Three..., no, four cheers for spontaneity!
Today threatened to be more of the same-old, same-old, with me opening the store this morning and being joined soon after by Drew, Anna, and Galina. Drew brought Shannon and Huntür by on his way back from the post office mail pickup, and it was decided that Drew would spend the day with Huntür, and that I would help by taking them into the woods to look for mushrooms.
It was a pleasant couple of hours, and we managed to get some more oyster mushrooms and aspen boletes, and Drew was sharp-eyed enough to spot a small patch of Suillus mushroooms and an even more remote patch of mica caps.
I managed to stumble across a couple of other types of mushrooms I am unfamilar with; the caps are currently resting on a piece of paper and I hope to have a good spore print tomorrow morning.
A couple of eBay purchases came today, including a CD drive for one of my Dells, which reminds me of Yet Another Dell Support Nightmare.
A woman came into the store this past week with a package she said was supposed to go back prepaid to Dell. All it had was a reference number, which I can tell you from past experience doesn't impress the UPS driver in the least. While she was at the store, I called the Dell toll free number that she had called and after the requisite wading through about 4 levels of redirection menus, I ended up speaking with a human being.
Said human being knew very little about Dell products -- which I find is all too common in such conversations -- and said I had called the wrong number. She vowed to connect me to the proper department, and to stay on the line until I was connected.
When a voice next came on the line, the young woman was no longer a party to the conversation and I punched my way through another pair of menus.
At this point, the computerized voice at the other end informed me (without my having said anything) that the service contract on my printer had expired (I own no Dell printers, nor have I ever bought a printer through Dell), and that if I wanted to continue with the phone call, I would have to pony up a credit card number and pay about $30.
By this time, I'd been on the phone for about 15 minutes, and after I hung up, I informed the woman of what had happened and asked her to pursue the issue from her end.
It will be a cold day in Hades when next I buy a new Dell computer. The hardware is, in my experience, reliable, but attempting to get any kind of support is sheer, unmitigated torture. (This observation is based on about half a dozen attempts, all of which were equally satisfying.)
It does make me wonder where in the name of all that's holy does Dell get off claiming "world class" support?
(Sorry to go off on a tangent like that, but I feel a little like the fella who shaes the cell with Lou Costello in the famous "Niagara Falls" sketch, 'cept with me, all you have to do to set me off is say "Dell Computer.")
Cheers...
It was a pleasant couple of hours, and we managed to get some more oyster mushrooms and aspen boletes, and Drew was sharp-eyed enough to spot a small patch of Suillus mushroooms and an even more remote patch of mica caps.
I managed to stumble across a couple of other types of mushrooms I am unfamilar with; the caps are currently resting on a piece of paper and I hope to have a good spore print tomorrow morning.
A couple of eBay purchases came today, including a CD drive for one of my Dells, which reminds me of Yet Another Dell Support Nightmare.
A woman came into the store this past week with a package she said was supposed to go back prepaid to Dell. All it had was a reference number, which I can tell you from past experience doesn't impress the UPS driver in the least. While she was at the store, I called the Dell toll free number that she had called and after the requisite wading through about 4 levels of redirection menus, I ended up speaking with a human being.
Said human being knew very little about Dell products -- which I find is all too common in such conversations -- and said I had called the wrong number. She vowed to connect me to the proper department, and to stay on the line until I was connected.
When a voice next came on the line, the young woman was no longer a party to the conversation and I punched my way through another pair of menus.
At this point, the computerized voice at the other end informed me (without my having said anything) that the service contract on my printer had expired (I own no Dell printers, nor have I ever bought a printer through Dell), and that if I wanted to continue with the phone call, I would have to pony up a credit card number and pay about $30.
By this time, I'd been on the phone for about 15 minutes, and after I hung up, I informed the woman of what had happened and asked her to pursue the issue from her end.
It will be a cold day in Hades when next I buy a new Dell computer. The hardware is, in my experience, reliable, but attempting to get any kind of support is sheer, unmitigated torture. (This observation is based on about half a dozen attempts, all of which were equally satisfying.)
It does make me wonder where in the name of all that's holy does Dell get off claiming "world class" support?
(Sorry to go off on a tangent like that, but I feel a little like the fella who shaes the cell with Lou Costello in the famous "Niagara Falls" sketch, 'cept with me, all you have to do to set me off is say "Dell Computer.")
Cheers...