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.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
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?
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