yawn

Just can't keep my eyes open today...haven't been sleeping well, and when I do sleep, I have weird dreams that stick with me for a while.

One thing I really miss about my hiatus this summer: being able to nap when I needed to.

whimper

Good news: the previous tech *did* escalate my case; he just didn't give me the updated case number. I now have it.

Good news: that case has been escalated up to Tier 3.

Bad news: that case has been escalated up to Tier 3, meaning the Tier 2 folks couldn't fix it.

Good news: both cases are being left live, doubling my chances of resolution [theoretically].

Bad news: they will contact me in 2 to 3 business days with an update. Not necessarily a resolution, but an update.

Good news: I can call in 2 days to check the status.

Bad news: I have to call in 2 days to check the status.

Sigh. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

impotent scream of rage

Oh, my head. Called Yahoo [er, I mean "the wahoos"] at 46 hours elapsed [screw waiting those final two hours]. Very, very nice tech on other end of line feels my pain, and carefully tells me that he doesn't see the escalation. Heavy, heavy sigh. 46 more hours of downtime, needlessly piddled away. On hold with the nice tech now, as he escalates the call to Tier 2 and checks with the techs to be sure it takes.

Great googly-moogly, I'm tired...

35.5 hours elapsed

"Hey tiredcynic, tell me: are you just brimming with confidence that your 'dead domain' issue will be completely resolved in the promised 24 to 48 hours?"

Yeah, right. I'm already limbering up my fingers for the phone call to the wahoos at 7:50p tonight. Brimming? Yeah, with annoyance and frustration...

frack

Well, boys and girls, our tired cynic is growing more tired and bitterly cynical [or cynically bitter, if you prefer]. At 72+ hours in the "it will take 24 to 72 hours to become active" cycle, things still didn't work. No domain, no website, no email, no teeth from the grinding and gnashing.

Called the wahoos. Nice guy says, "Hmm...for some reason, though I see that your new account was activated 72 hours ago, the system thinks you just signed up right before you called me. So I've escalated it to the engineering level for you so they can reset it and get it working."

Sounds good, right? But wait...waaaiiiittt...you know it can't be *that* easy...

[fade back to our tired cynic on the phone]

Nice wahoo: "Escalations take 24 to 48 hours for resolution."

Sigh.

[Why do I have this awful feeling that I will be back on the phone with the nice but frustrating wahoos in 48.0001 hours???]

[Stop that! Think positive!! {side note: that should be "think positively", you know} Anyway, positive thoughts. It will be resolved by the crack escalation team of wahoos in even less time than they said! And I'll get a full refund!! And they will send me flowers for being such a loyal customer for so many years!!!]

[Oh my. I think the hold music must have gotten to me. Somebody send help, stat.]

leonard nimoy has a cute smile

Oh my freaking god, how awesome is this?? Warning: the song might stick in your head.

http://www.maidenwine.com/catalog_02_bilbobaggins.html

and the fourth

'Letters from Iwo Jima' was very good. Solid, very human, insightful. Interesting to see the 'other side' of the war.

Next: 'Little Miss Sunshine'

whoops...

Some sort of technical difficulty is keeping my live, on-the-spot posts from publishing...I'll try to send them again. They won't have the 'in-the-moment' freshness, but the thoughts are still valid...

hmmm...

My posts after each movie don't seem to be getting through. I'll resend when I get home tonight...

three down

Hmmm...kind of underwhelmed by 'The Departed'. It was good, absolutely, but didn't live up to the hype for me. Glad I saw it, though.

Next up: 'Letters from Iwo Jima'

two down...

Helen Mirren frickin' *channeled* the queen...eerie. And the movie was more entertaining than I expected.

Up next: 'The Departed'

one down, four to go

Holy crap, 'Babel' is intense. I'm exhausted.

Up next: 'The Queen'

i hate technology

Once upon a time, there was a tired cynic. She got herself a cynical domain and website, with some cynical email addresses, and a place to keep her history of cynical jobs. Then, years later, our beloved cynic found that her cynical site was no longer supported by the wahoos that originally offered it to her.

Now, the cynic actually kind of liked the features and services the wahoos gave for her hard-earned cash, so she realized that she was going to have to "upgrade" to the newest offerings by the wahoos.

Sadly, the only way to do this was for our cynic to kill her original and simple [though much-loved] website, then purchase a new cynical site from the wahoos [because the wahoos did not provide a simple path to migrate from old to new. And you wonder why our heroine is cynical...].

So she grit her teeth, made copies of her old, simple, yet functional site, and cringingly clicked the "Close My Account" button. Then, a short while later, she opened a new account with the wahoos, promising 24x7 support and lots of swoopy features.

Limbo. Oblivion.

You see, it takes 24-72 hours for the changes to take effect, in spite of the fact that the wahoos hosted both the old and new sites. So our poor cynical domain is floating in the ether, with no cloud on which to rest, until the wahoo changes snake their way through the labyrinth of routes and servers and cables and electrons. Cynical email is left to wander aimlessly, looking for a home, sometimes bouncing back to their possibly-cynical senders, sometimes just waiting, waiting, with puppy-dog eyes, hoping against hope that it will find somebody to love it, read it, and then delete it cleanly, ending its pointless existence with dignity and respect...or perhaps it will be the lucky one, the one-in-a-thousand that gets saved in a folder for posterity, or perhaps even [dare it dream??] get forwarded on to other appreciative audiences.

No cynical email. No cynical bookmarks. No cynical mailing lists. But *plenty* of cynicism...

[We'll see what happens at 72.0001 hours, boys and girls. Stay tuned for further cynical updates...in the meantime, if you are trying to reach our cynic, you can use Wahoo, er *Yahoo* Messenger or send email to 'tiredcynic(at)yahoo(dot)com'.]

gearing up

I think I am set for tomorrow [the Oscar movie marathon at my local AMC theatre]. Popcorn and soda refills are provided all day, so the caffeine and salt quota are filled. Have my trusty-dusty carryall ready to go: chocolate goodies [to counter the salty popcorn], mints [to counter the chocolate], dried fruit [to pretend I'm being healthy], a couple bottles of water, a book [for the in-between-movies down time], and a lap blanket [because twelve hours sitting on my hinder in a movie theatre is going to be a bit chilly]. Even have a travel pack of Tums [I have a feeling they will come in handy].

Off to bed...I've got a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

i love technology...

Okay...I'm a total dork. Sitting here on my couch with a silly
grin on my face...

...'cause I'm typing this on my new (to me) smartphone. Yeah, it's
the one that's all scratched up; haven't heard back from the
vendor yet, but figured I'd go ahead and try it out.

So here I am, on the couch, with my little Windows Mobile
device, connected via wi-fi to my new wireless router, surfing
the web, checking email, and playing with the built-in remote
control app on the phone that controls my tv, dvd player, and
receiver (how frickin' cool is that??).

Geek. Dork.

Happy.

well, poo-monkeys

My swoopy Samsung i730 smartphone arrived [finally...annoyingly, using the "faster, easier" PayPal method adds a 4-day waiting period for the electronic transfer...grumble, grumble]. Anyway...it arrived. And it's scratched and beaten up, darn it. Yes, I knew it was refurbished. That was the point, actually...to save $300 by buying it from a third-party company. However, their website said "Factory Refurbished to New Condition!" [exclamation point is theirs]. It may work fine, and it does come with a 90-day manufacturer warranty, but it's all beaten up...scratched, scuffed, and even a couple of gouges in the plastic. Definitely *not* "new condition". I've contacted them to see what they can do, but it's yet another delay and I can't use it in case I have to return it...and [start whiny voice] I want to play with it nooOOOOooowww!! [end whiny voice]

Harrumph. Grumble. Harrumph harrumph. Whine. [Or whinge, if you are part of the Empire.]

Pout.

I really don't want to feel this way, but...

...it is *really* difficult to deal with tech support when English is not the person's first language. The person I am dealing with is very bright, and once I get my situation communicated, she's great, but getting to that point is difficult. I feel for her and her compatriots...the people who are calling for help are already frustrated or stymied by something, and to add the language barrier to the mix just dips into the patience well even further.

Sigh...

wonderfully surreal

Some of these are simply incredible:

http://haha.nu/creative/creative-photos-by-chema-madoz

go, go gadget bladder!

This Saturday, AMC is doing a "Best Picture Showcase" of the five 'Best Picture' nominated movies. Back to back. To back to back to back. Starting at 11am, going through almost midnight. Babel, The Queen, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Little Miss Sunshine. Large popcorn and soda included, with free refills all day. I'm so there. [Oddly enough, I can't seem to convince any of my friends to spend twelve hours with me in a movie theatre watching heavy dramatic movies...]

Man, I am *so* going to need something light and frivolous the next day to overcome the heaviness of those movies.

And a salad. To counteract twelve hours of popcorn and soda.

sheesh

Went to retrieve my trash can from the curb last night, only to find that my neighbors had missed trash day and put two bags of trash into *my* can after the fact. It's the second time they've done that...the last time, I just ignored it. This time, I took the bags, closed them up [they hadn't bothered to], and set them in front of their gate.

How did I know it was theirs? By the pieces of mail in the bags, one of which I set prominently on top of the bags. Yeah, it sounds a bit petty, but trash service in Palo Alto isn't cheap...I've already lowered my account to the smallest can they will allow to save money, and then these rude kids come and fill my can 2/3 full the day after trash day, leaving no room for my own trash next week.

Annoying. Especially when you try to be a good neighbor yourself, bringing over mail that was accidentally delivered to you, picking up random bits of trash along the shared walkway, delivering FedEx packages that were incorrectly left on your doorstep, being sure to leave the shared driveway accessible, stuff like that.

Harrumph.

my morning

hic.

hic.

hic.

[hopeful pause]

[tentative anticipation]

[sigh of relief]

hic.

damn.

hic.

almost forgot

Another fun, dorky thing I did: After figuring out that I needed a PAL-to-NTSC plug adapter, I hooked up a powered antenna to my LCD monitor [with integrated TV tuner], so now I have TV in my office. Even cooler, the monitor does picture-in-picture, so I can be working on the computer and watching TV.

Hee hee...I love technology.

look ma, no wires

w00t. Just replaced my wireless router...now have dual-mode [B/G] secure wireless up and running. This means I can use my work laptop [a sweet little Dell Latitude D410], and in about a week or so, I'll be trying out my Windows Mobile device [a hopefully sweet little Samsung i730] wirelessly.

Rock.

a nice surprise

It's been hectic at work lately...not horrible, but definitely busy. As I was heading back to my desk yesterday afternoon, the QA manager saw me and said, "Congratulations, Stacey!" I blinked and asked, "For what?" He smiled and replied, "Check your email." A bit baffled, I did...and got a nice surprise.

Code Green does a monthly "employee recognition" [people nominate folks they think deserve recognition], and I was one of the two chosen this month...so I now have a very nice $150 amazon.com certificate to spend.

How cool is that??