Married In Ohio

I ordered The Boy a laptop for another company this morning and though that everything was good. Then, when I checked my email after watching the Bengals beat the Packers, I had an email from Dell notifying me that they had shipped my computer and it should be here on Wednesday. So, now I have two computers on the way. As I mentioned in my previous post, I couldn’t reach them on the telephone to verify that my order was cancelled; but they should have done it anyway in accordance with FTC requirements.

So, now I have a conundrum. Do I send the Dell back for a refund and keep the system that I bought when I didn’t think that I was going to be getting it? Or, do I keep it and sell the unneeded substitution on EBay? The Dell is faster/better with more memory, a bigger hard drive, etc. since it was custom configured as opposed to a standard system. But it’s the only one that can be returned. The replacement was purchased from a site that does not allow laptop returns. I won’t be buying anything on my credit card until I get things sorted out.

Your order is further delayed and we need your permission to… This was the email that greated me when I check my email when I got home on Friday. When your son is leaving for college in less than two weeks discovering that the vendor still can’t ship his laptop after waiting for a month is not a pleasant surprise. California Girl and I will have to scramble and try to find one locally. Now we’ll end up spending more money, getting him a system that is not as good or both.

I tried to call themFIVE times about the order andthe firstfour times I called I got mysteriously disconnected when I was being transferred to a “supervisor”. I finally reached someone’s voicemail on the fifth try. I doubt that they will ever call me back. They’ve had plenty of time to call me back so far and have yet to return my call. Sometimes, I wonder how companies with such disregard for their customer stay in business. The only thing that was “good” was that they didn’t even try to pretend that they were American. Instead of Saying their name was “John” through a heavy accent; they gave obviously foreign names.

If anyone has any suggestions for retail locations to purchase a good laptop for a college student please let us know. The college will be providing all of the software he needs; so the laptop itself is the only thing that is important for us.

I knew that it was only a matter of time; but whoever writes the spam robots had finally adapted to the anti-spam measures that I was using on the shoutbox. The funny thing is that I don’t allow URLs in shouts so there’s really no purpose. That’s the problem with spam. It causes aggravation for everyone even when the spammers are getting nothing out of it.

I know that there are online services that block spam; but I’ve never been comfortable sending comments and shouts that people have left for us off to a “big computer in the sky” to be checked. Maybe they delete them after they’ve been analyzed; but they’ve got to make a profit somehow so they must be doing something with all of the data they collect.

This site doesn’t have a written privacy policy; but, if it did, it would be simple. We don’t share information what we have with anyone. We don’t post the text of any emails that we receive (even if they are interesting). And we don’t reveal IP addresses. We do this for fun and would like for people to respect our privacy and anonymity. So we do our best to respect theirs.

People with tattoos and body piercings came up during a discussion I was having with a few of my coworkers a couple of weeks ago. I know that I work in a “square” office; but I was still surprised at some of the negative comments I heard. It’s what people are on the inside that matters, especially in the workplace. And to be intolerant of someone just because of the way they look is wrong. I haven’t exactly been a trailblazer; but, many times, I’ve been the only black person in my organization. So, I know what it’s like to have all eyes on you. Everyone is different. And it’s wrong to think less of people because of superficial differences. It seems that the more we become accepting of some things, the more we find other things to dislike. I’m glad that most of the people I know both in real life and in blog land are open-minded and non-judgmental. I just wish more of the world was.

California Girl’s watch died over the weekend. I’m almost certain that it’s the battery which is a nuisance since it has to be special ordered directly from Seiko. I’d like to get her a nice new watch; but, since we have his and hers watches, I’ll probably just get another battery. It was supposed to last 5 years; but, both this one and the original one lasted for less than half of that. If we had known beforehand that a replacement battery would be so hard to find, we would have never purchased the set. Unlike hers, my watch is still running on the original battery.

We like to have matching stuff. It’s kind of a trademark of ours. We don’t overdo it; but we do like jewelry and other accessories that remind us of each other. For example, we always have coordinating costumes at Halloween. If anyone has suggestions for a nice coordinated set of his and hers watches we’d love to hear them. We don’t want to spend too much money; but we’d really like a matched pair. After the “fun” we have had with batteries, we’re thinking that we would like to have automatic (self-winding) movements. And, or course enough water resistance so that we can swim in them. (It gives us a funny tan, so we don’t usually wear them in the pool; but, sometimes we do need to know the time). The only thing I can say is our next set of watches will not be Seikos.

Other than the battery being such an annoyance, we really like the watches. They keep very accurate time and are perpetual calendar models so we only have to adjust them when changing to or from daylight savings time. Even though they only display the date, they “know” what month and year it is and adjust the date accordingly. It’s a good idea; but poor execution. I guess the same could be said about many things.

We’ve got clocks all over the house; and we’ve always got our cell phones with us; so we don’t really need a watch to know the time; but it’s a touch of elegance that we like share. I’ve always thought that timepieces were symbolic of relationships. Hopefully we’ll be able to find something that is a suitable remembrance of ours.

After twenty consecutive weeks of six and seven day work weeks, I finally had a three day weekend. I really enjoy my Christmas and Independence Day vacations but five months is a long time to go without a break; especially since I worked so many weekends. My telephone did not ring and I did not even turn on my laptop. It was bliss. I just caught up on mundane chores and generally “decompressed”.

If you have a blog that I frequent regularly, I apologize for not visiting this weekend. I had planned to visit everyone on Sunday or Monday; but was too busy relaxing. Every year, it seems like Memorial Day Weekend takes longer and longer to arrive. I’m already paying for my three-day weekend at work; but it was worth it. I must admit that I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time playing computer games on our new widescreen monitor. The wider display made some older games seem new again.

If possible, I have also developed even more distaste for spammers. On Saturday I inadvertently deactivated the spam filter for comments. In a matter of minutes, the moderation queue was overflowing. It’s a nuisance for real people, but the CAPCHA (code words) stops thousands of bogus comments on every post. I wish they would go away. Their advertisements never show up. They are just a waste of bandwidth and processing time.

P.S. California Girl is taking The Boy to a pre-graduation event. We plan to have our photo session when she returns.

If it seems to you I have not been not around blogland much except on weekends, it’s because that is the case. I already was working a lot before our hiatus; and the amount of work to be done has only increased since then. We’re nearing the finish line; but I still have a couple more weeks of long days. In the career I have chosen, the long days come and go. Unfortunately, I’ve been assigned to two projects whose success is vital to our business back to back.

I “like” being selected to work on high visibility projects because it’s an acknowledgment of my skills and accomplishments. But, I do need a low key project from time to time. The good thing about working on critical projects as opposed to low-key tasks with open-ended timelines is that, assuming you get finished on time and under budget, you don’t have to worry much about being laid off. The bad thing is that you end up surrounded by a lot of nervous directors and VPs. And, of course, there is that whole not spending enough time with your family thing. In a way, the other members of the project team and I are victims of our own success.

I’ve always been good at what I do and expect to succeed; so I don’t have a true understanding of what is like to be a chieftain and basically have your future in the hands of an extremely capable but very overworked and somewhat irritable project team. All they can do is watch and hope. I think I would be nervous too if I was in their position; but, as hard as it is to do, the best thing they can do is leave us alone to do our job. And feed us when it gets late.

When the long days and nights are over, I’m going to take some very well deserved time off and do something nice for the family. And California Girl and I will probably have some very “interesting” photographs for the blog.

Too Bad Its Monday. For a variety of reasons, Last week was a very trying week at work. I usually don’t let what goes on at the office leak into my private life; but this was one of those weeks where it did despite my best efforts. The weekend was good but I am dreading going to work, and not just in the usual way. I need a long vacation; and probably a new job.

I’ll be sure to stop by and catch up on everyone’s blogs when I get home on today.

The new computer we got the kids is finally set up and configured. I stayed up most of the night on Saturday installing and configuring software. It was supposed to be a belated Christmas present but I didn’t expect it to be nearly as late as it was. Despite “guaranteed 3-day shipping” everything didn’t finally arrive until late on Friday. So I couldn’t really get started until Saturday. And, when you keep computers for as long as we do, there are a lot of software and documents to migrate. We’ve got all of the CDs; but, because of the new OS, I spent a lot of time on the Internet looking for updates.

The kids were very understanding, but I wish everything would have arrived when promised. It was very frustrating to receive a box every day; but not get the most important pieces until last. Plus, California Girl and I got them things that wouldn’t run on their old computer for Christmas in anticipation of the new one. We did get them other gifts; but their “big present” was MIA for three long days.

And yes, we know, everything could have been avoided if we had shopped early. But, it’s hard to hide a computer. And, we’re very cost conscious and the best deals did not happen until very close to Christmas. This is the first time that they’ve ever gotten a brand new system rather than a hand-me-down; so they were excited. Especially since, unlike their old computer, it can run all of the latest games and software.

It’s been so long that I had an off day that I almost didn’t know what to do with it. I woke up around 9:30 for some Sunday morning fun with California Girl; but I didn’t finally get out of bed until almost 2:00 in the afternoon. I’ve been on critical projects with deadlines that require heroic efforts to meet before; but I can’t recall a time when so many things have been going on at once. I especially dislike working long hours around the holiday season. I know it comes with the job but, wrestling season is right around the corner and I’ve don’t plan on missing any of The Boy’s meets. It’s his senor season and I don’t want to miss a moment of it.

In case you were wondering, this is what I do on my day off. The picture is actually fro the last time I had a day off; but you get the point.

I haven’t replied to comments (and shouts) since last weekend so I’m going to do that. Then I’m going to go catch up on everyonne’s blog. If I get around to it later this evening, I’ll post a video that we made this afternoon.

And, before I forget, O-H-I-O!!!