Losing a customer...

Symantec just lost a customer. Me.

It started innocently enough. It turns out my virus-scanner is up for renewal, so I agree to renew. I am shown a window that asks for my "subscription key." If I don't have one, I can call a Symantec office to get one (how 20th century is that?).

I call and have fun (not!) with an automated voice system that, in the end, never tells me what button to push to get a subscription key. I press a button at random. I explain my situation to the voice that eventually comes on the phone, after stepping through a couple of lines of his "capture customer information" script. Eventually, he vectors me to a web site that will give me a subscription key. His accompanying instructions, of course, have nothing to with what I find when I pull up the page.

I end up ordering an upgrade. Despite having collected all of my information last year (and having given me an account number, for crying out loud), Symantec decides its never heard of me (moi, who renewed this software last year) and asks for my billing information all over again. Once I click on the button to complete my order, the system goes away for several minutes, eventually coming back with a timeout error.

I attempt to resubmit my order, but am informed I already have a completed order, and that I may click 'New Order' to start a new order, or go to Symantec's Customer Service (now there's an oxymoron) to see the status of my existing order.

Existing order? Hmmm. With raised eyebrows, I click to Customer Service. As I have no order number, I enter my email and the last few digits of my credit card. The result?

Sorry, We could not find your order.
The error message is incomplete. They should have added: "Please purchase your virus protection software elsewhere. We're a bunch of incompetent ninkompoops."

Ye gods. It's a good thing I didn't wait until the last minute.

Cheers...

What gives...?

For a while there, this morning, after my experience with Symantec, it seemed as if I was destined to visit only web sites designed by nitwits (two words: phone company) but I managed to convince myself it was merely a run of bad luck, online.

This was compensated for somewhat by the fact that, for the nonce, I am all caught up in the paper chase department. I finally managed to finish everything I had planned to do before leaving for Houston (everything not related to translation, that is). And although my grandiose scheme of spending the afternoon translating fell through - I spent time at the store, instead, while Drew ran an errand - I still think I'm too high from having gotten caught up chasing paper to worry about it much.

(Heck, the night is young, yet. Since returning from the store, I've laid 1700 target words down on paper; maybe I can translate some more before going to bed.)

Maybe. But as I did not get a walk in this morning owing to it being a ham breakfast morning, I think I will go for a longish walk in the next few minutes (I took a second walk last night that started out as an "around the block" jaunt, except I added about a mile-long loop to the middle of it... I might go do that this evening, though I should probably put on some bug repellant... the mosquitos were pretty thick last night and Archuleta county did report a couple of cases of West Nile last year).

Cheers...

Wrapping up...

The walk went well, although by the time I decided there was too much wind for the way I was dressed, it was time to turn around and go home. Today, though, I followed the path I had planned to take yesterday, and if the time I spent walking is any indication, the distance exceeds that from home to the store.

I laid another couple of thousand words down on phosphor since then - the material I am working with is very familiar, I'm not sure I've encountered a really new term yet, so that whatever dipping I do into the dictionary is for my own peace of mind - so I am wondering whether I really am all that far behind. I guess I'll see what I can accomplish once I get to Houston.

While walking, I mused about something I've heard from various people about my LiveJournaling, to the effect that I must spend a lot of time doing this, usually with a subtext (or explicit statement) that my time could be better spent doing other, more important things.

It occurs to me that, primo, it's been ages since I've had a good sit-down where I freewheel away for an hour or so about something-or-other. Segundo, if I were to suggest that my critics' time would be better spent doing things other than, say, reading the paper, watching television, drinking that extra cup of coffee, or brushing their hair in the morning - I mean, you don't really have to brush your hair, do you? - I'd get funny looks.

The reason I'd get funny looks is because everyone brushes their hair. Everyone watches TV (pretty much). But because I choose to spend some time doing something that helps me better focus on what has or is about to happen, or on clearing away the cobwebs between my ears - as I am doing now - and because this isn't the kind of activity that "everyone" engages in (write? about stuff in general? huh?), some people think it's a purely elective activity, and that maybe I'd be better off doing something else.

(I say again: if you are thinking these words are directed at one person in particular, you'd be wrong.)

In short, writing keeps me focused, keeps me sharp, forces me to think about things I normally wouldn't think about, and relieves an aching that darned well almost ruined my life back when I was younger, which is a tale for another time.

Departure for Houston is tomorrow. I hope to get under way with Galina before noon, so we have a chance to bed down between Amarillo and Ft. Worth tomorrow night. I still have to pack. Ye gods.

Cheers...