very simple

I think I’m really, actually, for real, no joke finally going home (at least for a few days) on Wednesday. I may need to turn around and be here again on Monday, or in London, but just to get out of this hotel room will be exalting (and seriously, I’m so staying at the airport Sheraton if I have to come back – I feel confident that they don’t charge 80 euros a day for wireless internet access). I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining too much, and it’s actually not the work that’s the problem (the work has been interesting, if very time-consuming). It’s really all of the circumstances at the margins. It’s certainly the hotel (which…I don’t want to get started again), the apparently totally anomolous rainy weather, that lovely flu bug thing I had last week, missing the entire fall lineup of new TV shows, missing major events in my friends lives, and not even having time to shop for myself, let alone gifts for anyone else (did I mention that everything around here is closed on Sunday?).

Oh, and my back totally misses both my new mattress and my aeron chair. And, while I’m normally a big fan of Italian food, I’ve seriously eaten enough pasta to last a lifetime. I want sushi. I’ve actually had a major craving for about a week and a half. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be heading downtown to yama wednesday night, no matter how tired I am.

On the flip side, I’ve become quite adept at typing out long e-mails on my blackberry. I think tonight I’m going to find a little outdoor cafe, have a glass of wine, and not think about work for a few hours.

So, this was a particularly crappy week. I managed to come down with some sort of flu/sinus infection thing where my entire head feels like it’s filled with cotton balls and I’m nauseous to boot. And it’s been raining for the whole week. And, even though I only worked four days last week because I took Tuesday off for Rosh Hashonah, I still managed to bill almost 70 hours through the end of Friday. Needless to say, I’m a little burnt out.

And the hotel isn’t helping. I’ve had a series of (relatively petty) problems since I’ve gotten here. I admit that most of them are petty, but over time, I’m beginning to think that someone is out to get me. It started with my "business-oriented" hotel having no idea how I could print a document my first week here. It took four hours to get it done, after I spent at least two of those hours moving my way up the chain of command trying to find out where the business center advertised on their website was. So that pissed me off.

My room key stops working every 2-3 days – they tried to use the excuse that if I keep it in my purse near a cellphone, it can become demagnetized. OK, fine. I won’t keep it in my purse. And then I noticed something – about two weeks ago, I was getting it fixed (again), and even though my reservation at the time was through October 3rd, they only reactivated it through September 30 (I watched the guy typing on the computer). I actually didn’t say anything at the time, because, who knows, I could have been wrong, but sure enough, September 30 arrives and my card doesn’t work again. So that was another thing that pissed me off.

Two Saturdays ago, I went to get breakfast at the hotel. Get a table in the courtyard, and sit there. and sit there. and sit there. I didn’t want to eat the buffet (frankly, I wanted an omelet), but I eventually (after about 20 minutes) got up and went inside to get some food because no one appeared to want to take my order. When I got back to my table, I then had to go find the maitre d’ in order to (finally) get a cup of coffee. Then the bees showed up. Needless to say, I got up and walked out of the restaurant without signing for my bill. This was the point when I went to the guest relations people and started to complain. Where they told me, a full week after my printer problem, that they were going to get me a printer in my room (first I had heard of this). I pointed out that it probably would have been more useful, like, 7 days earlier when I actually needed to print something (mind you, I still haven’t seen this mysterious printer).

They also, at that point, offered to change my room to one with a nice big patio (not a bigger room, mind you, I still trip over the furniture and have to work pretty much from bed). The patio is really nice to look at through my window and the pouring rain.

They also informed me at that time that the reason I couldn’t "find" the business center was because they had to close it. Apparently the Italian police have decided that there needs to be fairly significant security at any public access point (ID requirements and whatnot) because terrorists were using these public sites to plan stuff. OK, fine. But this hotel decides that they just need to close the entire business center (at least temporarily). Instead of, you know, just sitting some low-level staff member at the front door to make sure that anyone who wants to use the center has a hotel room key. Mind you, they don’t bother mentioning any of this when you make a reservation.

Ah.

So everything goes fine for another week, largely because I pretty much ignore everyone. Until Thursday, when I get back from a very long day of meetings at about 10:30 at night. I’m actually worried at this point, because I’ve been sick all day, but I’m now starving, and I know the restaurant closes at 11. So I run upstairs and call room service at 10:45 to order some plain pasta (because I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing I’ll be able to keep down). But according to the room service guy, the kitchen is closed, even though the book of information clearly says 11 p.m. So I call the front desk and ask to speak to a manager. The girl downstairs says she’ll have someone call me back right away. 10 minutes go by, and I don’t hear anything. So I go down to the lobby, book in hand, and find out that she’s gone home for the day, and there is no manager on duty. So I demand that the concierge call the manager at home, where he apologizes profusely but doesn’t actually do anything for me. I point out that the could send someone out to a restaurant that is still open (if I wasn’t sick I would have gone myself). Or, you know, let me into the kitchen and I’d cook myself dinner. I argue about this for 45 minutes, with everyone apologizing but not actually doing anything. When finally one of the guys says he’ll send someone out to get me some food (I’m pretty sure that they realized that I was just going to continue arguing about it until I got my way, in full view of all of the other guests, so they gave up). So I finally got some plain pasta at 12:45 in the morning.

OK. manager meets me on Friday to apologize, makes a joke about how they should just sell me my room at this point.

Great. Ok. At this point, nothing else could go wrong, right? I mean, I’ve had enough problems that now the manager is looking out for me personally, right? Plus, I’ve paid my bill to date, so that my office could reimburse me and I’d still have room on my credit card, so the hotel has almost $10K of my money already….

So let’s see what else happens….

Oh yeah, there was today. When I sent my laundry out.

And then got a call from the manager at 6pm saying that the laundry service had "damaged" my clothing. And not just once piece, but most of it. By pouring bleach into a load of laundry that pretty much consisted of black clothing (socks, underwear, cotton shirts). And some of it might have been shredded.

Now, of course they were happy to reimburse me. And that’s all fine. But now I needed to go out, on a saturday night, in the rain, with the goddamn flu, in order to have underwear to wear on monday to work. So I dragged a hotel employee with me, made them drive me around, and made them pay for everything up front because I refused to spend a dime. I was kind of a bitch.

While I was sitting in the lobby waiting to be taken around, I of course sent a very long e-mail on my blackberry to the hotel’s american headquarters, and made them all sit there and watch me write it. The manager thanked me for being so calm (i.e., not yelling). I actually had to point out that my anger had gone past the stage where I was even capable of yelling. I mean, this is supposed to be a 5-star hotel and they can’t even figure out how to wash a pair of socks.

I am just so ready to be back in new york. But I’m stuck here for at least another week. I’m hoping that I’ll at least get to go home for a few days at some point…I think even my boss, who was in town this week, recognizes how stressed out I’m getting. And it’s not just the work. Sure it’s frustrating and I’m working a lot of hours, but there are plenty of times when I’m home that I work like this as well. But there’s a support system I have in NY that I just don’t have when I’m four thousand miles away from my office, my family and my friends. Argh.

It’s been unusually rainy here. It’s rained at some point almost every day that I’ve been here. For the most part, it’s been at times that are OK (like 2 in the morning, when I’m asleep), or tonight, when I only had minimal exposure jumping from my taxi to the hotel doors, but on Saturday night, right at the point when I made my way to the bottom of the Spanish Steps to scout out a place for dinner, the skies opened up and just poured. I got drenched from head to toe in about 30 seconds. At which point I started making my way back up the steps.

Now, you have to understand that Saturday night was supposed to be this big festival in Rome – La Notta Bianca (white night). All the shops were staying open late, and they were having music and parties in all of the squares, including, obviously, mine. So the place was teeming with people. Wet, wet people. One group of whom started yelling at me while I was trekking up the stairs, soaking wet and still getting rained on, about why wasn’t I wearing a white shirt…(I should point out that these were not Italian guys, but definitely of the british hooligan variety). Oy. I thought I had reached the age where I no longer attracted (or whatever you want to call it) the youthful oglers, but apparently no age is too old, and no weather too unpleasant, for some segment of the male population to think it’s an opportune time for you to show them your…*ahem* (no need to encourage dirty google searches!).

So that was Saturday night. needless to say, I ordered room service when all was said and done.

I should say that I’ve been compiling a list in my head of all the things I swear I will never complain about when I get back to NYC (and which I will promptly forget about 3 seconds after getting back there)…

• the condition of the paving of the streets and sidewalks
• the width of the same
• the "out of control" drivers, including the drivers of the taxis that I am in
• parking
• traffic (did I mention that I got to experience the wonders of a transportation strike today?)
• street vendors
• tourist trap scam artists
• the size of my apartment (which is a palace compared to the ‘european sized’ hotel room I’ve been in for the past week
• the channels that I get on my TV when I stay in a US hotel (seriously – I have the CNN International lineup memorized at this point)
• the size of my office (ok, I never actually complained about it before, because I have one of the biggest associate offices on my floor (it’s a quirk of the building layout – basically they couldn’t fit another office in, so each of the two "end" offices on each side of the floor, right next to the giant corner partner offices, are a little bit wider than everyone else’s), but I appreciate it all the more after working in a cube for all of 3 days)
• the speed of my home/work internet connection
• the clearly defined rules for walking down the sidewalk, crossing the street, driving, etc.
• red lights and don’t walk signs
• elevators that are big enough for two people
• the price of diet coke (my hotel seriously charges 6 euro for one – that’s, like $9 for a can of soda – needless to say I’ve switched to espresso, which might be why I haven’t fallen asleep until 2 in the morning every night I’ve been here)
• the fact that my office stays open 24 hours (I worked at the client’s office late last night, and when I got downstairs discovered that the building had been locked, with me inside, but with a "visitor" ID card that only works during regular business hours, and no one in sight – luckily, after about 10 minutes, someone else who actually works there, who spoke english helped me out)
• public transportation

I think of new things every day too…this isn’t to say that it isn’t absolutely beautiful in this city (it’s frankly one of my favorite places I’ve ever been), and I’m in awe of the sheer amount of history everywhere I go. And I could compile a list of things the Italians do better than us as well (I so want a smart car), but right now I’m craving sushi, bagels, diet coke and HBO. And traffic lights (really – there’s one point on the route back to my hotel that involves a major four way intersection, where the only way to navigate is for my taxi to basically push its way through the continually streaming traffic going perpendicular to us – no stop signs, traffic lights, or anything – my heart ends up in my throat on a daily basis).

And by "done", I mean "livable". not actually "done" done. The plumber was supposed to come today to hook up the bathroom sink and shower, thereby making it habitable. When i stopped by tonight after work, the bathroom sink was sitting in the middle of the bedroom, and only part of the shower fixture had been installed.

So i call the plumber to find out what happened, and he’s all…"the tile wasn’t glued in, grouted, blah blah blah and I can’t install anything until it is". I ask if he spoke to the painting contractors, and he’s all "the only people there were the "kitchen guys". And i say, "[plumber], the "kitchen guys" are the painting contractors – you’re telling me you were both in the same apartment for hours and you didn’t say one word to them?"

So I call giuliano to find out what happened, and giuliano says that the "plumber is a jackass", that he didn’t actually show up until 3:30 in the afternoon (mind you, all work must stop by 5 p.m. according to condo rules), and giuliano was waiting for the plumber to get his shit together before he regrouted, so that he could regrout around the new fixtures.

So the result of all of this? I have two contractors who are more interested in passing blame at the moment than actually getting the apartment done (I’m right now leaning towards placing more blame on the plumber myself, because…3:30? really? It’s just not physically possible to get the work done in that amount of time in the best of circumstances). And I get to sleep on an air mattress in my parent’s spare room for at least another week, since I also can’t clean all of the dust and debris out of the new place, being that there’s still no freaking water!!! (not to mention that they’re still working, so cleaning a bunch of stuff that’s just going to get covered in new contractor grime on Monday is not exactly at the top of my list). My favorite part was where the plumber’s all "the toilet works!". And I’m all, (a) the toilet is the only piece of equipment that wasn’t replaced, so it damn well should work, and (b) I can’t exactly get ready for work monday morning with just a toilet and no other water fixtures.

But the best part? my brother comes home on monday. Which I’m actually quite excited about, because this is the month he’ll be home before going into the Peace Corps for the next two years, but it’s going to get really old really fast if there’s now a fourth person trying to share the one shower in my parents’ apartment in the morning. I think he’s planning on going up to the country first, so that may ease the overcrowding. 

Rick posted in comments the other day that my moving/renovation saga was better than a soap opera. heh. he spoke too soon. After my PC Richards episode on Tuesday, I continued to pack for my move on Wednesday afternoon. Let’s just say that it didn’t go too well. I sent an e-mail to my stepmother later that night, and I think it captures better what went on than I can recall at this particular point, so I’ll just copy the relevant portions here:

Oy…today was pretty much a mess. The movers showed up late and didn’t have the insurance information that I told the company about at least 5 or 6 times (including calling the other day to check that it was done). And the crew supervisor was a complete asshole (to both his crew and to me), and refused to move my second TV, even though it was on the inventory list. [not only that, he was a jerk in a way that bled time all over the place – thereby aggravating me further – every five minutes he would stop what he was doing to tell all the guys on the crew what they were doing wrong, then he would undo their work and redo it]. So the Company has to send another crew to my [old] apartment in the morning at 8am (because I refuse to allow this supervisor within 100 feet of me) to pick up all of the stuff this guy just decided he was too good to move, then move me in in the morning. Meanwhile, most of my stuff is sitting on a truck somewhere. So I actually haven’t moved in yet – I actually had to go out and buy clothes at the gap, since they packed my overnight bag, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if they, you know, had moved me in today.

This was after, of course, PC Richards totally screwed up their delivery yesterday, showing up two hours late, after Giuliano had to make an executive decision to paint the floors so they would be dry by today for the move (heh). So they’re coming tomorrow again.

So of course, the morning crew didn’t show up until 8:30, even though I dragged myself down there from the upper west side to meet them at 8. Conveniently, PC Richard showed up at the new place about five minutes after I did, so the appliances got moved in before all of my stuff. not so conveniently, my entire apartment is filled to the rafters with furniture and boxes, because the contractors were still tearing up the kitchen floor that morning as well.

Anyway, the PC Richard guys get there, and I look at the invoice, which says "refrigerator–white". so they have to open the box before I’ll let them take it off the truck to show me that it’s actually titanium. So they drop off the appliances, walk out the door, and I notice that the side of my range box says "black". So I go running downstairs to literally run across 72nd street, to chase the now-moving truck, because they’re not going anywhere until they can confirm that it’s actually a stainless steel range sitting inside the box (of course it turns out to be fine). The only problem PCR seems to have is with their labeling system.

At this point, all of my stuff is in the apartment, but I can’t unpack anything because there’s nowhere to put anything. Giuliano stopped by today to help me move the appliances into the kitchen, but then we realized that the boxes took up as much space as the appliances themselves, and they can’t be thrown out until Monday (we need freight elevator access). But one of the maintenance guys in the building managed to snag me a bunch of subway tile from an upstairs apartment that’s being gutted, so my bathroom will be able to get done by mid-next week, which means that I may be able to start actually living there by the end of next week. I’m currently staying at my parent’s new place, which isn’t exactly a hardship, other than the fact that I’m living out of a suitcase.

I took a bunch of pictures, but just realized that the cord I need to download them to my computer is packed somewhere.

On Monday morning, I tried to postpone my move, but the moving company was having none of it, being that it’s the end of the month, in the summertime, when, apparently, everyone in the city is trying to move at the same time. So my contractors have been totally busting their asses trying to get my floors sanded, painted and varnished (and dry!) in time for tomorrow afternoon, because, really, if the floors are done it’ll make moving so much easier.

On top of everything else, my appliances are supposed to be delivered today. and the store is one of those places where you have to call in the morning and get your estimated delivery time. So I call this morning and get a time of 10:45 to 2:45 today. Okay, fine. I call my contractor, who says that’s fine – they’ll hold off on painting the living room floor until 3pm, let that dry, and then varnish it in the morning – the varnish takes about 2 hours to dry, and since my movers aren’t coming until the afternoon, it works out perfectly.

Except for one thing. 2:45 rolls around and the delivery guy is nowhere to be found. I call the store, and am told that "I’m the next stop and he’s on his way". Finally, 4:00 rolls around, my contractor (Giuliano) calls to tell me that they had to go ahead and paint the floors even though no one has shown up, and they were leaving since they couldn’t walk around the apartment anymore (obviously). (You have to also understand the tone of these conversations – Giuliano is Italian, and speaks with an incredibly thick accent – I can’t understand half of what he says, and I’m pretty sure that he can’t understand me half of the time. So most of our conversations involve us shouting at each other, not because we’re arguing, but because we’ve become so consumed with over-enunciating everything that we turn into caricatures – I’ll just speak louder and that’ll make it easier for him to understand me. Oh, and we’re both on cellphones, so the ugly *loud* cellphone talking voice doesn’t help things along either. The flip side? he does such beautiful work that I actually started crying with joy the first time I saw the bedroom painted.)

So I call the store, where they claim that the guy showed up at, like, a minute after 4. Where he was turned away by the doorman because (surprise!) my floors were wet. I, of course, immediately launch into argumentative lawyer mode, blame the whole thing on the store (it was because they showed up so late that my guys had to paint the floor ahead of them, blah blah blah). In the end, not only did they agree to redeliver for free on Thursday morning, including getting me first priority on the 9am truck, they’re refunding my delivery fee for today. Given that Thursday’s probably a better day for everyone anyway, that turned out well.

In the meantime, I actually had to go this morning and buy more boxes. And that’s with throwing out about 10 big black reinforced Hefty bags full of trash in the last two days. I swear, one of these days I’m going to turn into the Collyer Brothers. 

Of all of the myriad of problems about my current apartment that I have not discussed before, one of them is the blackouts. The 11th and 12th floors of my building (I’m on 11) run off of a particular building circuit down in the basement, which trips on a regular basis. It’s been doing so since April. The only person who has access to the electrical panel, which is under lock and key, is the Super, Mario (and yes, we’ve all made the requisite Nintendo jokes already). The power has gone out, pretty much at least once a week, going on 3 months now. This week, it went out on both Monday night and Tuesday night. Monday wasn’t so bad – Mario was home so it was back on in about 15 minutes. But last night? was the last straw.

See, part of what happens is that the power in all of the apartments goes out, but the hallways, which are apparently on a different circuit, stay on. So everyone stumbles around their apartments to open the front door so that it’s not quite so dark. And then we all hang out in the hallway creating, essentially, a mob effect. Well, last night? 15 minutes go by and Mario is nowhere to be seen. I try calling both his home phone and his cellphone, and get voicemail in both places. I try buzzing the doorman but get no answer. So I finally trudge downstairs to ask the doorman what’s going on. First, apparently our buzzer system is broken, which they didn’t bother to tell any of the tenants about (brilliant!! so much for, you know, security!). Second, apparently Mario is "out". And no one else can fix the problem. So we’re all stuck in our non-air conditioned apartments (did I mention that it’s been in the 90s, with about 120% humidity all week?). Doorman claims that Mario will be back in "5 minutes". 20 minutes go by while I’m standing in the lobby. Mario finally shows up, to, now, a mob of angry tenants all hanging out downstairs.

When he finally comes upstairs to check the second panel (which is on 11), I mention that maybe, just maybe, it’s time to call ConEd. He shoots back that it’s not a ConEd problem, it’s a building problem, and over the past two months he’s made repeated requests of the management company to hire an electrician to fix the problem, but doesn’t seem to get any response. Maybe if we all called in the morning, we’d have better luck…

So at 10 this morning, I call Windsor. Finally get transferred to someone who knows what’s going on – apparently I’m the fourth person to call (go neighbors!). She responds to my questions with a very chipper "well, you’ll be really happy to know that we’ve scheduled an electrician for Friday morning." I, of course, respond in my total bitchvoice (trust me, I’ve got one – it’s the one that I use when I know better than to yell at the customer service people, but want to really convey my aggravation), questioning why they didn’t hire someone when Mario first alerted them to the problem, months ago, as opposed to waiting until they got a whole bunch of phone calls from pissed off tenants.

She then jumps down my throat not to use "foul language" with her. I am actually at a loss as to what she is referring to. Apparently in her really tiny little world, no one should ever say "pissed off". I mean, come on. If part of your job is dealing with angry tenants who have problems, in the notoriously ugly New York real estate environment, you really need a slightly thicker skin than that. So, in the interest of helping her along, I responded,

"I’m sorry, but ‘pissed off’ is not foul language where I come from. Now if I had said that I was ‘fucking pissed off’, that would be foul language."

She kind of backed down at that point, even though she had no answers for me. I also, of course, pointed out that while I have no more rent to pay (and hence, had none to withhold next month), I was not averse to explaining to all of my neighbors (perhaps during the next blackout!) what an implied warranty of habitability is.

But the best part? I get home tonight to a flyer in the building stating that the electrician is coming between 7 and 10am tomorrow, and all electricity in the building will be shut off during those hours. Way to inconvenience your tenants even further! I’m fairly certain that those are the hours in which the greatest number of people in the building are trying to get ready for work.

Assholes.

So…after a week and a half of working OK, I went to check my e-mail this morning and discovered that my hard drive (yes, the new hard drive they put in the computer two weeks ago), was failing (as in, not booting, not being findable, and making weird "chirping" noises). So I got dressed, packed up the computer in a trash bag, and went to stand in the rain in front of TekServe until they opened at 9am. Where I proceeded to kind of lose my shit. The intake guy was kind of a jerk to begin with – when I pointed out that maybe, just maybe, they installed the drive incorrectly (because, really, it’s kind of impossible that this many parts can fail quite this much), he gave me this completely condescending tone and look and said that it was impossible that they installed it wrong. Impossible. So I refused to speak to anyone but the manager at that point. Where I relayed my entire travail.

And told them that I wanted a new computer at this point. That I wasn’t putting up with this anymore. Manager told me that they weren’t authorized to do something like that, but I was welcome to call Apple directly and talk to them.

So I left the computer and went to work (after, yes, getting on the subway in the wrong direction, because I was just that discombobulated). Got two phone calls from the store, one from manager guy to just give me an update, and one from the new tech, who actually left me a voicemail that said "we’ll try to get a new cs number from Apple, otherwise I’ll let you know how much this is going to cost". So I promptly called back and left him a voicemail that strenuously pointed out that under no circumstances was I paying for anything relating to a week-old defective hard drive that they installed.

When I got home tonight, I decided it was time to call Apple. And after pleading my case (twice, because I actually got disconnected while getting transferred during the first call forcing me to call back and wait on hold for another 20 minutes), I got through to the customer relations department. Where they agreed to send me one of these. I actually opted to pay an extra $200 to upgrade to the dvd-burner, and this replacement requires me to send back my G4 before it’ll ship (which means going tomorrow morning and getting it back from the store). But I’m in a much better mood now. Given my upcoming move, it’s getting shipped to my office, where I’ll probably just drag it to the new place when possible…

How about that. All it takes to get a free shiny new computer is three months of aggravation, frustration, lost files, and $1000 in warranty-covered replacement parts.

Oh, and the previous three entries in the blog weren’t backed up, so I had to manually recopy them to my laptop – if you linked to any of them, you’ll need to update the links.

I recognize that I’m a particularly heavy and aggressive computer user, and that as a consequence, I’m likely to experience more than my fair share of technology-related problems (hey, if you only turn on your computer once a month, it’s that much less likely that it’s going to crash, right?). But lately, it’s like I’m cursed.

I didn’t write about this on Saturday, when I was in a much rantier mood, but the cable company managed to screw up my service appointment. The one that the technician made the week before. As I mentioned earlier, he had managed to fix my immediate problem by replacing my modem and reconfiguring the wiring, but there was a "signal bleed" problem in the trunk line to my apartment. So he called it in so that it could get replaced because he couldn’t take down the molding by himself, and let me know that a "team" would be showing up on Saturday to fix it.

So Saturday rolls around, and guess what? One guy shows up. And as he’s walking to the door, he’s already telling me that the job got misclassified as a regular service call. And it wouldn’t be getting fixed today. Now note, I, personally, don’t have any service problems at this point. The sole reason that I sat around all day on Saturday was so that they could access the end of the trunk line that enters my apartment. I was essentially doing them a really big favor. So, of course, I feel I deserve some sort of compensation from the cable company for my time, inconvenience, aggravation, etc.

I get on the phone with customer service guy, who proceeds to explain to me that they *never* give billing credit to customers unless the service person fails to show up. And since the service person showed up (albeit a completely useless person), I have no claim. Oh, and it’s somehow my fault that they misclassified the call because I was apparently not specific enough. Mind you, I never spoke to them. I just stood next to the technician as he made the appointment. And he was very specific (I mean, if it was handle-able by an individual technician, he would have just done it himself).

So I get the supervisor. Who, after I posit my argument that technically I was entitled to a month free under their policy because they failed to send a technician who was actually qualified to fix my problem, that I wouldn’t be receiving the correct service within the four hour window, eventually agreed and I’m getting a $145 credit (and yes, that is what my monthly digital cable/dvr/road runner package costs).

Oh, and when I finally get the call to reschedule, again, they claim they don’t need access to my apartment. which is funny, because the line actually runs through a hole in the wall from the hallway above my front door, and then gets connected to my "internal" line – I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

On the iMac front – I spoke to the tech today, and they’ve now also replaced the entire hard drive, as well as the cable that connects the hard drive to the logic board (they couldn’t figure out which was causing the latest problem). I’m guessing that they just had a loose connection after installing the new logic board, but I’m not going to argue with a new hard drive. At this point, the tech pointed out to me, the only parts they haven’t replaced are the screen and the power source. It was actually all fixed last week, but they hadn’t called me because they decided to just run the computer continuously for a few days to avoid the whole problem of my bringing the computer home only to have it fail the next day. I’ll hopefully be able to pick it up tomorrow. I still think giving me a new G5 iMac would have been cheaper, but since I didn’t pay for any of this, I don’t really have grounds to argue.

So, i left work early today to take the iMac into tekserve (again). Normal wait, I was somewhat amused by the guy who kept interrupting the service people wondering why he had to wait so long (I guess he didn’t understand the whole "take a number" system. or the fact that the more he bugged the people, the longer it was going to take for his number to be called). Around 6:30, one of the guys starting pre-screening those of us who were left. He gets to me, and I go through the whole spiel, and the girl sitting next to me just looks at me and says "oh my god. now even I feel bad making you wait". So my number finally gets called, and the helper guy gets to see my blank screen. which isn’t even blank – instead of a grey apple, it has a grey symbol that looks like a no smoking sign without the cigarette. And that’s all it’ll do.

So he goes into the back to talk to the tech guys about the work they had previously done. About 10 minutes later he comes back and just gives me this look, and says "one of the guys looked like he was about to cry when he found out this machine was back". Apparently, in their attempts to fix it the first time, they had actually installed three separate optical drives before it started working again (at which point, I mention that maybe that was a sign that it actually wasn’t the optical drive), and with this new problem, it was now officially the worst system failure that they had ever seen.

I guess I should be impressed that I’m not mediocre, at least.

I again (half jokingly) suggested that I deserved a new computer at this point. Service guy didn’t laugh – he just gave me a sympathetic look that seemed to say that he pretty much agreed with me. I mean, given that it’s already gotten $800 worth of new parts, and is looking at a possible hard drive replacement (and who knows what else), in the end it may actually be cheaper to just hand me a new G5 iMac. Cheaper for Apple, I mean, since I’m not paying a dime for any of this.

I do have the powerbook, so it’s not like I’m computer-less, but it’s not the same. Heck, the powerbook is actually faster, because it’s 2 years newer than the iMac. But the tiny 12-inch screen is doing nothing for my nearsightedness, and I find myself propping it up on boxes on my desk to get it anywhere near an ergonomic viewing level. I really only bought it for travel and whatnot, but it was never intended to be my main computer.

And this’ll be yet another entry that none of you actually get to read for a day and a half, since the time warner guy isn’t coming until between 2 and 6 tomorrow. There’s a waste of a perfectly beautiful day (after our recent heat wave, it’s actually going to be 77 and no rain all weekend).

In other news, I’m already a fifth of the way through the current book that I’m reading. So that’s something.