Oct 08 2009
A Girl Walks Into a Bar
They say that geniuses are seldom found behind bars, but they are in the the Apple stores.
Tech tard that I am, I was having problems transitioning my new email address to my Mail program (I hate webmail), along with a couple of other things I wanted to have fixed before I vanish into obscurity. So I made an appointment at the Apple store in Emeryville to get things fixed.
The Apple store was bustling, and I was glad that I had made an appointment, since those who hadn’t were being turned away in droves. As I waited, I had time to admire all the shiny new products, and think how nice it would be to have a wafer thin MacBook Air, or a shiny silver PowerBook. I have to admit that my iBook looks a little dingy next to the new kids on the block.
My problems were fixed in an embarrassingly short time. If they weren’t so busy, they’d probably have laughed at me. One more thing to cross off the To Do list.
Meanwhile, another girl was having the opposite experience.
The satellite internet was scheduled to be set up at my new house this afternoon. Instead, they called my sister yesterday morning, just as she was drifting off to sleep after the third of her twelve hour night shifts was over for the week. They told her that they’d be there in two hours. She designated her husband to deal with it, and went back to sleep.
When the installer showed up, he informed my brother-in-law that he’d need to install a pole and embed it in concrete to hold the satellite dish. He said that they’d have to pay for that up front, since the pole person was an independent contractor and not part of the internet company. Note that they did not mention this when the appointment was booked, or two hours earlier when they called to say they were en route.
Fortunately, Rob figured out a way to fasten the dish to the roof (where there is already a dish for the TV, so what’s up with the whole pole thing?). However, the installers did not bring a modem or router, so who knows if it even works. All that annoyance for nearly nothing.
I have a call in to our IT person about it, and it looks like I’m heading up there for a couple of days next week, so hopefully I can get it all straightened out before Moving Day. Less than two weeks away!