A bad afternoon

What a fun afternoon (or day) we both had. Actually I had kind of a "fun" (see sarcasm here) day. As mentioned on the previous post we are off on vacation in 10 days (actually as of right now 10 days, 13 hours and 14 minutes) and this is one of the most stressful times for me.

We knew the day was going to be screwy when we woke up to snow. SNOW!!! Damn snow. I really hate snow. It got Kathleen out the door more than an hour late and that was just the start of the fun.

Let me see if I can explain the work problem. I have a newsletter I need to get to press before we can leave. This is my annual premier issue. It happens every April. That's when I showcase all the new products and services from the company I write about. It's a very big deal for my customers who use my newsletter. It is the biggest issue I do all year. And I have to get it to press before I leave.

Most months, getting my newsletter out to press is just about me getting the work done but this month is different. I have to depend on people in our marketing department to get me the info so I can write about it. Today I spent all day trying to get some of our new software installed (in a very beta version) so I could do screen shots for publication. Nothing we did (tech support and me) could get it to work the right way. That's the way a bunch of my day went. If it doesn't work tomorrow I don't know what I will do. It still has to be proofed and then I need a full day to get it to press.

Then Kathleen called about three minutes before she came home and said she had stopped at the mailbox to get our mail and "the woman with the dog" is out walking it without a leash again. Explanation here: I am on the board of our condo association. Probably the president now that the current president is gone. We have a rule about dogs. They have to be on a leash. HAVE TO BE ON A LEASH. This couple who lives in the complex has two dogs. They walk them in the complex. One is always on a leash and the other is NEVER on a leash. We have sent them letters. We have fined them under our house rules. Our fines double every time you break one of the house rules. Their current fine is well over $1000. We have talked to them in person and they still walk this dog off a leash. When we have talked to them they act like they just don't care.

One of the problems is that when we fine them, they just don't pay. We can lien their property (and we will) but we don't get their money until they sell their unit. Our only other option is to foreclose on them. We may be doing that now.

Which brings us to this afternoon. Kathleen stopped to get the mail and saw the woman of the couple out walking the dog--of the leash. She gave Kathleen a really dirty look and after Kathleen had the mail she said to her that they were going to get fined again. The woman waited until Kathleen was back in her car and she threw her bag of dog poop at her car. When Kathleen stopped the car she ran up to the driver's side window and slammed the window with her open palms. Kathleen did the smart thing and came home. We called the police to file a complaint.

While we were waiting for the police to come I was reaching for my coffee cup to go upstairs and I dropped it on my keyboard. Thus the keyboard disaster. Not sure if it is going to work tomorrow morning but I cleaned it out and I hopefully got it all.

The police came and looked at the hand prints on Kathleen's car, took her statement and left to speak to the woman. What a thrill.

So that's been our day. We had a really good time. Can you tell?

I can say that every time that couple takes their dog out without a leash I will be not only fining them but calling King County Animal Control and bugging them until they fine these people as well. And I am going to deal with the board about starting foreclosure proceedings unless they pay their fines.

If they don't pay attention to the rules pretty soon, no one will. And their will just be anarchy in the complex.

A Cruising Pet Peeve

I have made it pretty clear that we are cruisers. It's our favorite way to travel. It has so many advantages for us. We meet great people, we go to fun places (we like the Med), we only have to unpack once and our hotel moves while we sleep. If you haven't tried it, you should. 

One of the things that makes cruising so great for us is Cruise Critic. I mentioned it the other day in my friends post. On Cruise Critic besides the general cruise-related threads there are also what are called roll calls for each individual cruise. That's where you make the long time friendships that we love. On our last four cruises I have put done a website for the cruise. People send pictures and bios and I put them online so that we can all see what we look like and learn a little bit about each other. You can see the one for our current cruise by clicking here.

Now to my pet peeve. When people who have signed into a roll call decide not to take the cruise I sure wish they would go back to the roll call and say something like, "Sorry, we aren't going to be able to cruise with you folks." But no! They just disappear without a word. I consider that really rude. People, cruise or other online threads, don't join something and then quit without a word. 

That's all. 'Nuff said.

Angry all the time

Kathleen wants to know why I am angry all the time. And she's right. I am angry all the time. Or at least most of the time. I try to hide it from her and from myself but when I really think about it, I am angry a lot. I get ticked off easily (too easily) any more. Little stuff, big stuff and more just tick me off. When I am alone, I let it out. When I am with Kathleen or anyone else, I just cover it up. 

All this came to light today when Kathleen went back to work and found a message from me on her work phone. It seems that when I had gone out to get dinner on Saturday night at our favorite Mexican take-out place, I had inadvertently hit her office number on my cell while it was in my sweatshirt pocket and she got to hear my totally ticked-off tirade about the idiot drivers taking forever to get into the parking lot where I wanted to go. It wasn't just that. It was just the whole thing. I started making lists of things that have just been ticking me off. It's always the little stuff. 

Here's what I mean. Kathleen needed an Amazon gift certificate for a gift exchange at work. So I went on early today to get it for her. First problem was you had to know who to make it out to. Well since it was a grab bag kind of gift, we didn't know. So I had to wait until she got home to finish the purchase. Then it should have been an easy thing to buy it and print it. But that was not to be. She got home, we figured it out and I bought it. But did Amazon recognize me (like it ALWAYS does)? No! I have to type in all the passwords and then it finally lets me put in my credit card. Then it won't take my credit card because I didn't tell it that it was the right kind of card. So I have to type everything back in again. Then I get it purchased but it won't let me download the PDF and print it because I have to wait to get the e-mail that confirms I bought it. But the computer I was on (that was hooked up to my color printer so I could print it) doesn't have e-mail. So I had to go to this computer (my laptop) get the e-mail, save the PDF and then copy back to the computer connected to my USB color printer. Then I tell it to print and the printer is out of yellow ink. It's been printing fine up until then but now it wants yellow ink. WHAT THE ^#%&&$^%$$%#%#!!! So I get out yellow ink and try to install only to find that the only yellow in I have only fits the printer I used to have. So I have to e-mail the PDF to Kathleen's computer upstairs so I can print it there. I finally get it printed but it has now taken more than 30 minutes for something that should have taken five minutes, MAX! That's the frustration I am talking about. Things like that happen all the time. 

And don't even get me started about my head. It is a constant irritation. As great as my psoriasis has been the new treatment that Dr. Greene has for my scalp means that I have to have a solution on my head covered by a shower cap for 6-8 hours a day. And under that shower cap it itches constantly. Like having continuous poison oak. My head itches just about 24-7. But it has improved my scalp enough that I am no longer losing big chunks of scalp and hair. 

Is there any wonder that I am on edge constantly. And there just isn't enough time in the day. And an awful lot of people I deal with are just plain stupid. I am sorry. I have gotten to the point where I don't suffer fools very well. And for some reason I seem to attract the fools more and more all the time. 

I wish I could figure out a way to not be so stressed on a regular basis. I just have too much going on. Too much to do. I'm just damn tired of this. I know that to relieve stress there are lots of things I can do. A big one is exercise. I already work out an hour a day and get up at 4:20 am to do it. I can't do anymore. I just can't.

There is no free lunch (or software)

I have just sat here for 20 minutes trying to log in so I could create a post. Why can't this damn site just log me in every time I come here instead of me having to continue to log in. 

Don't you hate passwords, logins and all that crap? I know I do. I have so damn many websites that I have to log into I don't know how I remember them. I tried 1Password, a program that allows you to just have one password and it supplies the rest but I could never get it to work the way it was supposed to. I have a feeling that if I am going to continue to blog I may need to find someplace else to do it. If I do, I will let you know where it is. Right now I am at the end of a very stressful day computer and work-wise and I really don't need to have it take me 20 minutes to log into this site. 

I think it's because Blogger is owned by Google and I have a different Google login and password that is different from the one I use to login in to Blogger and I have no idea how to put the two together. Nor do I have the time to spend a few hours online trying to find the answer to that question. 

Which brings me to the problem with free software from companies like Google. If I was using my .mac account to do this and it didn't work, I could call Apple tech support and they would walk me through a solution. I pay for the .mac service and they support it for that reason. But Google provides this very nice blog space for me and I appreciate it but I would gladly pay something if they would add tech support. And yes, I can probably find the answer to my questions in support forums but that can take a very long time. Time I don't have. 

That said, here you are reading my blog on this free site. Enjoy!

Nothing makes me feel smaller

Today I was made to feel small. And then I made myself feel smaller still. Let me explain, no let me sum up. (PB reference, sorry.)

This morning Kathleen had to go in to work for a little while. I went and did the grocery shopping but before that I got to go to my FAAAVVVOOORRRIIIITTTEEE store, (please hear Steve Martin Excuuuuuuussseee Me sarcasm there) Home Depot. There is no place I can think of that I feel smaller than a home improvement store. I would actually rather go to the dentist than a Lowe's or a Home Depot. Hell, I would rather have a prostate exam. 

When I go into a home improvement store I feel like a total moron. I know absolutely nothing about so called "do it yourself." Now, as you saw a few days ago, I can handle it around the house. I hire someone to fix things. And thankfully, I now have someone who I can hire. But I should be able to go and buy the things that my "handyman" can install or maybe, I can.

So this morning, I went to get a replacement for the timer that runs our laundry room fan. My new handyman guy had pulled it off for me, given me some instructions of how to hook it back up once I had it in hand. So off I went to buy one. Home Depot is in the midst of the recession like no other store I have seen. There were probably four or six employees standing around talking all over the store. Talking to each other. I was one of probably 15 customers in the store. 

Now, I have no clue where the timers are so I ask. I am not the kind of person who can't ask directions. I have no problem with that. I was told there on aisle 48 and the guy who told me pointed to the right. Since I was at aisle 4, and he pointed to the right, I started walking. As I approached the other end of the store I got to row 24. That meant that row 48 was in the back of the store so I started walking to the back of the store and back the other way. Got all the way to the other end of the store and there was row 48 was right behind my original row 4. 

Then I found the timers but nothing looked remotely like the one I was replacing. I was kind of expecting that since the one I am replacing is 10 years old. So I had to find someone to ask which one they thought would work to replace the one I had. 

That meant that I had to walk back to about row 24 where there were six employees standing and talking with each other. After standing patiently while they finished their conversation, one finally noticed me and asked if he could help me. He walked with me back down to the timer aisle and on the way said he knew nothing about timers but would call someone who did. And the guy they call, the expert, he's the one who always does the best job of making me feel small. His entire attitude is an unspoken, "You're a guy. Can't you figure this out yourself?" By that I mean he walked up and looked at me with disdain, looked at my old timer and snorted that "we aren't going to be able to replace this." 

But eventually he handed me a new electronic timer and said that it should work. I asked how the small little timer would fill the much larger hole in the wall that had housed the original timer. He said I could buy a plate separately and that they were "down that way," and he pointed off up the aisle. Then walked away shaking his head as if to say, "What an idiot." 

Well this idiot (that's me) then spent about 25 minutes trying to find the plate to go over it that he undoubtedly could have found in his sleep in about two seconds. After finding it, finding a new snow shovel I wanted to buy to ward off any future snowstorms, talking to the manager about how much I hate coming to Home Depot I went home to unload the groceries and to try and install the timer. 

Before I had unhooked the old timer, I had labeled all the wires with the color of wire they had come off of. There were three of them. Red, black and white. They were connected on the old timer to red, black and white wires. As fun as it sounds, when I opened the new timer it had a red, blue, green and black wire. No white in site and the directions said what to do when you had two or four wires coming out of the wall. I had three. 

There you have it folks. I can't feel a lot stupider and smaller than that. I packed everything up in a bag and tomorrow I will call my new handyman guy and pay him $50 to come back and put in my new timer cause maybe he can figure it out. The instructions might as well have been printed in Greek to me.

Why can't...

Consider this the first rant of my blog. In this rant, I want to ask why can't a company be consistent in their service and product. 

I have a company that I have proofread most of the publications I produce. They are based just south of Toronto. I have been using them for two years and up until about a two months ago, they were outstanding. I would complete a project, export it as a PDF, upload it on their website, pay with my VISA and the next morning I get get back the PDF with corrections highlighted in pink. I make the corrections and I go to press. It was a great system. 

But two months ago they sent me back a document with mistakes still in place. After two years of using them with no known problems, I went to press with those mistakes and it cost me a customer. Others were more forgiving. 

Last Friday I uploaded my monthly newsletter and was expecting to have it back this morning. The first strange thing that happened was that I got an e-mail saying the project was ready in about an hour. Usually it takes 24 hours but I figured, what the heck, maybe business was slow that day. So I downloaded the file but couldn't see any corrections. I e-mailed asking them for a new one. They said it was my problem and I should look again but they still redownloaded the file for me. Again, nothing. I e-mailed them again and asked them to redownload it for me before Monday (this morning). 

This morning, there was a new copy to download but when I opened it, nothing. Then I zoomed in closer and sure enough there were some edits. They were so tiny it was almost impossible to see them except when enlarged to about 250%. That was ridiculous. I was sure I would miss something. But I had a deadline today so I decided to go ahead and work with what they had sent. 

But once I got into the actual edits I had a problem. I have parts of the newsletter that I reuse on a yearly basis with minor changes. For instance there is a monthly calendar of reminders. They really don't change that much from year to year and the format NEVER changes. Well, this editor said that the way I had been doing it was wrong. Wrong grammatically, wrong punctuation-wise. Wrong. 

So who was right? The editor that told me to change everything this month or the editor that has been doing my stuff for the last two years? This was ridiculous. So I e-mailed them again (they have no phone number) and about two hours later I got back a file that was done by my regular editor, the regular way.

So, the company came through, finally. But my question is this, isn't grammar always right or wrong? I thought it was like math. 2 + 2=4, right? How can one editor say one thing and another something else?

And how can a business change the basic format of their work. That would like me publishing me my newsletter in Spanish next month. You could still read it but you would have do some really hard work to do it. 

So that's my first rant. Did I decide to dump the company (www.scribendi.com)? Nope, I will give them another chance. Mainly because finding them originally was a real pain and I really don't want to go through that again. But I will be more vigilant and plan my publications with time to get things redone.