pieces

This is a wonderful quote from one of my favorite authors:

To set the scene, there are some men and women living in a house together, and they rotate the housework so that that men do everything one day and the women do everything the next day. Jane is new, and is curious about this. She is told that men and women can’t get along while working. Here is the quote:

“But why should they quarrel?” asked Jane.

“Different methods, my dear. Men can’t help in a job, you know.They can be induced to do it: not to help while you’re doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.”

“The cardinal difficulty,” saidMacPhee(the man), “in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, ‘ Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them,’In where?’ they say, ‘in there, of course.’ There is consequently a phatic hiatus.”

-C.S. Lewis

The memory actually showed up the day after I had to put in the order for the second time.

And so far so good with the new memory. Wow, this computer is nice. The screen is big enough to be useful…

I had a great birthday party last night. It was also Caroline’s birthday party, and a celebration of her new job.

I invited a lot of different people, from lots of different parts of my life, and we had lots of friends of friends, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out, but it ended up being lots of fun. Plus, it helps that my downstairs neighbor came - we could play loud games without disturbing anyone!

Gotta love customer service…

Here’s one (of many) conversations that I’ve had in the past six weeks. Some of the issues were my fault, some were caused by communication difficulties. Having had several Indian students in my grad school class, I know that many of them speak wonderful English. So why do you have someone answering the phone who cannot understand what I say? And how about getting rid of the scripts when someone obviously knows what they’re talking about?

I may rant more later on this. It is quite a story.

But anyway, my phone call today:

“Here’s the case number and dispatch number.”

“Okay, I see we’re talking about a notebook computer, yes?”

“Yes. What I want to know is when the memory shipped and when I can expect it.”

“Okay. So I see you ordered memory on last Saturday.”

“Yes.”

“So we’re talking about memory, then, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So you have a memory order.”

Sigh.

“What is your question, then?”

“When should I expect the order to arrive?”

“Let me put you on hold for three or four minutes while I check on your order.”

“Okay”

…

“Yes, the wrong part number was entered, so your order has not been processed. We’ll order it now.”

“When will it arrive?”

“It should arrive within the next 48 hours.”

“If it arrives in two days that will be a Saturday, and since it’s going to my office I won’t get it until Monday. I need it by the end of business tomorrow.”

“Yes, it will arrive within 48 hours.”

“That is Saturday. I need it by 5pm on Friday.”

“Yes. 48 hours.”

“Can you expedite the shipping? I need it tomorrow.”
“Yes, it will arrive by the end of the day on Friday.”
Okie dokie. And no, I’m sure he wasn’t answering yes to changing the type of shipping. Whatever.

I ended up getting a refurbished computer. Not a problem, I thought, as my last computer had been refurbished, and really, it has lasted more than twice as long as it should have. But this one has some problems.

The support technicians have of course been very reluctant to send new parts, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a memory problem. However, some good came of it, as they had me reinstall the operating system. So now I have a new OS with none of the junk that always comes on a new PC. No trial software, no AOL. The start menu has 5 items on it. So beautiful.