FedEx Ground Sucks Rocks

There was a great deal on Dell last Wednesday for 1.5TB SATA Barracuda 7200.11 Internal Hard Drives for $99.  I couldn’t pass it up.  So I bought two of them.  They shipped them right away and they were due to arrive on Thursday.  Alas I couldn’t stay home that day, but I figured they would just try again on Friday because the shipment required a signature, it was over the price limit.

Apparently FedEx Ground is incapable of reading that requires a signature part.  They dumped the drives on my doorstep, which apparently some schmuck then stole, and then I have no drive.  I later look at the tracking status and see “Delivered.” I ask my roommate, “You see the box?” Nope.  I ask the downstairs neighbors, “Nope.” I call FedEx, who allegedly delivered it to the people next door that I do not know.

Really pissed off at this point, I call Dell.  I say, “This required my signature because it was over $200, yet they dumped it off on people I do not know allegedly.  This is unacceptable.” and they did the right thing, sending me two new drives overnight.

I sat home waiting today for them to arrive, expecting a doorbell ring and everything.  Except yet again FedEx Ground doesn’t ring the bell or get my signature, they just dump them on my front porch.  I just got off the phone with Dell letting them know that I have little to no faith in ordering anything of higher value from them delivered by FedEx because they’d probably dump that on my front porch too, leaving it for anybody to steal.

Seriously FedEx, what the hell.  You fail.

I hate widescreen monitors.

I’m sitting here looking at deals on LCDs because I’m thinking about picking one up for work for a few reasons.

• The one at work flickers constantly, which I’m starting to think is giving me fucking headaches.
• The one at work has a resolution roughly the size of a postage stamp.
• I’m used to having enough screen real estate to be able to have 1.5 billion windows open and not have them overlapping.

They won’t give me a LCD bigger than 19″ which is 1280×1024.  When you’re used to dual 20″ monitors, both at 1600×1200 for a total of 3200×1200, that’s… ok let’s be blunt here, fucking obnoxious.  So, I started looking at LCDs like the rest of the cool kids at work, trying to find one that’s relatively cheap.  You know, one that I wouldn’t overly care too much if it got pilfered at work and that would give me more screen for the buck that I could tolerate.

This apparently does not exist because every fucking LCD on the planet is widescreen.

You know what, fuck widescreen LCDs.  You lose the most important dimension, vertical.  I need that for doing actual fucking work on my computer.  Guess what people, some folks who use computers actually do WORK ON THEM.  We would like more vertical space to be able to do things like read code or see an entire fucking page in a spreadsheet.  And no, fuck you, I don’t want to flip the damned thing in landscape mode to be able to do it.  That’s bullshit.  Make some 4:3 monitors so real people can do some fucking work on their computers.  Not everybody uses their computers as cheapass entertainment systems to watch porn.

I used to be able to find and buy 4:3 LCDs at a decent price.  I own two of them.  I guess I’d better hope they last forever and never break because I will never be able to find a decently priced replacement for them at this rate ever again.

The washing machine followup

Cut to the repair people finally getting the part in.  Except the idiot who spent less than five minutes in my apartment looking at the washer after uttering the “why didn’t you call sooner” line ordered the wrong part.  Big surprise there right? The (different) guy who showed up with said wrong part is all apologetic about it since the part took FOREVER to come in in the first place, and he rush orders the right part.

A few days later yet another guy returns, with the correct part in hand, to attempt fix the machine. Except it doesn’t work.  He tries to put the part in, the door shuts, locks, and nothing happens.  Now mind you, at this point I have worked from home three days in the hopes these idiots will fix this washing machine so I can do laundry again, because at this point they’ve broken it so bad I can’t even wedge it shut and do laundry any more. My landlord is in a tizzy, and I suggest maybe at this point it might be cheaper to replace the 10+ year old POS than to fix it. He gives the idiotic repair people one more chance to fix it today, this time my roommate stays here to deal with them, and lo and behold, they finally do, having suddenly realized the LAST guy wired it up wrong like a moron. Five repair guys later, the thing works again.  Maybe they called in a priest to purge the demon from it.

Long story short, if you’re in the Boston area, I highly do not recommend American Appliance.  It took them from 12/30 until today (1/15) to fix this.

Earning my “engineering” degree.

Apparently the washing machine in our apartment should have “never worked” according to the repair man, who was about as useful as tits on a bull. “Why didn’t you call us when it happened!”  Gee, I dunno, because my landlord didn’t give me the number until Monday, when he said he was going to do it, and then suddenly decided I should do it.  Then you usefully all got sick the day you were supposed to show up, and then showed up the next day.  Go fig.

It’s going to take anywhere from three to five days to order the part (why would you keep spare parts on hand right?) to make it fully functional (but not anatomically correct, props if you get the reference here) so my roommate and I decided to improvise. Because seriously, we wouldn’t have tried to do laundry if we didn’t need to, right?

First, we were going to try to use the washing machine in the now vacant apartment downstairs only to find that the psycho had busted the knob on that machine. You can turn it just fine to select the cycle, but when you go to pull on it to turn it on, whoops, it comes right off! Not really wanting to be blamed for that, we decided to just skip that rats nest of fun.

Instead, we decided to just do this:

The machine flat out won’t run without the door completely wedged shut, which makes sense.  So now, it’s REALLY wedged shut.  Badabing.  No repeat of the other night’s debacle of suds everywhere.  No, I didn’t take a picture of that.  I was too busy cleaning it up.  I hate you, stop laughing. 

Anyway, back to laundry and making sure the door stays shut.  That’s right.  Ph33r the mad sk1llz.  W0rd.

You have got to be kidding me Blackberry.

I went into a Verizon store to play with a Blackberry Storm figuring the insanity surrounding them had probably died down a bit at this point and they may actually have them in stock.  Enh ok it’s not as bad as the reviews said and once I got over where to position my fingers, it was useable.  OK, I decide to get it and take it home and screw around with it for a few days.

I go, “Gimme phone I want to buy.”
They go, “You new customer?”
I go, “No. GIMME.”
They go, “No new customer, no phone til next Monday.”
I go, “Srsly?”
They go, “Srsly.”

Apparently, per Blackberry, unless you’re a new customer, you can’t get the new toy, even if you don’t actually own a Blackberry already because they’re greedy bastards and are trying to increase their revenues.  You have got to be fucking kidding me.  I’ve been with Verizon since 2001 and I can’t get a new phone because I’ve been with them for almost eight years?  I’m being punished for being a loyal customer?  Really?

OK.  Well, maybe I will like the HTC Touch Pro more then.  Kiss my ass Blackberry.

My week in brief. (Only not.)

Yes I switched to briefs from boxers. No, not really.

Anywho, I finally gave up the ghost and went to the doctor about my never ending sinus infection. Shockingly, she diagnosed it as a sinus infection. Egads, the shock. I’m back on my usual horse pill antibiotics three times a day for it. The fun of this round is that apparently along with this sinus infection it needed to go pay a conjugal visit to my right ear and give me the first (middle) ear infection I’ve had since I was about six. (I probably shouldn’t have called upon the evil that is banana phone earlier this week, I brought this upon myself. ) The downside of said ear infection is anything heavy on bass, or apparently anything with a fan in it, makes my head throb like mad. I was supposed to be at a Nine Inch Nails concert tonight, right now as a matter of fact, but seeing as how they’re NiN and all, not so much without my head exploding. Which really makes me unpleased because I had been looking forward to it for a while. Sigh.

I also got to do another sleep study this week courtesy of my neurologist thinking it might tell her why I’ve been having metric butt-tons (it’s a real measurement, look it up) of headaches. I was oh so gung-ho about it, because the first one was tons of fun, not, but whatever. Now, if you’ve never done one of these, they hook probably around thirty, yes THREE ZERO 3-0, wires to you to do these measurements and plug them into a box that looks like so.

Isn’t it great? That sits next to your head all night. One moment… Photoshop interlude. (Interlude music.)

This is from my cell phone with my trying to juggle that box at the same time, so my apologies for the “quality” here, but the arrows indicate where all the wires are. The one pointing to the top of my head actually has two up there, there are ones behind both of my ears, and a temperature sensor under my nose looped behind my ears, ergo my glasses at a fun angle. I should’ve worn my contacts. I had a band around my boobs as you can see, and another around my stomach and one sensor on each leg as well. There were more sensors on the back of my head too but they’re obfuscated by my wall’o'hair. Oh hey oops I missed two more on the top of my head here.

The red crap they used to mark up on my head where to put the sensors surprisingly took only three scrubbings to get off. Yay. How they expect any human being to get any sleep with this many wires attached to them is beyond me. Let us not forget the in room cameras and the intercom. Those were fun too. I got woken up at 5am and sent home, and as soon as I got here I went back to sleep because I didn’t really get much while I was there. Dopey me should’ve set an alarm clock because next time I woke up it was 11:30. I fail. However, losing a bunch of weight since the last sleep study apparently eliminated my mild sleep apnea that I’d had so huzzah for that I guess.

My downstairs neighbor is crazy.

No. Seriously.

The first thing she complained about was that when we had people over we were somehow “blocking her in” in the driveway and she couldn’t get out. OK, whatever. If she ever left her apartment, which she never does, she could just knock on the door and ask us to move. No big deal. Let’s not talk about the scrape on the side of my car from the maneuver I had to perform once to get around her van parked in the place she insists is not a parking spot, ok?

Then came the insistence that my leaving trash bags outside of my back door for 20 or 30 minutes while cleaning so I could take them down at the same time was making her kitchen stink. Really. Hrm. Why are you wandering up the stairs to my door?  (Yesterday to be a smart ass I put one of those little stand air freshener things outside the door.  My roommate suggested I put a “please do not steal” sign on it.  I probably should have.  Read the next part.)

While I’m asking questions, why do you keep stealing the light bulbs out of the basement? Seriously. Who steals light bulbs? That’s just nuts. I’m assuming you need to see as well while you’re down there. Why would you take them?

Then there’s the passive aggressive notes insisting that we’re randomly running “machinery” late at night causing noise that makes humming that’s keeping her awake. Instead of coming up and telling us when it’s keeping her awake, she writes notes many days after the fact. Clearly that’s the best solution. The notes also insist that we’re playing video games at all hours, which during the week my roommate and I are both asleep by 1 am usually. We also apparently randomly hammer on walls all the time, and run around at all hours. I really want to know who she thinks is up here, because they’re clearly having way more fun than I am.

Apparently my loudly suggesting she actually come upstairs when this crap happens penetrated her thick skull, so she started doing so. Last night as a matter of fact. I was in the living room watching TV and my roommate was in the dining room working. I hear a “WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM” which is crazy downstairs neighbor for “I’m too lazy to come upstairs and complain that something’s making me crazier than normal.” Seeing how we weren’t doing anything, I ignored it. Fifteen minutes later, she gets off her ass and rings our doorbell. My poor roommate went to go deal with her.

“Something is making my whole room vibrate.” (I really don’t care mind you, but seriously, how could anything we’re doing upstairs cause that?)

“OK….”

“Are you running the washing machine?!”

“No.”

“The dishwasher?!”

“No.”

“I don’t understand! There’s something making my whole room vibrate! You can come into my apartment and see if you want!” I don’t blame my roommate for not wanting to go into that pit of doom and despair to witness this, because damn. Instead he suggested she come up here to try to determine exactly what the hell is making the vibration since neither of us were even on that side of the house.

In her infinite wisdom, apparently the humidifier was causing her problems and putting it on a book was going to make her whole life better.   Apparently she can’t deal with this “stuff” going on any more and that’s why she’s moving out.  It can’t be because she was served with an eviction notice or anything.  Naaaah.

Tangental thoughts #1351-#1353

1351.) If you are yelling at your children in the grocery store to NOT run around because they might run into people, perhaps you might want to pay more attention when you yourself are backing out of a parking space in the parking lot.  You might run into people with your truck.  Just a thought.

1352.) These are not helpful suggestions to someone who needs to give a reference to someone:

“Yes.  He smells like cheese.  I didn’t really want to try licking him to see if he tasted like cheese, however, because that seemed not appropriate for a non-hostile work environment.  The rampant profanity and calling him a cock-burglar seemed like a good idea at the time though.”

1353.) If you’re looking at two packages and one looks like it contains a lot more items than the other one, you might want to actually look at the weight on the package.  Wow, look at that genius, they’re two different weights.  Way to fail.

Chocojebus has forsaken me.

Something the crazy doctor people have put me on is making everything have a funky taste to me. In particular, a metallic taste. Generally, it’s not a very big deal because I don’t really notice it. Unfortunately I am noticing it with the one thing I tend to consume on a daily basis in mass quantity. Soda now tastes ickybad to me. Not in an “ew it’s flat” or “ew the seltzer is gross” sense but in an “ew this is the nastiest thing I have ever had the misfortune of tasting” sense. I’ve tried Coke Zero, Diet Dr. Pepper, Barqs and Canada Dry. They’ve all been terrifyingly bad, except the Canada Dry, which was only mildly perverted by the medications taste altering properties.

Orange juice seems unaffected by the taste change, as does coffee and tea, so I’m ok with caffeine and won’t get a raging caffeine withdrawal headache at least. The next experiment will be with flavored seltzer water, and if that’s equally craptastic, my poor roommate will end up drinking all of that too.

(Obrandom: Chocojebus is very real. Sacreligious and tasty! For more details check out  http://www.slashfood.com/2007/10/19/my-sweet-lord-chocolate-jesus-returns-to-nyc/ )

Ugh. My brain hurts.

So the neurologist had nothing particularly good to say to me.   I have been taking the edge off the worst of my headaches with ibuprofen, which may in fact, be exacerbating the problem.  (Oh yeah, I’m tired, look at that big SAT word.)  Being the genius I am, I stopped cold turkey.  Usually I can just ignore … tolerate… I dunno somehow deal with pain, but right now it’s not working so good.   I apologize in advance if I’m a royal pain in the ass, my brain hurts.

She added to the alphabet soup of medications I seem to be taking to try to make this crap stop, and is going to add a MRV too my MR* list.  I doubt it’ll find anything useful since nothing else did, but whatever at this point.  She is however doctor three on the list, which means if this is like anything else that’s ever wrong with me, it’ll magically go away any time now.  (Please?  That’d be nice.)