Technical Difficulties Day

I’m not sure what happened here. I posted something a while ago, and it’s gone. It was even in the blog-reader, but now it’s gone. I didn’t delete it…I didn’t have nekkid people in it…but when I came back to check something else, it was gone.

It’s probably karma, people. I’ve had many times when somebody has posted something about Blogger “eating” their post and thought, Hmm, wonder what they did, because obviously posts don’t just disappear…

Yeah. Well.

It just disappeared.

Feh.

You know…it does just sort of fit with the day I’m having, though. It is apparently Technical Difficulty Day.

The laptop I was supposed to get from a client two months ago is still being imaged. Again. The Keystone Kop process here would be a lot funnier if it weren’t keeping cash from flowing my way. Let’s just say this laptop has an awful lot of miles on it, for a machine that has not yet produced a jot of work.

The desktop I just bought is making a weird noise that sounds like an off-balance fan (but what do I know). I am amazingly disinclined to open it up and look into the noise.

Also, I’m back into a business I got out of a few years ago: Fixing stuff that should never have happened. I’d managed to forget just how wrong a database can be. Microsoft Access has this way of making people think they know what they’re doing. I summon The Wizard! SHAZAM! Look, ma, Wizard and I made a database!!

Sometimes, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Especially when someone shows me the saddest excuse for a database – one table, fifty fields wide, and one form with more check boxes than could ever make sense – and then tells me they paid $600 for this thing.

SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS?! For somebody to summon The Wizard and mess up your record keeping beyond all hope?! Holy crap, dude…you get the tar, I’ll get the feathers, we’ll meet up at Andy’s Bait, Tackle and Access Database Shoppe…

Furthermore. People are insisting on texting me expecting INSTANT RESPONSE even though I don’t do texting and discovered today that my phone doesn’t beep or vibrate or anything else when a new text message comes through…it just puts a message on the screen that I have a new text.

I feel like those cell phone commercials: “Beep! Hi, yeah, this is my Treo! And even though you message me like sixty times! about that way {cool, important, urgent, time-sensitive} thing, I’m not gonna get this message – because I am a Texting Moron and have neither the knowledge nor the inclination to figure out how to make my phone go BEEP when I get a new text!”

When I saw the silent screen telling me I had new text messages, I hit the wrong @*^&@ing button, and it took me back to the phone. @*^&@. Where’s messaging…where’s messaging…and then I floundered around looking for ‘text messages’, which are not under ‘text’ but ‘messaging’…which to me means instant messaging so I’m expecting that to be AOL or Yahoo or Windows messaging services.

So I ignored that section for quite a while before I look there in case. Oh. Whaddya know. Three new text messages…on a related note, I now understand why people text in code – U only gt 160 chars ea msg! :(

The bank tells me I didn’t endorse a check, so they’re returning it. I did endorse the check, though. They cannot tell me why they thought I hadn’t, seeing as how my signature is RIGHT THERE ON IT. Nothing says Happy like having a deposit delayed an extra six days, right?

The school just informed me today that in order for the bus to pick Captain Adventure up from his new preschool to attend his special needs classes, I need to talk to his teacher and get an amendment to his IEP.

And she is, naturally, not available until the first day of school.

Oh. And. They’re very sorry about this but…it usually takes several weeks to put through the change.

Oh. And also, they will need forty-seven different kinds of authorization, a few notarized statements, and a full FBI background check on the entire teaching staff at the other preschool. (I made that last one up.)

It’s going to be a bumpy first few weeks of school. I am honestly not sure how it will actually work; Captain Adventure is a pretty easy going guy all things considered, but I suspect that if I pick him up from Preschool 1 (oh joy! The Woman is here! Attend my every whim, Woman!), and then try to immediately drop him off at Preschool 2 (whaaaaa? THIS is not my whim!)…there may be Trouble.

And then? Blogger ate my post.

You know what? There is a message in all of this. And that message is, “Go to bed, Tama, before you really @*^&@ things up.”

I can take a subtle hint, people.

Good night!