A Frustrating Day

It all began, actually, on Thursday. In early summer, while getting ready to leave for a visit to Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake, we realized Rocco, our big black alpha male cat, was not doing well. We ended up at the vets, and Rocco ended up being boarded there until our return. Lots of phone calls back and forth during our travels made it a bit difficult to completely lose ourselves in the vacation experience. Well, wouldn't you know, Thursday morning we noticed Gracie, Rocco's small and ditsy sister, had a swollen cheek and needed to be taken in to have what turned out to be an abscess lanced. Now we're giving her a series of antibiotic squirts of medicine to keep infection at bay; hopefully, she'll be A-OK by Monday ... That was Frustration Number One.

Then, around midnight on Thursday, Lee decided his new HP Mini netbook computer was, indeed, "broken." This following innumerable crashes and freezes, some of which occurred even before the XP operating system booted up, all of which appeared totally random, none of which didn't seem to take place in the midst of some "important" operation.

So he got on the phone right then to call HP Tech Support (which is supposedly available 24/7). After spending thirty-six minutes on hold, however, he gave up and went to bed.

Returning to the task early this morning, he got through quickly to Mohamed who quickly agreed to send a replacement. He needed to obtain his supervisor's agreement, though, and he (the supervisor) wouldn't be in the office for another two hours!

Mohamed promised to call back around 8:30 a.m. -- which he did. When connected through to a representative to conclude the process, however, the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) connection (with India?) was so bad it broke off in mid-conversation. Mohamed got back to me fairly fast, thankfully, but the connection problems persisted as I was passed from representative to representative.

At long last, after a second dropped call, someone who really knew what she was doing called directly using an 800 number and eventually straightened everything out efficiently and competently. Lee's replacement should arrive by noon tomorrow -- and the recalcitrant machine is on its way back to HP as well.

The basic problem wasn't proceedure nor personnel but rather poor communication dependent on a really bad VOIP interface. We just hope lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place and that the laptop arriving on Saturday works as advertised.

Meanwhile Heidi was fighting her own communication battles, trying to ascertain how to deal with a significant reduction in her Social Security pension due to her now drawing one from PERS (Ohio's Public Employee Retirement System) as well. She'd been at this for nine months, working to get things straightened out, and yesterday found out that she had been "overpaid" throughout that entire period and so needed to refund the overpayment to the government now that the corrected amount had been determined. To say the least, she wasn't a happy camper after THAT conversation!.

And her cold, while less debilitating than previously, still hasn't gone away.

Later in the day, Lee tried locating a download version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet music as recorded by Micheal Tilson-Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (which he had listened to while motoring out to the vets with Gracie). That version, turns out, is among the very few not available on iTunes ...

Fortunately the day ended on a better note. We were able to take a nice, long, leisurely stroll around Horseshoe Lake this afternoon, taking full advantage of today's gorgeous, clear, sunny and cool early Fall weather.

Otherwise all is on track for our Monday departure ...