C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 50

THey’re announcing Windows 10. I’m NOT impressed…

WE all get to wear silly glasses and wave in the air while staring off into imaginary space—just think of the oblivious walkers cellphones have given us. I’m sure that waving invisible objects into view and printing them will improve our computing skills and reorganize our databases without a single error. Better yet, we can 3-d print our silly waves into new artforms. Whoopee! I could only wish this were April 1—but I’m afraid they’re serious.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/21/techn...

It’s back. But guess what?

They completely ignored our letter telling them the mobo and usb board had been replaced less than a week before, replaced those, and shipped it back.

It naturally has problems, one of which is that Norton disappeared: they shouldn’t have touched that.

So I called repair again. An hour and a half on the line with one fellow—turned up the problem as related to need to set the usbs that draw power NOT to turn off after 5 minutes. Eh?

And apparently ‘power surge’ doesn’t mean power surge, it means—check your usb settings.

THis would be a software/setup problem. We adjusted it.

I proceeded to download Norton.

And started to restore my files.

Blue screen of death re a, yes, a conflict error…forget the exact terminology, but things weren’t matching up as they should. I note my system clock is some 2 hours and some minutes OFF. I call Dell. Get a different repair person.

Who updates a bunch of drivers and resets the system clock.

We are now downloading my files from Carbonite back onto that computer, and the word from Carbonite is, don’t turn off your computer and b) expect this to take ‘a few days,’ unquote.

Jane has had a mucky day of her own. I am not having a good one. I tell you, if I didn’t know a new system without such issues is arriving in a little more than a week, I’d be vewy, vewy angwy just about now, to quote Mr. Elmer Fudd.

It’s remotely possible that this machine will rise from the dead and perform immaculately, but after all that to-do, they send it back with a screwed up system clock and a protective program uninstalled? Yeah. I strongly suggested they send around a USB memo to the repair people online AND to their center down in Houston. I thought that was moderately phrased.

Well, they have found my computer. It was, at 3:05 am, still in the shop…

…but apparently being picked up, in Houston, and entering Fedex’s physical possession: these things are so nebulous in description it’s like subparticle physics…

It is by now probably at the Houston airport, a place I last saw during a hurricane…when wheel-chocks on cords were blowing straight out from the baggage truck…

I trust it is having a much saner takeoff and will be winging its way, likely via Salt Lake City, to Seattle, and back to Spokane by suppertime.

To be delivered tomorrow.

And….the tracking number on my computer’s Fedex return—doesn’t work.

Possibly it was sent way late on Friday and won’t enter the system until Monday morning. But shall we say the Vortex of Misfortune that has attended this computer is in full function?

Either it was just late getting in and I WILL get it Monday, or a) they’ve managed to screw up the shipping number and it goes to Cedar Rapids until they can find it again or b) the notice was bogus and they’re still working on it or c) nobody will ever see it again.

They say it’s fixed and on its way back—which we trust will be by air. ;)

Still working along on the older machine. And getting some progress.

It’s snowing. I made a run after some cat food, and a guy at the grocery just blithely flings his car door wide just as I pull into the next space. Fortunately I have good reaction time, and didn’t take his door off.

Ran into the guy in the supermarket in every single aisle. He’s dithering around, an obstacle in fairly narrow aisles. I didn’t say a word about the near miss–not even a cross look. Our paths cross and recross.

I check out. We both go out to our cars. Same time. We get in. I delay, since he’s to my right, thinking I’ll let him go out first.

He delays. I finally—gingerly and suspiciously—back out and get the heck away from him. I trust he got out ok.

Snowy days in Spokane. I swear people go on mental holiday when the snow flies, especially when it’s the first of a new stretch of snowy weather and people are out like squirrels stocking up on nuts for the new cold spell.

I wish the fellow luck.

And the computer has made it to Houston, been diagnosed, and repair…

…has started, according to the message. Whether this means they have a software or a hardware issue, we will not know perhaps until Monday. The Diagnosis phase on their graphic was a case of ‘blink and you’ll miss it.’ Whether it was that obvious, or whether they just started by wiping the drive and running tests, we do not know.

We still lean to problems with the camera. But hey, if they fix it, we hope it will be fixed for good and all. Yay to that notion.

I can say the new oven is doing very nicely.

I haven’t made actual baked mac and cheese in, well, forever, because it seems so small a thing to heat the big oven for.

But last night, yes: our family recipe: large elbow macaroni, boiled done, and colby cheese cut in small cubes. Pepper. A little salt, not much. I got this far when I recalled I had no milk in house—the recipe involves a half cup of milk. But hey, what is sour cream if not—? So I put sour cream and the cheese in the bottom of the baking dish, added hot macaroni, stirred with spatula, put shredded cheddar on top, popped into 350 oven for 30 min. Very nicely browned.

So far so good.

We’ve got lasagna for New Year’s Day.

I’ve got rezzes for New Year’s Eve at the Swinging Doors, our local pub. With a booth, thank you.

Doing just ok here!

jcrow, tried two different addys to say thanks! Both failed.

So thank you very much!

And the snow falleth….a lot of it…finally!

This morning was snowing dust, fine, fine stuff. Now it’s worked up to mid-sized flakes.

It’s so nice to have the snow. Along with it will come one day of ‘blowing snow’ and 3 degree temperatures…but still, I got that wonderful convection-thingie, and it does brown. We ordered an extra pizza two days before Christmas, froze one, and the frozen pizza (medium thin crust) fit the rack (it has 2) and cooked up crispy and sizzling without burning. This is auspicious. I’m thinking of other things I haven’t cooked in ages because firing up the big oven for 2 people seems so much—

Hamilton Beach 31103A Countertop Oven with Convection and Rotisserie is the one we got, and the price was in the range of a moderate microwave, cheaper than I would have thought.

Oh, thinking of recipes I haven’t done in years. Twice baked potatoes. Real mac and cheese. Nachos. Mmm.

We were headed for a party but…

We live on an arterial, a major road. And just as we’d gotten all dressed to go, a woman ran out of gas, on a low tire, right at our driveway. So we got her tucked into our driveway (with the help of two guys on the street) and gave her a place to put her car, which has a lot of problems, including a tire barely inflated. She said a person up the block has a check, ergo money, and somehow this is supposed to average out to her getting gas into the car and getting it moving—

I feel sorry for her, but this is a biggish city, and she’s not a neighbor, and we feel bad about not inviting her in, and taking care of her car, and all that, but it’s just too dangerous and the story is too weird. There’s a place we know in the direction she pointed as owing her a ‘check’ (which she was coming FROM, on that one-way street, not going toward) namely, right at the corner of the second street up, a house that for several years has been the subject of nearly nightly police attention, for fights, domestic violence, car theft, and various other complaints, so that did not increase our confidence in the story.

So we called our friends and said we’re not going to make it to the party. I’m sure there’s an entire novel buried somewhere in the story of why there’s a check owed in the wrong direction on the road and why she’s driving around in cold weather with no coat in the car, but so much of this just reads ‘wrong’ I’m not anxious to leave the place.