So the last few weeks have been ugh-ola. First my work Blackberry went bananas and it took a good 2 weeks and 3 replacements until I got one that would work. I don’t even want to make the switch to the iPhone that is being offered because I’ve just reentered all of my contacts BY HAND! So thanks but no thanks…I’ll wait until this BB dies then switch because it won’t matter anyway.
Then a week and a half ago my home pc went dark. The darn graphics card went kaput…and the computer was so old that it wasn’t one of those cards you could just take out and replace. Oh, no…that would have been too easy for me. When HunBun opened that thing up he found the card to be wired in. Gah! Lucky I was headed out for a work trip so I just let it go while he figured out a plan.
While I’m at work my darn work computer decides to blue screen itself…which if you’re familiar – means it has up and died on me. This is happening at 7:15am Wednesday morning as I was planning to print off a bunch of documents for an all day meeting I was leading with my team. When I turned on my laptop and saw that blue screen I yelped and hit the power off button…hoping I had caught it before the full memory dump completed. Well I started-stopped-started-stopped-started-stopped-started-stopped-started….then actually stopped. Seeing as my on-off plan wasn’t working I decided to sit there with a frowny face. Lucky I was in the office…one of the IT guys on site came over and took my dead laptop away to see if he could Frankenstein resurrect it for me.
Long story short…the technical way the IT guy said it was “You’re hosed”. Definitely not something you want to hear from an IT guy who was supposed to save your work life by recovering all of the work you had been doing for the last 2 weeks. (Thank goodness my work pal admonished me to back up my computer just 3 weeks ago) I’d be fine except for the fact that in the last 2 weeks I had built out an entire tracking workbook for all the things my team is working on…with legends and tabs and all that! Super BAH!
I got my new work laptop on Friday…then it took all day to get it to a working condition – while I am still waiting on another IT guy to save my email archive. Please please please be successful!
I got this lovely grapefruit shaded Vaio on Sunday to replace ye olde home pc.
Purchasing this was a pain in the patootie too. HunBun and I went on Saturday to the fancy Westfield mall since I couldn’t find something I wanted at the local Best Buy. We went to the Sony store and spent a good 40 minutes in there looking at a total of 4 laptops they had on display. It came down to the shiny red one or the white one that also came in pink. Meanwhile HunBun is steaming because the sales gal is blah blah blahing about techy this and that which means nothing to me since I told her exactly what I needed the laptop to do for me – go on the internet, upload photos, play iTunes, type stuff. Well when she said “when you need more memory you can upgrade this one and it’ll cost you as much as this more expensive laptop that has that memory now”. As I prepared for a flame out she walked away and I made a silent “whew” as I turned to look at his irritated face. He was done… and I made my decision. “I’d like to see the pink one of this Vaio please”, I said to sales person #2. Off he goes to the back room which must be the most cavernous place ever because it took him a good 10 minutes to come back out. Then he brings this pink cutie out and I say “I’ll take it”….and he says “oh, I can’t sell this to you today…but I can sell it to you tomorrow”. What????? I did not even look at HunBun as I could imagine what that face would have looked like….he was already circling the store so he wouldn’t get annoyed at the tech sell. We left. I was irritated. He was annoyed.
Sunday morning I dragged the 13yo (yes he had a birthday) and 11yo (and he had a birthday too) to the mall. After we wandered around the Lego store deciding on what new set we just had to have…we marched straight over to the Sony store where I promptly said “I’m here to buy the pink version of that laptop since I couldn’t buy it yesterday”. Sales person goes into the cavernous storeroom and after we stand there (I annoyed…kids asking why it’s taking so long) he finally comes out. I say, “is that the pink one?”. He says “yes, that’s the one you want right?”. I say, “how much is it?”. He says “$$$”. I say “ok, I’ll take it”. Then he proceeds to try to sell me some $$ protection plan to which I say “My husband says to never buy those, so no thank you”….I felt bad at my snooty self but I was just done with this whole purchasing experience. Plus he gave me an irritated look when I said no. Then after he attempted to sell me a different $$ protection plan – to which I not said a polite, but unfriendly, “no thank you”. He finally rang me up. I slid my card. I walked out with this teeny little box with a very spendy thing in it.
HunBun was able to buy some gadget that is able to pull my old data off my old hard drive. So he did his thing and now I’m back to business.
Whew….long story. Now it’s too work. I’ll be back to normal soon….I hope.
See ya later
Cathy
onthevector 