work

Monday

You know how yesterday I was saying my back was getting a lot better, except when I had to stand for long periods of time? Well, apparently the Long Island Railroad reads my blog and decided today would be good day to put that to the test.

Yes, I went in to the office today, rather than work from home. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but that ship kind of sailed last Friday when I didn’t take my work laptop home with me. Instead, I decided to attend a sales presentation this morning and not carry a heavy bag back and forth while my spine was still adjusting. It worked out pretty well, and wasn’t too bad for a Monday, except of course that the Long Island Railroad is perfectly horrible and awful.

My morning train into Queens was first in that window of not-being-on-time the LIRR likes to pretend isn’t “late” — I think it’s six minutes beyond the scheduled arrival — and then properly late by everyone’s reckoning. I had a seat, but on what became a progressively less comfortable and more crowded car, as we stopped at several more stations than usual. I made the mistake of getting up at Jamaica, because I’d made the earlier mistake of believing the conductor when he said my connecting train was waiting on the opposite platform. It wasn’t, of course, and no other train was headed in the right direction for another twenty to thirty minutes. (And that’s assuming that train wouldn’t be delayed or cancelled.) I wasn’t able to squeeze back on the train I’d just disembarked — I’d lost not just my seat but any room at all — so I had to wait around for another five minutes or so for another train headed to Penn Station. I was lucky there was at least someplace to stand on that one.

The problem with the Long Island Railroad isn’t that equipment breaks down — although it does seem to do so with a disturbing regularity — but that they’re horrible about communicating this, explaining the delays, giving you correct information when your train has already left, or is delayed, or isn’t coming. The schedules they’ve set up rely on clockwork precision, but they’re a little like my iPad’s clock, which weirdly seems to lose or gain minutes depending on how long it’s been on, or off, or just on some weird whim.

The New York City subway isn’t a whole lot better — just as crowded, just as prone to delays — but at least it’s a little easier to switch to a different line if you need to, and at least you can usually assume even if you miss your train, you probably won’t have to wait twenty or thirty, or sixty, minutes for another.

Still, though, my back didn’t rebel too much at having to stand. This is the first day in a while that I haven’t taken anything for the pain, and while that isn’t because the pain’s gone away altogether, I do seem to be on the mend.

Hopefully tomorrow the LIRR will be able to say the same.

Back on top

My new laptop arrived today. Or maybe it didn’t. It’s hard to tell what Dell wants me to believe.

I know it’s here — I’m physically typing this post on it right now — and customer support both called and e-mailed to tell me that it had been delivered. Then again, I never received any notice that it had been shipped prior to this, and when I log in at their website to check on the order, it still comes up as in production.

Adding to the confusion, it actually says the order “is partially delivered,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. I joked over Twitter that I’d ordered Schrodinger’s laptop, both here and not here simultaneously, but as near as I can tell everything I ordered arrived. I followed up with Dell’s customer support, and I’m sure I’ll get a half dozen more phone calls and e-mails from one or two gentlemen in India before this is through — they have been persistent even when they haven’t been helpful — but so far I’m quite pleased with the computer that came by FedEx today.

Then again, I was quite pleased with the last one, and that caught fire and quit working. If this doesn’t do that — and I continue to not be charged for those first two orders that didn’t get processed at all — I’ll be happy. The laptop’s a little weird, a little different (because I didn’t want to tempt fate and get the same exact model), but it’s shiny and new, which makes up for a lot of things. Living in the cloud is all well and good, but there are some things it’s just a lot easier to do on a laptop than on an iPad or iPhone. (Like purchase this laptop for one.)

And yes, I know that’s like the epitome of first-world problems. You should have seen me the other day, when I couldn’t find the remote control to my air conditioner. The servants’ collective heads rolled for that! I joke; I don’t have servants. I do have a remote-controlled air conditioner, though, thank you very much, and woe betide the servant that comes between me and its temperature control. (It actually has a wifi option, too, but that’s apparently an added attachment we didn’t buy.)

Anyway, all this is to say I have a new computer, and in the three hours or so that it’s been on thus far, it hasn’t caught fire or disappeared in a puff of Schrodinger logic.

My back, on the other, was kind of terrible today, although this I think was a pulled muscle — probably connected to but not exactly the same thing that happened to me last week. I think this because it’s on the opposite side, and I was pretty much fine until I bent a weird way in the shower this morning, and also because it seems to be getting a little better this evening. As always, walking helps, even when walking at first makes you want to cry, is the very thing that makes it feel worst, and so I went to work. (Also, while I have some sick days left, I neither want nor really can use them so soon after using two last week.)

Honestly, I don’t want to whine about my bad back, particularly as it does seem to be getting better this evening. I’m getting some comfort out of listening to David Mitchell’s Back Story on audio book (in small part about his own bad back). And I did I mention I have a new computer that hasn’t caught fire? Things really are looking up!

Dog days of summer

August continues to be something of a let-down. I’d suggest that it outright sucks, but I worry it maybe reads this weblog and would try to get back at me out of spite.

This past Monday, I finally got things sorted out with Dell, in so far as the third time I placed my order for a new laptop I received a confirmation number and estimated delivery date. Of course, my bank decided to flag that transaction for some reason, leading to much confusion. Not on the bank’s end — I was easily able to confirm, in about a minute, that I’d made the purchase and this wasn’t fraud — but again at Dell’s. I finally called them to clarify, and the laptop has now moved out of pre-production into production proper, but it’s a little ridiculous how difficult giving them my money proved to be. I’m still getting phone calls from customer service — mostly just to follow up, tell me things the automated e-mails and Dell website have already told me — but I hope this will stop once the new computer is actually in my hands.

That, of course, won’t be for another week and a half.

This past week, I also went through two days of terrible back pain, enough to keep me from going into the office on Wednesday and Thursday. I actually think this was the worst it’s been since 2008, when my herniated disc was first diagnosed, before I had any physical therapy or spinal injections. (It’s questionable whether either of those truly helped, but either way I’d learned to cope and usually don’t feel much pain.) It hurt just to get out of bed this week, and I spent most of the day hobbling around the house, taking pain medication (just Tylenol, or the generic counterpart) and watching episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The impulse was to lie in bed, since that’s where I most free of discomfort, but I think it was a mistake. Certainly it was harder to get up afterward, and lying in bed seemed to undo any progress I’d made. I spent most of Thursday sitting upright instead, where at least I had some lumbar support, and that seems to have helped considerably. I still missed the live Rifftrax show I’d planned to attend — to say nothing of the team meeting at work where everyone made pitches for “book of the year” — but I was back to the office on Friday.

I decided to work a full day. I could have left early, thanks to summer hours, and I only would have needed to make up 90 extra minutes. (Summer hours means you work 45 minutes extra Monday through Thursday.) So I could have left at 2 or 2:30. But that would have meant working straight through to that, without any lunch. It was a quiet day — most everyone who wasn’t on summer hours was at the company’s summer outing at Great Adventure — so I didn’t mind so much.

Today my back’s doing much better, and I’m just delighted to be able to walk, bend, stand, et cetera without real pain.

Then again, this evening I watched AVP: Alien vs. Predator, so maybe there was a little pain left over for me in the week.

Hello, Sunday

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been posting here much lately — and, if the site’s traffic in general is any indication, you probably haven’t — it’s because on Wednesday night, while I was in the middle of watching an episode of New Girl on Netflix, my computer suddenly shut down and starting puffing smoke.

This is not, it maybe goes without saying, normal or optimal behavior for a laptop computer, particularly one that isn’t all that old, quite possibly still under warranty. I pulled the plug and the battery, fretted for a while, and then ultimately decided to fret about it on more fully on Thursday. Of course, before turning in for the night — it was already kind of late — I placed an order for a new laptop at Dell’s website using my iPad.

An order which, apparently, never went through. I received an acknowledgement e-mail, but not the promised follow-up with my confirmation number and estimated delivery date. I spent more time on Thursday than I really wanted to talking with Dell’s very unhelpful customer service — including one gentlemen (presumably in India judging by his accent) who wanted me go step by step with him over the components and specs that I ordered. Forwarding him the acknowledgment e-mail with those specs wasn’t enough, even when I explained that I’d prefer not to re-order over the phone with just his say-so that I was actually ordering the same thing. I just wanted to confirm with him what I’d confirmed already with another Dell rep over chat: that the order had not actually be received, was not being processed, and the computer was not being shipped. (I may have been a little frazzled and impatient with him, but this was while I was at work, where I really couldn’t handle it.)

On Thursday evening, I ordered the new laptop for the second time. And discovered on Friday that that order had not gone through. Dell, apparently, does not want my money. Their customer service Twitter account was equally unhelpful, suggesting I wait until Monday or Tuesday, and then, if I still haven’t received a confirmation of my order, to phone them.

So that’s apparently what I’m doing, though I’m close to looking for alternatives and other brands, and I’m keeping a close eye on my bank account to make sure I’m not charged for these orders that haven’t been processed. I’m managing okay without a computer, with the iPad and iPhone and the work laptop, which is what I’m writing this thing on. I missed not really being able to watch a movie this weekend — I have Lincoln out on Blu-Ray but no Blu-Ray player, no TV to take the place of the computer screen, and watching something on the iPad just isn’t the same. (TV’s okay there; I just watched tonight’s Breaking Bad, for instance, and last night the first very mixed episode of Orange Is the New Black. I’ve also watched some more New Girl, maybe just to spite the dead laptop.) But it’s not all bad, the ways this has disrupted my life. It’s more the hassle of trying to order the thing and not being able to, and then getting no help from customer service. I’m no closer to solving my problem, and meanwhile the date when/if I get the new laptop just continues getting further away.

But anyway, enough of that. Today I went with friends to see Elysium, which was okay, and before that wrote this in my weekly writing group of the same friends:

If he hadn’t lost his way, Peter wouldn’t have needed the map, and then he wouldn’t have phoned Holly, just as she was getting ready to leave, and she wouldn’t have doubled back, gone upstairs to the bedroom and the locked chest at the foot of the bed where Peter had hidden the map, and then the twenty minutes she lost to finally prying the chest open and phoning Peter back wouldn’t have mattered, because she would have already been on the road, or even back at the lab, where the fact that she’d been poisoned wouldn’t have cost her her life, because the lab had plenty of the antidote (and, having themselves created the poison, could synthesize more), and the techs who worked with Holly would have recognized the symptoms that both she and Peter had been unknowingly ignoring for almost a week. Holly wouldn’t have died, and then neither would Peter, when an hour later he called her back and said he needed — this time rather desperately — to consult the map once again. For want of a nail, as the saying sometimes goes.

After Holly overdosed on the mutant formula, the lab techs brought her back to life, although they would have preferred not to do things this way, had anyone asked, and in fact they had a long list of regulations that suggested (quite strongly) that doing this could jeopardize the larger project, the single reason that the lab existed, and that even if it worked it would be no picnic for Holly, who would likely remember the deep physical pain of her death, the suddeneness with which the mutant formula played its final havoc upon the body, and she would definitely remember the terrible pain of ressucitation, which the lab techs could do — and would do, because they liked Holly — only with terrible cost and by using the machine. Only Peter had ever used the machine before, and the rumor was that he was lost somewhere in the wild darkness — which is what his notes had called it — with no way of contacting the outside world. Had only one of them thought to check the outgoing calls on Holly’s cellphone…

When he turned on the machine, Peter would have found it difficult to explain what he’d seen, not so much because it defied description or because he normally lacked for words, but because what he’d seen had seemed so mundane, so very ordinary, and none of those words seemed worth the trouble when he finally turned back to his notes about the map that he’d found…

I’m not really sure about this piece, which was born out three separate dependent clauses as a prompt. I was maybe more interested in it structurally — long run-on sentence, short cap, followed by a long-run on sentence, then a cap — than the plot, which leaves more questions than it answers.

Anyway, that sort of has been the last few days. By and large, I’m liking August considerably less than July. I described it the other day as July, but without the character. Same humidity, same long days, but not half as much fun so far. It was an incredibly slow week, interspersed with panic and frustration, and that isn’t anybody’s idea of a fun time.

Thursday

I arrived at the office today to discover a small wooden skull and a stuffed crow sitting atop my computer keyboard. As you might well imagine, this is not a normal turn of events for a Thursday morning. Had I not been almost entirely sure about who had done this — “you know it’s one of two people,” my boss laughed when she saw it — I might have taken it as some kind of ominous portent. That and the black spot left on an index card on my desk a few hours later. But it was all just a bunch of silliness. That’s just the sort of coworkers that I have. Need I remind you of the Dalek incident?

Alas, I only thought to take pictures once I’d returned the toys to their proper owner.

The rest of the day was pretty much normal. Sometime after lunch, I went looking for a training session that I thought was happening, because I had it on my calendar, but which actually happening for another three weeks.

And that’s about as exciting as the whole week’s been. Were it not for the deadly portents, having lost one of the earbuds from my headphones (and then realizing it didn’t make as much difference as I would have thought) would be the most exciting thing that’s happened since Monday.

So, in lieu of anything else, and apropos of nothing but it being (amazingly, finally) August, here’s my monthly music mix, that thing that I do for no particular reason but that I enjoy it, and like music, every month. Last month, I only had five songs. So this month I may have over-compensated. I have twenty-seven. This, quite honestly, is going to make pulling together a year-end mix a little more difficult:

  1. “Desperate Heart” by Gram Rabbit
  2. “Hit or Miss” by Odetta
  3. “These Ozark Hills” by Blackberry Winter
  4. “It Came Out of the Wilderness” by Pete Molinari
  5. “Closer” by Tegan and Sara
  6. “Entertainment” by Phoenix
  7. “Can You Get to That” by Mavis Staples
  8. “Shameless” by Lissie
  9. “Royals” by Lorde
  10. “Beautiful Tomorrow” by Beth Rowley
  11. “Be Good (Lion’s Song)” by Gregory Porter
  12. “Lose Your Head” by Dead Man’s Bones
  13. “In My Head” by Olivier Libaux (feat. Susan Dillane)
  14. “Only You” by Yaz
  15. “Questions and Answers” by Lou Doilion
  16. “Bones” by MS MR
  17. “Never Wanted Your Love” by She & Him
  18. “Mary” by Sparkadia
  19. “Back Then” by B. Story
  20. “Saint Judas” by Natalie Merchant
  21. “Hysteric” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  22. “Lucky” by Kat Edmondson
  23. “Dirty Paws” by Of Monsters and Men
  24. “I Still Believe” by the Call
  25. “Strong as an Oak” by Watsky
  26. “Gloria” by Patti Smith
  27. “Walking Song” by Kate and Anna McGarrigle

So that was Thursday.