Dear FEDEX

You’re killing me, FEDEX, you really are.  See that comment there on your delivery page, the one that says, “Customer not available”?  I’d like to know how the heck your driver can divine that when he never even deigned to pull into the parking lot of my building.  He just goes right to the office and drops off my packages.  I know because I watch him do it.  Hopefully, FEDEX, you realize that if I’m watching him do it, it means it’s because I am here and I am available.  So either your drivers are lazy or lying, and are you good with that?

Sure, I’m grateful for the service the office provides in accepting deliveries like that.  However, I pay for delivery to ME, not the office.  And I know doggone good and well that if I lived in a house, your driver would make the effort to come to my door, at the very least simply dropping off my package and leaving.  But no.   Because I live in an apartment, you skip me all together.

That’s called discrimination.

Is my apartment money not as good as my house money for some reason? 

There’s a reason I request delivery for things and it’s not your place to decide whether or not the office is “good enough.” 

Every FEDEX delivery I’ve had while living in an apartment has had the same results.  And every FEDEX delivery I’ve had while living in a house has brought the driver to my door with my package, just like I paid for.  Would you care to explain that?

Funny, I know the UPS driver.  He’s a really nice guy.  He knocks on my door and brings me my deliveries.  I’m sure I’ll tip him at Christmas, too.  But not your driver, FEDEX.  Because I’m fed up with how you treat me, with how your driver treats me.  Taking my money but not providing the service I pay for, doesn’t fly in my book. 

Rest assured, I’ll be requesting UPS delivery in the future from companies I order from. 

Sincerely,

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Death and Taxes

Did you hear me screaming?  I bet you heard me screaming.  If you heard someone screaming, it was probably me. 

Did I mention taxes?  Oh yeah, it’s tax day in the US.  Yay.  (You picked up on the sarcasm, right?    ) 

See, I opted to print our taxes and send them in, yeah, doing it the old fashioned way, since Uncle Sam wants some money and I don’t feel like e-filing.  There’s a certain rebellious sense of satisfaction in telling that greedy ol’ Uncle that the check’s in the mail. 

Guess what happened as I was printing?  I got the out of ink message!  Isn’t that funny?  Frack!  I hardly ever print stuff and wouldn’t you know, the day I need it most, the ink runs out.  So I did the only thing any thieving wife would do – I stole the ink out of Darc’s printer, since they use the same ink and he almost never uses his printer. 

Guess what?

Yeah.  His ink cartridges were empty too. 

What the heck happened?  Probably just dried up and blew away for both of us, but still, what are the odds?  Heh, I guess 100% apparently.  :roll: 

That’s the kind of luck I have.  So now I have to wait for my beloved to get home from work so we can run out to get ink, then run home to print the stupid tax returns, then run out again to the post office to mail that dang Uncle his dang money, because he doesn’t have dang sense enough to get his dang spending under control. 

Good thing I have a roast in the oven and don’t need to keep an eye on cooking.  Thank goodness for the little things!

So, how’s your tax day going?

What?

No more Microsoft Money?  *thud*  What the?  Seriously?  But … but … but … I’ve been using it for 15 years!  How can they just dump me like that?  I feel so abandoned!  Now I have to start looking around for another program to use.  Wah! 

What’s interesting is that MS says there’s no real market for it anymore, yet there’s something like 2 dozen programs I have to browse through, so there IS some kind of market out there for managing money.  And I hate Quicken.  *ptooey*  And I’m not the only one.

To make me feel even worse, they made this decision back in July.  Of 2009.  And stopped supporting it in January of this year.  I am SO behind the times! 

Plus, my husband sent me a bunch of links to programs that are similar to MS Outlook.  I love Outlook.  Remember the old days in computers, where when you bought a program, you could put it on every computer you owned?  Microsoft won’t let people do that anymore, *ptooey* on them.  But my new computer only comes with like a trial version of MS Office, and I don’t know how much it costs to buy the code to unlock the full version.  More than I have, I’m sure.

Looks like it’s time to start shedding the MS skin I’ve grown so comfy in.  My computer life came of age when MS was pretty much the only kid on the block and made all the rules.  But as much as I love them, there are times to branch out a little, step out of the comfort zone.  I simply can’t afford $500 for the full Office suite, much as I’d love it. 

Maybe if I find those winning lottery numbers, I’ll give you a call.  In the meantime, I’m really going to miss you Money, and Word, and Outlook.  You’ve been my very good friends for eons in computer years.  And I’m sorry I won’t get to know the new baby OneNote.  Wow that looks so ME! 

©DarcsFalcon All rights reserved

Whine

I was browsing the news last night – wow!  How fun!  This new computer Darc got is pretty awesome.  Even though we don’t yet have our own Internet connection, we’re getting decent speeds from the connection we’re able to get.  We’ve gone from “very low” on the old boat anchor, all the way up to “fair” on this one.  I’m dizzy from it!  Plus the screen … oh my gosh I can SEE! 

Re-establishing our own Internet connection has been a big topic of conversation here in the Darc House, and we’re excited at the probability of that happening in the near future.  One bite at a time.  We’ve decided that when we do, we’re going to go with an Internet only package, no TV.  There were several reasons for it, but one of the major ones is family time.  We like spending time together as a family and sitting down to watch the latest episode of some show while the kids go off into their room to play because they’re not interested in “grown-up shows” is not how we want to be.  Plus, we’re really not excited at the prospect of them being glued to Nick Jr or Noggin or whatever the current kids TV station is. 

We do love watching movies however. 

Getting movies from the library has been a boon.  You can’t beat free!  But, it’s also kind of discouraging knowing you’re not going to find anything more recent than maybe 2-3 years old, IF you’re lucky.  So, when we found out that once we have an Internet connection we can stream movies through the Wii, we were all over that.  Netflix was on our list of future additions to the electronic family here.  Plus, we really love being able to watch DVD’s.  We LOVE our pause button while we dissect and talk about the movie we’re watching. 

Then I read this article: Netflix Is Abandoning DVDs, Customers Who Prefer DVDs. 

Can I just say I’m REALLY not happy about this?  I don’t want to stream all my movies, as much as I love the idea of being able to do so.  What if my connection goes down for some reason while we’re in the middle of a movie?  I want the hard copy!  I like the idea of options and I’m not pleased that Netflix wants to remove those options. 

I had Netflix several years ago when they first came out and I loved the service.  Bonus points too because I hated Blockbuster.  Do you know how hard it is to get decent customer service at Blockbuster? 

Now I find myself thinking I’ll go with Blockbuster for my movie rentals when I’m finally able to utilize a service like that.  They do DVD’s AND streaming – although I don’t yet know if they’ll stream through a Wii – but it kind of bites to have to go back to them.  The one I liked is letting me down, before I even had the chance to re-join them!  Back to the freaking drawing board, and here I thought my research was all done.  *sigh*

/whine

©DarcsFalcon All rights reserved

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An Open Letter

(Been meaning to write this one for a while.)

Dear fellow library patron,

I know how proud you must be of little Junior and/or Juniorette, now that they can put disks into the DVD player by themselves.  And I know how important it is to you to make sure your toddler has healthy snacks.

But for the love of God, please make sure the snacks have been wiped off the disks before you return them to the library!

Often I fear that what I find on the disks I rent isn’t masticated food at all, but some other dried bodily fluid that I really don’t want to know what it is.  Do I really need a haz-mat suit just to watch movies from the library?  Do you know what I have to go through every week with cleaning off the disks before we can watch them?  And Lord have mercy on my DVD player if we don’t check a disk before we put it in.  Just how many DVD cleaner kits do you think I can afford?!

I am aware that the current mentality is, “Hey, what do I care, it doesn’t belong to me!”

Let me tell you, your attitude needs an adjustment.  And you need a spanking.  When something doesn’t belong to you, you’re supposed to take better care of it than you would your own. 

Now, we have to share the library movies and books.  I have been doing my part to make sure that the things I borrow are returned in as good, or better condition than I got them.  I don’t think it’s too much to expect you to do the same.

Thank you.

Fellow Library Patron,

Falcon

 

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Wednesday Winter

I don’t actually know how many days it is until Spring, and around here, it doesn’t really matter what the calendar says.  Have you seen the pictures I’ve posted taken on the 1st day of Spring?  There’s a reason I call it “Sprinter.”  While we had a fantastic New Years Eve, weather wise for us, now it’s in the single digits tonight, likely to stay that way the next few nights to come at least, and that means that whatever the thermometer is, it’s really colder because we have that stupid thing called “wind chill,” which is what the air really feels like.

I used to have a friend in high school who often wistfully said, “Oh, I hope it’s a white Christmas this year.”  Yeah, she needed a good smackin’!  I didn’t even know what a “White Christmas” was, other than a song, until I was in my teens.  Once I saw it, I realized that snow belongs in only 3 places – snow globes, postcards and Lake Tahoe. 

Ahhhh, okay!  I got my annual snow-b#tch out of my system.  😀

We watched these awesome DVD’s I got at the library – a set of clips from the Ed Sullivan show.  Remember that?  It was all music clips, so really, almost like MTV before there was MTV.  I watched the years from ‘65-‘70 and boy did it bring back some memories!  I was cracking up at Herman’s Hermits – “2nd verse, same as the 1st!” and they way they bopped around on stage.  They really should have bottled all that energy!  So much music from when I was a tiny thing, with older teen siblings who listened to the rock stations of the day.  I remember seeing the album for the Chambers Brothers and wondering how they could all be brothers.  “How did all those black men get a white brother?” I asked my sister.  I think she told me he was adopted. 

I had to look up Mama Cass after seeing the Mamas and Papas, to find out just when she died.  She didn’t really die from eating a ham sandwich.  I knew that, you knew that, but can you believe that rumor still persists?  The Jackson 5, the Supremes, Tom Jones – oh my goodness, I had “Delilah” going through my head all the next day!  LOL 

It was so much fun walking down memory lane.  I know if I ever get the money, I’m going to be a sucker for those Time-Life video things that are like 986 disk sets of “all your favorite music!”

 

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Wednesday Whine

Power outages, lost connections, sore necks, oh my!  Seems like life is conspiring against me lately, but never fear, I shall prevail! 

I don’t know what causes it, but periodically I will sleep wrong – how does one do that exactly? – and woke up with a sore neck.  Read “barely moveable.”  I feel like a whiplash patient without one of those neck pillow thingies, but I really want one.  I figured I’d be better by the 2nd day, but no such luck.  Maybe the 3rd?  We’ll see.

All day today the connection has gone back to what it was pre-strainer days.  Can you say slower than dial-up?  You think I’m kidding, doncha?  Yeah, you try waiting for a page to scroll for 3 mins after you press the “down” arrow! 

Our power went out too, right in the middle of one of my i-searches for some information.  At least my son didn’t scream bloody murder this time!  LOL  Fortunately, the power wasn’t out terribly long, but it was enough that I decided to do other things, like make something for dinner. 

Have you noticed that things seem slower in the Internet lately?  Or is it just me?  Many of my “blogger buds” don’t seem to be blogging as much anymore, if at all.  I see fewer and fewer comments around town too.  I expect that during the Summer, when people are out and about doing … stuff.  But when Summer ends, I expect to see more of you guys, just so you know!  I don’t like missing people. 

Okay, < /whine >, you may return to your normally scheduled programming.  🙂

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A Fine Cast of Characters on Amazon US (Kindle version) A Fine Cast of Characters on Amazon UK (Kindle version) A Fine Cast of Characters on Smashwords (non-Kindle versions)

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