I told Michaela about my phone, and about the problem coming up within hours of an OS update. She told me I should make an appointment at the Apple Store. So I did. The appointment-making process involved my telling the operator about what had happened, and sharing my frustration about the fact that it had happened THREE DAYS after the warranty expired. She transferred the call to a supervisor, who agreed to place a note on the appointment authorizing warranty treatment. I had taken the phone out of its protective case, and when the senior adviser asked me once again about the symptoms I pressed the button on top.
Wonder of wonders, it responded! Now, true, it responded with an icon indicating the battery charge was at zero, but I plugged it into the charger, and it started charging. Four percent later, it turned on and booted up. Well, that’s cool and all, but this episode had made me apprehensive about trusting the phone, so I decided to keep the appointment.
Well, I got to my appointment half an hour late, but they set me up with a representative anyway. The representative ran a diagnostic, and it came up entirely devoid of insight into the problem. Still, based on some doctrine that intermittent problems turn into frequent problems, which turn into total device failure, he replaced the phone.
My medication of choice and necessity is generic sumatriptan. I’ve had good luck with several of the triptans, but this is what’s cheap and effective right now. There are several other drugs in this class - eletriptan (generic), Imitrex, etc. Good luck, and don’t ask hillbilly doctor to whack you in the nuts just yet.
I had a similar problem with a MacBook several years ago, and fixed it by removing the battery for a few minutes, then putting it back in. Probably the battery going dead in your phone allowed whatever bits in memory were causing the boot to hang to reset to zero. Nice that you got a new phone, it could have kept happening anyway.
Where I used to work we wouldn’t charge the customer if the failure occurred within a month of warranty expiration, unless they clearly did something to cause the problem. People remember when you give them a break.
I’m thinking this is more of a full rant, but here goes. So my fiancee’s company wants her to travel to Ohio to train some employees in an office there. That’d be fine, except after hemming and hawing about it for literally months, they want her to go with just a couple weeks notice. Not great behavior on the company’s part but not in itself a huge issue. The problem is that they want her to fly on Labor Day (normally a paid holiday for her) and we already had a road trip planned, non-refundable hotel (because hey, it’s only two weeks away) booked, and so on. This is a major problem. Now, I’ve managed to purchase travel insurance before the schedule is official, so hopefully if it comes to it we’ll recover most of the cost. In my opinion, being told to work on a official company holiday counts as a change to approved time off. But it’s complete crap to suddenly expect your employee to fly–especially when hourly–on a paid holiday for your convenience. Her boss is apparently even waffling on how or even if she’ll be compensated for the loss of a paid holiday.
Hopefully they’ll come to their senses and let her fly on Tuesday. But they’re already complaining about the flight time and lack of flights between Albuquerque and Columbus. Anyone who knows anything about air travel in this country would have known that a connection is almost mandatory. Not to mention the two-hour time change making it even more of a lost day.
I really wish she’d just quit if she hates her job this much. But she’d rather be miserable and blame me than change.
We’re transitioning from paper records to web-based. The workers expected to learn the new system can barely figure out how to check their email. It is not going well.
And a coworker from another department saw me in the kitchen (brewing coffee, it’s always a bad idea to engage me before coffee), trying to make benign conversation I guess, reminded me that the three Clinic admin people are stuck in one office together. “How are things in your dinky office?” she says. “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s not like I’m going to come upstairs and work next to you.” I said. There may also have been a laugh and a “fuck off” in there at the end. Hey, you’re gonna remind me, especially before coffee, that I’m stuck in this little office with two other people, you’re gonna get a grinning but hostile response.
On a whim, I took my daughter and her ancient dead iPod into an Apple Store, and the Genius Bar dude pulled an identical one out of the back room and handed it to us, no charge.
I asked him how the hell they could have the exact same six-year-old model AND give it to us for free. Guy pointed at the sign over his head and said “Hey, I’m a genius…”
I said “Y’know, that’s good marketing. She’s going to need a laptop for college and I think you just made her decision easier.”
“Jeeves learns of the secret phrase* ‘I know all about Eulalia’* and tells it to Bertie as a way to keep Spode from beating the latter ‘into a jelly’.”
Here, do watch Hugh Laurie evade certain death:
From the plot to the Wooster & Jeeves novel “Jeeves Saves the Cow-Creamer”. Bertie is saved by saying *“I know all about… Eulalia.” *
Spode, despite his murderous rage, is cowed into subservience, despite Bertie’s knowing nothing about the magic word at that point.
The plot, from Wikipedia:
Aunt Dahlia sends Bertie to “sneer” at an antique, silver cow creamer, in order to keep its price down. He accidentally brings the antique to the attention of rival collector Sir Watkyn Bassett, who buys it. Dahlia sends Bertie to get the creamer back at all costs. Jeeves steals the unique silver cow creamer, using it as the car/motor moscot and hiding it as a hood/bonnet ornament and radiator cap on Wooster’s car.
Sir Roderick Spode is appalled when he learns that Madeline Bassett is engaged to Gussie Fink-Nottle. Gussie is naturally terrified of Spode, and even the smallest misunderstanding will put his life in jeopardy. Spode has two jobs—he is the leader of the (manly, fascist-like) Black Shorts, a tiny group of teenage boys dressed in black shorts, but also designs and sells women’s underwear, being the proprietor of a lingerie shop called Eulalia Soeurs. He is perpetually in fear that his followers in his first role will discover his second one and it is the threat of this disclosure which is used by Jeeves to stop him assaulting Bertie. Jeeves reveals the secret pseudonym “Eulalia” and finds a way of keeping Spode from beating Bertie into a jelly.
I notice that other sources, and Mr Laurie, say “Eulalie”… oh, piffle.
I predict this will someday inspire a MPSIMS thread: “Doper names you assumed you understood”.
…wherein we learn that Walken After Midnight has never listened to Patsy Cline, Happy Lendervedder is, in real life, Rarely Amused Lendervedder, Little Nemo has never heard of the comic strip, Covfefe had that user name since the AOL days, and Bricker is unaware of the tradition of forming clay into rectangular building blocks.
Today was good for four middle fingers on the “this day was not worth getting up for” scale.
Before lunch.
Finger #1: bus drivers in this area seem to consider the schedule a suggestion. This has resulted in my being late for work twice in two weeks (once being today), when the bus I HAD depended on to get me to the train I needed on time decided it’s going to run ten minutes later than published schedule. This is now consistent for this bus. I will now have to add ten minutes to an already two-hour commute to get a different bus to the train.
Finger #2: just as I was ending a call, my phone rebooted itself. When it came back up, necessary software on my actual computer refused to work, forcing me to reboot that, then get sup help to get everything back on track.
Finger #3: Caller with limited English fails security verification. Asks for interpreter in her primary language. This is great with me, since we’ll communicate better. Until she still can’t pass verification. This forces all three of us (caller, interpreter, and me) to contact the protection department. Agent there wants me to stick with the call so I can help the caller once protection agent gets security under control. Caller is rather repetition-prone and argumentative. The four of us finally get things under control, then once protection leaves the line, caller changes her mind about what she needed in the first place. This call ran AT LEAST 30 minutes (I’m afraid to find out for sure just how long it was). I’m very surprised a supervisor did not show up at my desk to check in.
Finger #4: Not long after the multiplayer PITA, someone calls about a process that should have been completed for him by this point. Caller himself is civil, but a prior agent screwed up that process, and it will take a manager approval, that prior agent did not bother to request, to complete said process. All SIX supervisors are busy and cannot help me. Jump chain of command, stick head into grandboss’ cube. Get him to put appropriate notation of approval on account (thankfully, he is very amenable). Check in with caller, then contact another department. Annoying length of time and red tape later, process finally completed. Twenty minute call. At least.
My stats for today are hideous and I was so stressed out it took two chocolate bars and a dose of tyrosine to come close to calming down. Leaving at lunch and taking the attendance points was VERY tempting.
I just want to say that there is nothing you can purchase at Michaels that is more important that your infant who’s been crying for 20 minutes while you browse.
Thank you for reminding me I don’t have it all that bad. Between your commute and performance expectations breathing down your neck, I don’t know how you keep your sanity.
You know that commercial that has all the people wearing T-shirts that say what they smell like? “Just microwaved fish”, for example. Well, I have no sense of smell, so that commercial really feeds my paranoia.
If I had one of those T-shirts today, it would say, “Cleaned up mass quantities of dog diarrhea when I went home for lunch”. :mad:
Also, something went wrong with my work computer, and it’s fixed now, but everything LOOKS DIFFERENT and all my bookmarks are gone. This is worse than dog diarrhea.
I’d take a work computer that makes me use AOL on Windows 3.1, and then explodes, showering screws and sparks over every cubicle, setting everyone’s hair on fire … especially problematic because Marcia soaks her bouffant in hair spray and it flashes into a fireball that sets every dried-out fern in the place alight which is all of them because the boss threatened to fire Ed if he didn’t water them but Ed hates his job so he’s done it twice since we spent good money on them but that’s moot because they’re useless now except as triggers for the sprinkler system… did you know that that water can get green and slimy if it’s not bled monthly… which is Ed again, but he’s in a fetal position knowing he’s out of a job and it feels like that slime that Nickelodeon used to pour on kids and I think I’m having an allergic reaction to whatever microbes are growing in that “water” but no time for that now because all of our papers are simultaneously burning and getting soaked and now the huge commercial laser printers just shorted out and there are black oily clouds of smoldering toner and Cheryl says she she has “non-smoking office” written into her contract and she’s yelling that she can sue and Sue, where is Sue we can’t find Sue but we’ve got to find the owner’s cat (don’t ask) as we evacuate…
over dog diarrhea any day.
I walked out our back door and this fell on me. We have a grape arbor attached to the sunroom. I guess something like this was bound to happen one day.
