, sat, drank, moved closer, talked some more and bought her a drink when she told me her name was Deirdra. Then the music ran out. She had change and pushed it forward, so I chose more Sinatra and some Chris Isaak. We got touchie-feelie at the bar, then smooched and slow-danced to Summer Wind, grinding around on the spot until my leg went numb.
Then we left, melded together as one - and you don’t win any points for guessing it wasn’t to go sight-seeing.
Now you know how we met. Not everything, but the pertinent facts. You know Deirdra was hot, you know about the music and you know it was early. What you don’t know is that I was there to meet a blind date.
It’s important to mention that it was the Sunday after the day when the clocks changed; the second half of the spring-forward, fall-back thing. Imagine how easy it would be for someone with the remains of a hangover and tired from a previous late night, to not know about the time change and to arrive an hour early to meet someone he’d not seen before. Someone whose name he’d forgotten. Someone whose partially-remembered description matched that of the dark-haired siren who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or, at the wrong time, depending on your perspective. Do I need to connect the dots?
Maybe you don’t do blind dates or, if you do, maybe you don’t have one almost every night of the week and keep their details in a black three-ring loose leaf binder in the kitchen; but that’s your choice and I’ll make no judgment upon you in that regard.
The personals columns in the newspapers were my new social scene and the fervor with which I approached this project could not be paralleled by any mission in history. At any one time, I had overlapping ads in the New York Times, the Village Voice and several local rags. Not only was I meticulous about recording details in that binder – because my memory has always been less than perfect - but I had analyzed, planned, plotted and mapped everything that could transpire between the first anxious meeting to the subsequent parting with a goodnight kiss and the promise of more to come. Such analysis had not extended into the gray area of what could happen on a second date or a third, which might then lead into a nocturnal visit, because no such event had yet occurred. There simply had not been a second or third date with anyone because I was so firmly entrenched in analyzing a series of firsts. Some mistakes are only obvious with the glaring clarity of hindsight.
On the short but chilly walk to my apartment, I began to suspect that my residence might not be quite the palatial lovenest expected by a goddess of the quality on my arm. That suspicion grew, along with an increasing ache somewhere within my inner regions. By the time I guided Deirdra under the dim porch light, across the aged mosaic tiles in the old hallway and through the back door into the cold outside air, down the steel steps and into what must’ve seemed like the centre of the planet, I was experiencing the kind of anxiety of someone about to lose his virginity. I was also suffering stomach pains of the proportions of a ruptured spleen.
I don’t actually know what went through Deirdra’s mind as I opened the apartment door and ushered her into a pitch-dark room, entirely devoid of furniture and reeking of the unmistakable smell of recently burnt paper and plastic, but I would guess that it wasn’t complimentary.
Sometimes, I try to put myself in her place and imagine Deirdra’s perception of the evening. One moment, you’re in a local saloon, dressed nicely for a Saturday evening and having a quiet drink by yourself, when a reasonably attractive Englishman, dressed like the Fonz and who’s been playing your kind of music on the jukebox, starts paying you plenty of attention and buying you drinks. You decide to go home with him – what harm’s a one night stand, after all – but then things take a turn for the worse. He leads you into a basement where there’s no light except a candle in the bedroom, no furniture and the place stinks of fire. Is it a trap? Is this man a recently released madman? It’s OK, you think, he has money and musical taste – but then you see that the lack of furniture isn’t confined to the living areas – there’s no bed, just a futon on the floor and a giant box of condoms. None of the lights work, not even the bathroom vanity. What kind of place is this? Are you going to get out alive or will the river police find what’s left of you floating somewhere upstream on the Hudson? Will your disappearance make the national local papers or just the local ones? One thing’s certain – you won’t be going back to Fabian’s in a hurry.
If asked, I could claim extenuating circumstances to excuse the lack of furniture, but I wasn’t and felt no need to explain myself. Anyway, who really needs more than a futon? Let’s say it’s a lifestyle choice and call it Bohemian. People are too soft these days.
As for the darkness and the smell of fire, I suppose you need a limited explanation if you’re to not think of me as a total waster. I’m really not, but sometimes a situation just occurs through circumstance and then gets worse by inaction – the snowball effect.
It was impossible to reach the ceiling to change dead bulbs without anything to stand on so, as each light breathed its last, the basement increased in darkness towards the level of a black hole. Eventually, the oven light found extra purpose and the stove top became a desk for reviewing details of the evening’s imminent date.
Domestic conflagration is not what we’re discussing, so I will say only that I was rushing and carelessly left the binder on the stove, directly over the gas pilot lights. That should be enough detail. Just remember that this incident occurred before I managed to read up on the evening’s meeting, which explains the lack of information, the misplaced barroom confidence and the mistaken identity.
The escapade taught me many things, including how difficult it is, naked and wet from the shower, to put out a fire using only the kitchen sink hose, trying to ignore the screech of the alarm above your head and with no light other than from the flames you are extinguishing. I would not recommend this method, should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.
Anyway, I digress...
You deserve to know a few more things; that the relationship wasn’t consummated, that Deirdra got the jitters and I got the giggles, that the ache in my belly overcame everything and that I had to leave her alone with the sole remaining candle and retire to the bathroom, where I promptly fell asleep on the toilet.
I emerged an hour later to find an empty bedroom, the candle burnt out and the front door wide open. Condoms scattered the floor like miniature banana skins and a dent in the wall, that matched the remains of the portable CD player, suggested that the machine had been kicked there with some force.
Whose fault was it, that insalubrious ending? Mine, for screwing up the music so Fly Me to the Moon repeated forever whilst I sat, comatose, with my head on my chest? Hers, for being unsympathetic to my inner plight, re-discovering a child’s fear of the dark whilst Frank sang and suffering a personal meltdown in a dark and unfamiliar bedroom?
Deirdra vansihed from the face of the earth, so I’ll never know. I retain the imagined vision of her leather-clad figure creeping up the fire stairs and into the street sometime after midnight on that frigid Monday morning, perhaps grateful that she had escaped with her life.
Maybe if I’d been a little more direct and said, “Hey, this is how I live, we all do it like this in England,” it might have added a degree of charm. Conceivably, we’d still be together today and I’d be that old geezer in the knotted tie and faded clothes, singing tunelessly into the ceiling after describing my Fannie Mae. Might leave out the diarrhea though.
So how long were we together?
When all’s said and done, stretching and un-stretching boundaries and calculating what might be longest and shortest span, it’s still a conundrum. Were we were The Real Thing for six hours, a little less than five and a half, or an indeterminate period somewhere in between?
Whatever the answer, it’s still something of a personal record.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Caffeine Withdrawal
It’s a hot Sunday in Tampa and I’m in need of a coffee. Not simply desirous of one, but experiencing a deep need brought on, perhaps, by a surplus of alcoholic beverages last night.
Brain states like this create the best thoughts for writing, so I pack up the laptop and drive to Joffrey’s at Channelside. It’s a pleasant corner establishment, and fits my creative mood. I might even wander to the cinema later and fall asleep.
Parking in Channelside requires navigating several tight turns into an outrageously priced multi-story garage - unless you happen to know about 12th Street. Taking into account the unknowns surrounding show times and a pre-cinema beer, for the cost of parking, the movie, popcorn and a Coke, you could buy a decent steak. However, I never buy popcorn and Coke at the movies and besides…
I know about 12th Street.
When I arrive, I find that digging machines, building supplies, foundation holes, concrete pilings and fences entirely block 12th Street. Even though I could sneak up on it by driving half a mile past the aquarium and around a pair of large-footprint residential towers, it seems that there is no way to get back to Joffrey’s on foot. In 95 degree heat and direct sun, without a hat and carrying a laptop, the prospect of walking that distance is far from pleasant, so I drive past and continue to an alternative coffee servery in Ybor City.
The Bunker on 19th Street in Ybor is a small independent place, just off the main drag. I have recollections of creative afternoons spent writing personal ads there in a vain attempt to add spice to a flagging romantic life. It’s not Joffrey’s but there’s a cinema close by, so all is not lost.
It’s closed.
Not because I’m too early or too late, but closed in the way that a business not caring about customers or profit would shut up shop for the summer – and that is what a sign on their door says. Why? I don’t get to stop work for an entire season, so why should they? This is shocking. If Starbucks did it, I’d die from a heart attack. Fortunately, I discover the situation on a drive-by, so I’m still in cool comfort as opposed to having walked two blocks in the sun.
Without further mental bitchin’, I continue to Starbucks, the third choice, which is right next to the movie theatre and therefore more convenient.
It’s gone out of business.
What? Starbucks cannot be out of business. This is outrageous. It’s like McDonalds voluntarily closing one of their grease-spots. The very foundations of my world have been rocked.
Joffrey’s, The Bunker and now Starbucks; one hundred percent of coffee attempts have failed. I realize that a sample of three is hardly representative of the entire coffee outlet population but I’m starting to get a bad feeling. Did I wake up on the wrong side of bed and fall through a black hole into a caffeine-free universe? Is there a demonic force at work intent of regulating my java intake? Has the current administration in Washington DC introduced a new and restrictive form of prohibition and no one told me?
This is like sweating the pedals all day on a bike ride with nothing for inspiration but the thought of a cold beer, only to reach the destination and learn that it’s a dry town. Discovering Hell isn’t so bad if you go looking for it but having it appear unexpectedly is just unfair.
After brief deliberation during which I consider ranting, screaming or simply breaking down in a puddle of tears, I reach the conclusion that I must return to trusted haunts near home. Panera bread may not be perfect, but it’ll do.
It’s whilst driving through the downtown area of Tampa - where nothing usually moves at weekends or after five on any other day - that I’m surprised and almost ecstatic to see an Indigo Coffee. True, it’s not Joffrey’s or Starbuck’s, but it’s a coffee shop, it’s open for business and it’s here. I park quickly, push coins into a meter and walk into air conditioned comfort. Fantastic. There’s even a good sized table by the window, with an electrical outlet for the laptop.
This is exactly the combination of facilities I wanted. It’s not noisy or crowded, I have power and a work location in which to write and will soon have a cuppa Joe.
Life is good.
Life is wonderful.
Life has swished from a hellish black hole to heaven.
The laptop boots up and I can almost feel ideas germinating in my brain. It’s as I place a cake and coffee cup on the table, tear open a brown sugar packet and pour it into the steaming brew that the serving person – whose personality, I have already detected, is missing a few points of humanitarian kindness – calls over from the counter.
They close at three o’clock.
In five minutes.
Brain states like this create the best thoughts for writing, so I pack up the laptop and drive to Joffrey’s at Channelside. It’s a pleasant corner establishment, and fits my creative mood. I might even wander to the cinema later and fall asleep.
Parking in Channelside requires navigating several tight turns into an outrageously priced multi-story garage - unless you happen to know about 12th Street. Taking into account the unknowns surrounding show times and a pre-cinema beer, for the cost of parking, the movie, popcorn and a Coke, you could buy a decent steak. However, I never buy popcorn and Coke at the movies and besides…
I know about 12th Street.
When I arrive, I find that digging machines, building supplies, foundation holes, concrete pilings and fences entirely block 12th Street. Even though I could sneak up on it by driving half a mile past the aquarium and around a pair of large-footprint residential towers, it seems that there is no way to get back to Joffrey’s on foot. In 95 degree heat and direct sun, without a hat and carrying a laptop, the prospect of walking that distance is far from pleasant, so I drive past and continue to an alternative coffee servery in Ybor City.
The Bunker on 19th Street in Ybor is a small independent place, just off the main drag. I have recollections of creative afternoons spent writing personal ads there in a vain attempt to add spice to a flagging romantic life. It’s not Joffrey’s but there’s a cinema close by, so all is not lost.
It’s closed.
Not because I’m too early or too late, but closed in the way that a business not caring about customers or profit would shut up shop for the summer – and that is what a sign on their door says. Why? I don’t get to stop work for an entire season, so why should they? This is shocking. If Starbucks did it, I’d die from a heart attack. Fortunately, I discover the situation on a drive-by, so I’m still in cool comfort as opposed to having walked two blocks in the sun.
Without further mental bitchin’, I continue to Starbucks, the third choice, which is right next to the movie theatre and therefore more convenient.
It’s gone out of business.
What? Starbucks cannot be out of business. This is outrageous. It’s like McDonalds voluntarily closing one of their grease-spots. The very foundations of my world have been rocked.
Joffrey’s, The Bunker and now Starbucks; one hundred percent of coffee attempts have failed. I realize that a sample of three is hardly representative of the entire coffee outlet population but I’m starting to get a bad feeling. Did I wake up on the wrong side of bed and fall through a black hole into a caffeine-free universe? Is there a demonic force at work intent of regulating my java intake? Has the current administration in Washington DC introduced a new and restrictive form of prohibition and no one told me?
This is like sweating the pedals all day on a bike ride with nothing for inspiration but the thought of a cold beer, only to reach the destination and learn that it’s a dry town. Discovering Hell isn’t so bad if you go looking for it but having it appear unexpectedly is just unfair.
After brief deliberation during which I consider ranting, screaming or simply breaking down in a puddle of tears, I reach the conclusion that I must return to trusted haunts near home. Panera bread may not be perfect, but it’ll do.
It’s whilst driving through the downtown area of Tampa - where nothing usually moves at weekends or after five on any other day - that I’m surprised and almost ecstatic to see an Indigo Coffee. True, it’s not Joffrey’s or Starbuck’s, but it’s a coffee shop, it’s open for business and it’s here. I park quickly, push coins into a meter and walk into air conditioned comfort. Fantastic. There’s even a good sized table by the window, with an electrical outlet for the laptop.
This is exactly the combination of facilities I wanted. It’s not noisy or crowded, I have power and a work location in which to write and will soon have a cuppa Joe.
Life is good.
Life is wonderful.
Life has swished from a hellish black hole to heaven.
The laptop boots up and I can almost feel ideas germinating in my brain. It’s as I place a cake and coffee cup on the table, tear open a brown sugar packet and pour it into the steaming brew that the serving person – whose personality, I have already detected, is missing a few points of humanitarian kindness – calls over from the counter.
They close at three o’clock.
In five minutes.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Wordplay
No matter how long I’m involved with computers, I’ll never get accustomed to the inordinate length of time it takes to do anything.
I understand that it takes eons to install software, download stuff from the internet, do wonderfully creative stuff with photos etc – but how long does it take to write a letter? Not something the length of the Gettysburg address, just a simple little ditty to say hello to your old Uncle Albert. Should that simple task take so long you hair could go gray and fall out before you get to the ‘Yours Faithfully’?
In days of yore, you’d take a pen, a pad and start to write. You wouldn’t need the editing benefits of a word processor because your mind wouldn’t have become so lazy from constant exposure to commercial-laden television that it couldn’t think more than a word or two ahead.
So you write it. It takes half an hour and a cup of coffee. You address an envelope, put the two together and it’s done. There’s room for error, but not a lot. You could suffer an unexpected bout of cramp, the pen could run out of ink or perhaps you don’t have enough paper but, other than that, not a lot could happen to prevent the writing. Disasters that I could think of at this moment stretch the imagination and fall into a ‘when-the-aliens-come’ category; somewhat unreal.
Now, imagine what might go wrong if you use a computer with, say, Word…
You start to type – and let’s concede that you can do that relatively fast. You make typing and grammatical errors, thoughtfully highlighted by Word with squiggly red and green underlines, which you take the time to correct. This tends to distract and slow the process rather that help and it takes a while before more than a couple of paragraphs are on the screen. That’s if Word doesn’t throw a fit because you accidentally pressed a particular key combination that tells it to do something to your document.
Should that happen, you will have no knowledge of what occurred or how to prevent it happening again. If Word had been created to express its demonic intentions with an information message along the lines of ‘I’ve just detected that you wanted to remove all alignment, center random lines of text and put every third word in italics – and by the way, this service is called FUCKADOODLE’, then you’d at least be able to click some drop-down menu to disable fuckadoodle should you accidentally press that key combination again. But there’s not. So you breathe frustration and click the little ‘cancel’ arrow to make everything the way it was before – and pray that it stays that way.
Then there’s saving it. Should be easy and actually it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do it but, for some reason, people tend to find it a chore and screw it up. Uncle Albert’s letter ends up in a hitherto unknown location on the hard drive, where it will never be seen again. Conversely, saving a paper document is more of a passive process and involves NOT doing something – like NOT throwing it away, NOT burning it or NOT chewing it up and flushing it down the toilet.
What about other computer-related problems? Power outage, battery failure, machine freezing or even printing deficiencies get sent regularly by some evil deity to make your computing life hell and let’s not forget that curiosity, thankfully rare now where the PC entirely forgets it has a printer attached.
My printer has 6 ink cartridges, only one of which is black but if any other cartridge is empty, it won’t print anything – not even a letter to Albert, even if it has not the slightest hint of non-black text.
Why? Forgive me if I see no correlation between a lack of Light Magenta and the need to print a monochrome black letter. Is it me? Does this have any sense at all? Have I missed the painfully obvious?
So Uncle Albert will have to wait until I find myself in a shop that sells Epson 79 Light Magenta ink cartridges.
In a previous life, all I’d have to do would be borrow another pen.
I’m so sorry, Uncle Albert.
I understand that it takes eons to install software, download stuff from the internet, do wonderfully creative stuff with photos etc – but how long does it take to write a letter? Not something the length of the Gettysburg address, just a simple little ditty to say hello to your old Uncle Albert. Should that simple task take so long you hair could go gray and fall out before you get to the ‘Yours Faithfully’?
In days of yore, you’d take a pen, a pad and start to write. You wouldn’t need the editing benefits of a word processor because your mind wouldn’t have become so lazy from constant exposure to commercial-laden television that it couldn’t think more than a word or two ahead.
So you write it. It takes half an hour and a cup of coffee. You address an envelope, put the two together and it’s done. There’s room for error, but not a lot. You could suffer an unexpected bout of cramp, the pen could run out of ink or perhaps you don’t have enough paper but, other than that, not a lot could happen to prevent the writing. Disasters that I could think of at this moment stretch the imagination and fall into a ‘when-the-aliens-come’ category; somewhat unreal.
Now, imagine what might go wrong if you use a computer with, say, Word…
You start to type – and let’s concede that you can do that relatively fast. You make typing and grammatical errors, thoughtfully highlighted by Word with squiggly red and green underlines, which you take the time to correct. This tends to distract and slow the process rather that help and it takes a while before more than a couple of paragraphs are on the screen. That’s if Word doesn’t throw a fit because you accidentally pressed a particular key combination that tells it to do something to your document.
Should that happen, you will have no knowledge of what occurred or how to prevent it happening again. If Word had been created to express its demonic intentions with an information message along the lines of ‘I’ve just detected that you wanted to remove all alignment, center random lines of text and put every third word in italics – and by the way, this service is called FUCKADOODLE’, then you’d at least be able to click some drop-down menu to disable fuckadoodle should you accidentally press that key combination again. But there’s not. So you breathe frustration and click the little ‘cancel’ arrow to make everything the way it was before – and pray that it stays that way.
Then there’s saving it. Should be easy and actually it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do it but, for some reason, people tend to find it a chore and screw it up. Uncle Albert’s letter ends up in a hitherto unknown location on the hard drive, where it will never be seen again. Conversely, saving a paper document is more of a passive process and involves NOT doing something – like NOT throwing it away, NOT burning it or NOT chewing it up and flushing it down the toilet.
What about other computer-related problems? Power outage, battery failure, machine freezing or even printing deficiencies get sent regularly by some evil deity to make your computing life hell and let’s not forget that curiosity, thankfully rare now where the PC entirely forgets it has a printer attached.
My printer has 6 ink cartridges, only one of which is black but if any other cartridge is empty, it won’t print anything – not even a letter to Albert, even if it has not the slightest hint of non-black text.
Why? Forgive me if I see no correlation between a lack of Light Magenta and the need to print a monochrome black letter. Is it me? Does this have any sense at all? Have I missed the painfully obvious?
So Uncle Albert will have to wait until I find myself in a shop that sells Epson 79 Light Magenta ink cartridges.
In a previous life, all I’d have to do would be borrow another pen.
I’m so sorry, Uncle Albert.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
A Laptop Story
So let’s get this right: buying a laptop computer is easy.
Right. Yeah. ‘Course it is.
Simply go to an appropriate shop – butchers, bakers and candlestick makers don’t count – and pick one off the shelves. How remiss of me to not see the blindingly obvious.
It’s just like buying a peach. Test it, of course – squeeze it a little, dig your fingernails in, maybe take a little taste when no one’s looking – and then buy it. Done. Easy. Maybe best to omit the tasting, with a laptop; people tend to look at you curiously – or so I’m told.
I want one – a new laptop, not fruit. Best to do a little research first. Battery life is important and I need it to last all day. Most, even when new, find it difficult to exceed two hours on a full charge – worse after a few months – and that’s about as useful as a bicycle would be to a fish.
I search the internet, read magazines, talk to friends, go to stores and read the specification labels. I stroke them, finger their touch pads with a sensitivity that would get a film an ‘R’ rating and try to envision what each one would feel like in actual use. Sometimes, I even speak to salesmen.
Most are happy to spend a few minutes expounding their knowledge and opinions. It must be a release, talking to someone with an alert brain, after a day of drudgery dealing with tattooed customers sporting hairstyles like weeds and who exhibit the intelligence of a dustbin.
After much research, the choice narrows to just two: an ACER and a Dell. Both are cheaper online but there’s no substitute for touchy-feeliness so I go to the store; returns are so much easier.
CompUSA does not sell Dell but has the ACER on display and in stock, at a price equal to the best available on the internet. It’s a no-brainer. Barely five minutes pass between walking through the doors on the way in and walking back through them with a shiny new box. I am a salesman’s dream.
Three days later, I take it back.
The boredom of waiting for customer service is mitigated by listening intently whilst a latent teenager, wearing over-sized shorts that reveal half his red-checked underwear, tries to argue with the returns clerk about a refund for gaming software. His opinion is that the rules are unfair and that BestBuy are responsible. His argument includes names of game characters with which he expects the clerk to be familiar. He is, undoubtedly, a fine example of the dustbin intelligence class.
Once he’s finished and gone, I explain to the rather impatient clerk, that the laptop keyboard has a mind of its own and frequently produces two or more letters for a single keystroke. A little joke about the thing being possessed by a Godless demon (ha ha) doesn’t produce the desired result and I realize that she’s not the type to see humor in the spoken word and now thinks I am either a religious fanatic or mad.
Turning it on, she wants to know why it took me three days to notice such a fault and I realize that I don’t have much of an explanation but, luckily, the machine boots up just in time and the question is lost in testing. In times gone by, the customer was always right and his word about the unsuitability of a product would be enough to ensure an immediate replacement or refund. Times have changed. Returning items now often involves some degree of negotiation so, as she probably thinks I am insane, I can understand a degree of doubt.
Fortunately, it still doesn’t work – but what would she say if it did? Would I be sent away with a severe reprimand for wasting her time? Perhaps I’d get a slap on the wrist or a poke in the eye with a four gig flash drive for tasking up valuable floor space with my redundant complaint.
She summons an assistant, who disappears into the CompUSA areas of darkness where customers aren’t allowed and returns with a brand new box. Pushing it towards me, the clerk tells me fairly abruptly, as if I am an irritation to whom she is showing a kind favor, that I should realize she’s not going to, “Keep replacing machines.” Perhaps I confused her with my earlier attempt at humor, but her attitude annoys me. This is no way to treat a paying customer with a legitimate complaint, who is reasonable enough to agree to a replacement for a faulty product. BestBuy are less than a mile away and sell both the ACER and the Dell, so I push it back across the counter and demand a full refund.
Ten minutes later I’m listening to a somewhat biased BestBuy salesman rant about the poor quality control of ACER products as opposed to Dell and how he’d never have one in his house unless it was a door stop. Perhaps he’s an ex CompUSA employee. He even persuades me to purchase one that has been optimized – a semi-magic process that supposedly makes it perform faster.
He is successful.
I buy it – the optimized one.
It lasts almost an hour.
The battery unit, I patiently explain to their returns clerk when I go back, does not properly click into position. The locking mechanism is defective. When the computer is placed upon a desk and pulled towards the user, as may well happen in use, the battery often comes out. “Maybe it’s meant to do that,” she suggests slowly, with the innocence of a child expecting the tooth fairy to leave some cash under the pillow. At least she doesn’t think I am mentally deficient.
A new machine appears within minutes. The battery unit is fine and the clerk smiles and makes it click in and out several times, but this unit hasn’t been optimized. They can do it overnight, she says, and it’ll be ready tomorrow. I agree.
So, tomorrow arrives and I collect the newly optimized Dell. Not at 10.00am, as promised, but closer to 5.00pm – they were busy…
The first thing I notice at home is that there is no packaging. Whoever has performed the optimization has discarded all the polythene bags, cable ties and Styrofoam supports and dropped the laptop into the box, where it now flops around like a caught fish on deck. Is everything in there, or are there items missing? I cannot tell. It is a large box with a lot of empty space.
When switched on, it will not completely boot up. A Norton installation screen appears, informing me that an old version of the product has been removed and the machine should now be restarted. Strange, since this is new but, of course – it’s been at the mercy of the BestBuy optimization technician – so I do what it says.
It shuts down, it turns off, there is silence and the blank screen of death shows for a moment or two and then it starts up. As the Windows logo appears once more, so too does the Norton screen, once again requesting a re-boot. A stirring in the pit of my stomach warns me that all is not as it should be but, again, I do as I am told. After five such iterations, I place the machine floppily back into its box.
Am I wrong is thinking that a responsible technician who worked on this machine should have seen this? That he should also not have discarded all the packaging? BestBuy are not yet closed, but I can’t face another confrontation tonight.
There is, however, a full bottle of chardonnay in the fridge and tomorrow is another day….
How many laptops and how many shops will I have to go through to get one that works? Whilst we’re on questions of that nature – why do penguins have wings, how long is the universe and how deep is a hole?
Right. Yeah. ‘Course it is.
Simply go to an appropriate shop – butchers, bakers and candlestick makers don’t count – and pick one off the shelves. How remiss of me to not see the blindingly obvious.
It’s just like buying a peach. Test it, of course – squeeze it a little, dig your fingernails in, maybe take a little taste when no one’s looking – and then buy it. Done. Easy. Maybe best to omit the tasting, with a laptop; people tend to look at you curiously – or so I’m told.
I want one – a new laptop, not fruit. Best to do a little research first. Battery life is important and I need it to last all day. Most, even when new, find it difficult to exceed two hours on a full charge – worse after a few months – and that’s about as useful as a bicycle would be to a fish.
I search the internet, read magazines, talk to friends, go to stores and read the specification labels. I stroke them, finger their touch pads with a sensitivity that would get a film an ‘R’ rating and try to envision what each one would feel like in actual use. Sometimes, I even speak to salesmen.
Most are happy to spend a few minutes expounding their knowledge and opinions. It must be a release, talking to someone with an alert brain, after a day of drudgery dealing with tattooed customers sporting hairstyles like weeds and who exhibit the intelligence of a dustbin.
After much research, the choice narrows to just two: an ACER and a Dell. Both are cheaper online but there’s no substitute for touchy-feeliness so I go to the store; returns are so much easier.
CompUSA does not sell Dell but has the ACER on display and in stock, at a price equal to the best available on the internet. It’s a no-brainer. Barely five minutes pass between walking through the doors on the way in and walking back through them with a shiny new box. I am a salesman’s dream.
Three days later, I take it back.
The boredom of waiting for customer service is mitigated by listening intently whilst a latent teenager, wearing over-sized shorts that reveal half his red-checked underwear, tries to argue with the returns clerk about a refund for gaming software. His opinion is that the rules are unfair and that BestBuy are responsible. His argument includes names of game characters with which he expects the clerk to be familiar. He is, undoubtedly, a fine example of the dustbin intelligence class.
Once he’s finished and gone, I explain to the rather impatient clerk, that the laptop keyboard has a mind of its own and frequently produces two or more letters for a single keystroke. A little joke about the thing being possessed by a Godless demon (ha ha) doesn’t produce the desired result and I realize that she’s not the type to see humor in the spoken word and now thinks I am either a religious fanatic or mad.
Turning it on, she wants to know why it took me three days to notice such a fault and I realize that I don’t have much of an explanation but, luckily, the machine boots up just in time and the question is lost in testing. In times gone by, the customer was always right and his word about the unsuitability of a product would be enough to ensure an immediate replacement or refund. Times have changed. Returning items now often involves some degree of negotiation so, as she probably thinks I am insane, I can understand a degree of doubt.
Fortunately, it still doesn’t work – but what would she say if it did? Would I be sent away with a severe reprimand for wasting her time? Perhaps I’d get a slap on the wrist or a poke in the eye with a four gig flash drive for tasking up valuable floor space with my redundant complaint.
She summons an assistant, who disappears into the CompUSA areas of darkness where customers aren’t allowed and returns with a brand new box. Pushing it towards me, the clerk tells me fairly abruptly, as if I am an irritation to whom she is showing a kind favor, that I should realize she’s not going to, “Keep replacing machines.” Perhaps I confused her with my earlier attempt at humor, but her attitude annoys me. This is no way to treat a paying customer with a legitimate complaint, who is reasonable enough to agree to a replacement for a faulty product. BestBuy are less than a mile away and sell both the ACER and the Dell, so I push it back across the counter and demand a full refund.
Ten minutes later I’m listening to a somewhat biased BestBuy salesman rant about the poor quality control of ACER products as opposed to Dell and how he’d never have one in his house unless it was a door stop. Perhaps he’s an ex CompUSA employee. He even persuades me to purchase one that has been optimized – a semi-magic process that supposedly makes it perform faster.
He is successful.
I buy it – the optimized one.
It lasts almost an hour.
The battery unit, I patiently explain to their returns clerk when I go back, does not properly click into position. The locking mechanism is defective. When the computer is placed upon a desk and pulled towards the user, as may well happen in use, the battery often comes out. “Maybe it’s meant to do that,” she suggests slowly, with the innocence of a child expecting the tooth fairy to leave some cash under the pillow. At least she doesn’t think I am mentally deficient.
A new machine appears within minutes. The battery unit is fine and the clerk smiles and makes it click in and out several times, but this unit hasn’t been optimized. They can do it overnight, she says, and it’ll be ready tomorrow. I agree.
So, tomorrow arrives and I collect the newly optimized Dell. Not at 10.00am, as promised, but closer to 5.00pm – they were busy…
The first thing I notice at home is that there is no packaging. Whoever has performed the optimization has discarded all the polythene bags, cable ties and Styrofoam supports and dropped the laptop into the box, where it now flops around like a caught fish on deck. Is everything in there, or are there items missing? I cannot tell. It is a large box with a lot of empty space.
When switched on, it will not completely boot up. A Norton installation screen appears, informing me that an old version of the product has been removed and the machine should now be restarted. Strange, since this is new but, of course – it’s been at the mercy of the BestBuy optimization technician – so I do what it says.
It shuts down, it turns off, there is silence and the blank screen of death shows for a moment or two and then it starts up. As the Windows logo appears once more, so too does the Norton screen, once again requesting a re-boot. A stirring in the pit of my stomach warns me that all is not as it should be but, again, I do as I am told. After five such iterations, I place the machine floppily back into its box.
Am I wrong is thinking that a responsible technician who worked on this machine should have seen this? That he should also not have discarded all the packaging? BestBuy are not yet closed, but I can’t face another confrontation tonight.
There is, however, a full bottle of chardonnay in the fridge and tomorrow is another day….
How many laptops and how many shops will I have to go through to get one that works? Whilst we’re on questions of that nature – why do penguins have wings, how long is the universe and how deep is a hole?
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Where Everyone Knows Your Name
Cheers – the place where everyone knows your name.
Hmmm…
What if you don’t actually want everyone to know your name? I don’t. Maybe that makes me twisted or mad or simply a tad unusual, but when I go to a pub, I’m content that no one knows who the fuck I am.
Except the bartender, of course. That cheery welcome from the one person who knows me – the smile, the greeting, the reaching over the bar for a handshake and the, “How ya doing?” - all goes to show other people, to whom I’m still a mystery, that perhaps I’m worth getting to know.
I want that. That’s why I don’t stay too long. The mystery would be shot to hell if I sat in the same seat, sucking down beers, staring into space for increasingly longer periods and finally slurring at someone who sits down in close proximity.
Not being known is the best way to get known. Keep quiet, acknowledge those who say, ‘Hello’, stay a short time - then move on.
Anonymity – it’s the way to get known.
Hmmm…
What if you don’t actually want everyone to know your name? I don’t. Maybe that makes me twisted or mad or simply a tad unusual, but when I go to a pub, I’m content that no one knows who the fuck I am.
Except the bartender, of course. That cheery welcome from the one person who knows me – the smile, the greeting, the reaching over the bar for a handshake and the, “How ya doing?” - all goes to show other people, to whom I’m still a mystery, that perhaps I’m worth getting to know.
I want that. That’s why I don’t stay too long. The mystery would be shot to hell if I sat in the same seat, sucking down beers, staring into space for increasingly longer periods and finally slurring at someone who sits down in close proximity.
Not being known is the best way to get known. Keep quiet, acknowledge those who say, ‘Hello’, stay a short time - then move on.
Anonymity – it’s the way to get known.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
In Search Of The Light
A primary purpose of any body shop, the major portion of whose business is insurance-related, is to estimate the cost of repairing a damaged car. They have online screens to find any part for any vehicle. How many problems could there be in looking up the cost of a driver’s side rear light cluster and a replacement windshield for a factory-produced car with no aftermarket parts or custom work?
A lot.
Angelo, the full-sized and boisterous manager, gave the impression of being on the way down from a rather large amphetamine hit. He tried to locate a rear light cluster through his online system but, every minute at most, the phone on his desk would ring and his right arm would snake out like a whip and snatch it up before the first note had ended. There would then follow several minutes of one-sided mundane conversation that would cause him to roll his eyes towards the ceiling, occasionally glance in my direction and make nonsense gestures towards the unheard voice talking in his ear.
Between each telephonic iteration, he’d forget the car’s official designation of 2004 Mazdaspeed MX-5 Turbo and check his screen for a fictitious model. Had he not been such a talker, I’d possibly not have known.
In Angelo’s mind, the car switched between a 2004 Miata, an M5 and a Mazda 5. Eventually, after learning that it had a 6-speed manual transmission, it became a Mazda-6X, which produced much tut-tutting and head shaking, as though he’d stumbled upon a forgotten truth.
I soon learned that he was listening to the voices in his head and not the one from my side of the desk. More than slightly unnerved and waiting for either Angelo to scream ‘Eureka’ and leap upon the desk in a dance of triumph, or grab a hidden meat cleaver and slice off my head, I sat and tried to pretend that this was all quite normal and something I did every day.
After the online system bore no fruit, he began calling other body shops to track down the parts. None had a rear light cluster for whatever collection of words and mnemonics had popped into his mind between incoming calls, until one place said that they had.
Now I’m worried. I have an appointment to drop the car off next week at 8.00am. If the part doesn’t fit, will they cut pieces off and hammer it into submission, then fill the gaps with paint and sawdust? Like we used to do with fence panels back in the garden centre in England?
Let’s just wait and see….
A lot.
Angelo, the full-sized and boisterous manager, gave the impression of being on the way down from a rather large amphetamine hit. He tried to locate a rear light cluster through his online system but, every minute at most, the phone on his desk would ring and his right arm would snake out like a whip and snatch it up before the first note had ended. There would then follow several minutes of one-sided mundane conversation that would cause him to roll his eyes towards the ceiling, occasionally glance in my direction and make nonsense gestures towards the unheard voice talking in his ear.
Between each telephonic iteration, he’d forget the car’s official designation of 2004 Mazdaspeed MX-5 Turbo and check his screen for a fictitious model. Had he not been such a talker, I’d possibly not have known.
In Angelo’s mind, the car switched between a 2004 Miata, an M5 and a Mazda 5. Eventually, after learning that it had a 6-speed manual transmission, it became a Mazda-6X, which produced much tut-tutting and head shaking, as though he’d stumbled upon a forgotten truth.
I soon learned that he was listening to the voices in his head and not the one from my side of the desk. More than slightly unnerved and waiting for either Angelo to scream ‘Eureka’ and leap upon the desk in a dance of triumph, or grab a hidden meat cleaver and slice off my head, I sat and tried to pretend that this was all quite normal and something I did every day.
After the online system bore no fruit, he began calling other body shops to track down the parts. None had a rear light cluster for whatever collection of words and mnemonics had popped into his mind between incoming calls, until one place said that they had.
Now I’m worried. I have an appointment to drop the car off next week at 8.00am. If the part doesn’t fit, will they cut pieces off and hammer it into submission, then fill the gaps with paint and sawdust? Like we used to do with fence panels back in the garden centre in England?
Let’s just wait and see….
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