Category Archives: Drama

Whats life without a little drama?

Pay My Bill

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I picked my mail up from my parents’ house last Thursday and among the various spam, bills, and fan mail, I found my credit card bill. I didn’t get a chance to actually open it up until Friday night. As I perused the charges, I made sure to note when I needed to send it in by since I was several days late the month before last. The very last thing I need is to start getting bad credit because I’m so absent-minded. Of course, the payment due date was for March 11, 2006. For those not keeping track, thats Saturday, as in the next day. Naturally, I freaked out. It was really late at night and was practically Saturday already, so I did what anyone else would have done in my situation. I went to bed.

In the morning, I roused myself to see the bill sprawled across my keyboard, at which point I freaked out again. It was pretty obvious at that point that mailing the check out via snail mail was out of the question and that I somehow needed to make an online payment to my credit card company as soon as possible. I asked a couple of my roommates what they normally do, but that wasn’t terribly helpful since neither had the same credit card company as me. One had the same bank I do and had a good tip for setting up regular payments, but that didn’t really help my immediate need. I gave up and went online to my credit card company’s website and found the online transfer section conveniently labeled “Pay My Bill”, admittedly though I was looking for the tab labeled “Somebody Else Pay My Bill.” One can always hope.

After entering a dubiously small amount of information and specifying the amount I wanted to transfer, the site said the transaction was successful. I had gotten it in by 3pm on Saturday which means its supposed to post that day, allowing my payment be on time. It wasn’t showing up though on the site. I realized there was nothing else that could be done until Monday if it continued to not appear in my account. After about 36 hours of slight panic about it, though I checked the site again and it appeared in my recent activity. Not only that, but it said it was as of the 11th (on time) and no site of any late fees or finance charges. I may need to look into this online banking thing more seriously. It could not have been more convenient and easy to do, unless I had an assistant to pay all my bills for me. One goal at a time.

The Penalty of Stability Part 4

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5 installs of Windows XP and service pack 2 later, I have returned the victor!

To make a long story short, it was the graphics card driver. I uninstalled it in safe mode restarted and it went right into Windows without so much as a pause. I’ve loaded up some of my applications including those necessary to get the Zen Vision up and working. I only meant to watch the first few seconds of the episode of Battlestar Galactica I loaded, but ended up watching all 45 minutes of it. I’ll post a review of the Zen player at another time, but needless to say I am pleased with it.

Now I can get some sleep and get back to work.

yay.

Car under ice

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I didn’t really go out this past weekend. It was mostly inclement weather and I had some work to do. The rain was particularly bad on Sunday. As soon as my alarm went off Monday morning, I was instantly cold. Usually thats a hint thats its quite cold outside because there is a window in the basement that keeps opening and we can’t seem to keep it closed. It makes for a chilly winter. I was running on time when I walked outside and heard an ice scraper scraping away at the windshield of one of my roommates’ cars. It instantly occured to me that I did not go out all weekend and it is now 10 degrees farenheit. (32 degrees is the temperature at which water freezes for those on the Centigrade scale.)

I tried my remote starter and my car wouldn’t turn over and start. I put my key in the lock and tried to unlock the door. When I pulled the handle, the door wouldn’t budge. I tried the passenger door and the key wouldn’t even turn in that lock. The tailgate was frozen shut, no matter how I tried to open it. At this point, Eddie had come over and helped me with all of these doors. I’m started to panic a little because if I don’t get to the Braintree parking garage by 07:20 EST, the garage is full and I have to head to the Quincy Adams T Station and fight through a great deal of traffic to park there. Eddie suggested getting some hot water and pouring it over the door. In my panic, this sounded like a viable option. At that moment, any suggestion would have sounded like a viable option. So I went inside and got some steaming hot water in a glass and brought it outside. As I poured some of the water on the frame of my driver’s side door, I watched it instantly freeze. In effect, leaving me worse off. Not realizing I had gotten some water on my glove, I tried to wipe at the window. Instantly, my glove was frozen to the window. Flabberghasted, I had the option of leaving the glove on the window for the rest of the day and hope it wouldn’t get lost as my car heated up on the way to the T station, or just pulling and praying it didn’t rip the glove. Still in a semi-panicked state, I pulled quickly on the glove and it broke free without any visible damage. However, in my rage of irrational fury, I took the glass with the hot water still in it and splashed the rest of the water across my windshield. I realized immediately what I had done as I watched another thick layer of ice form on my windshield. -_-

This was not turning out to be my day. I went back inside, semi-defeated, in order to regroup and think of another strategy. Around that time, I remembered my mother had gotten me some lock de-icer as part of a big bag of practical gifts for Hannukah in 2004 and it was still in my room. I ran downstairs and grabbed one of the cannisters and rushed outside back to my car. One spritz in the lock and my key turned just a bit further. Just enough though, that I heard the door fully unlock and with a quick tug, the door opened. I started my car and sat there for about 30 minutes waiting for the car to heat up. After a while I decided I could wait no longer and grabbed my ice scraper. I went to work quickly and furiously on the windshield. Fortunately some of it had started to melt, not all of it though. For that reason, my wrists were in a great deal of pain for the next day and a half.

When I drove into the Braintree parking garage 45 minutes late, I was astounded to see that I could not only get in, but there were so many open spots that I didn’t even have to park on the roof. It was Martin Luther King Day and I had no idea. So the day turned around after that, even though it seemed like we were the only company working in the state that day.

Black Friday 2005

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Things I learned from Black Friday this year at Best Buy.

  • If other people know you are going to stand in line, they will invariably ask you to pick something up for them too.
  • If doors open at 5am and you get in line at 1:40am, you will still not be close enough to the door to qualify for the really good deals everyone wants.
  • No matter how many layers of clothes you wear, you will still lose feeling in your feet.
  • While waiting in line, dozens of asians will cut you in line and when confronted will pretend not to understand english.
  • People become irrationally furious and violent when said asians cut in line at 4:30 in the morning.
  • The cops can’t do much when everyone ignores them.
  • When the doors open, unless you are close to the front of the line you will most likely not get in for another half hour at the very least. (we were close to the front.)
  • Once you are in, you cannot stop moving or you will be trampled.
  • The section of the store that 90% of the crowds want to go to will be roped off because they would be shoplifted into bankruptcy.
  • The one heavily discounted item that you came for will be blocked off by the line waiting to enter said section of store.
  • People become just as irrationally furious and violent in the store as they were outside the store if they feel you are cutting them in line. Even if you are just getting an item off a shelf they are blocking.
  • Once you finally make it to said item, you will watch someone pick up the last one, with no hope of the store having any more.
  • If you ask 5 different people where a sale item is, you will get 5 different responses and none of them will actually be right.
  • and finally, after you are outside the store and walking to your car with your purchased items, you will come to the realization that you could have gone in to the store at 11am and bought all the same items at all the same prices with a lot more sleep and a lot less aggravation.

Maybe next year.

ATXCases.com Strikes Back

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A day after I get the email stating I was to receive a full refund, I received another email saying my case shipped.

Being the utterly confused kid I am, I responded asking which was the case. I receive a response from my nemesis, bud@atxcases.com. It had a Fedex tracking number in it. I think to myself, hmmm…I really just wanted my refund, but if this is real, I’m ok with that.

A day later I notice the destination of the package for the tracking number they sent me is Oro Vally, AZ. -_-

I sent them another email. An hour later, my mom calls saying a big package came in the mail from atxcases.com. I go to my parents’ house after work and pick it up. It was a Thursday night, so I met up with the Duke, Dave, Nate and Dan at Uno’s. I get back at night and take my case out of the box.

Wrong Case.

So now when I return this awful imiation of a good case, they will probably not refund the shipping they charged for this cheaper case AND I’ll have to foot the shipping back to them.

This has been the worst consumer experience I have ever been put through. I can’t wait until this order is finally cancelled and I receive the case I want from some other site.

DONT BUY FROM ATXCASES.COM!

Victory

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bud@atxcases.com decided he could not meet my demands and has cancelled my order and told billing to issue me a refund.

I’m glad that all got cleared up in an efficient manner over the past 3 MONTHS!

Getting hosed by ATXCases.com

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So i order a new case on ATXCases.com on August 22nd, 2004 as a birthday gift to myself.
This is the case I ordered: Goth case

I call a month later asking where my case is after nothing being entered in their tracking system on their website and the case still being listed as ‘in stock’ in its listing. They say its on back order. Should come in next week. I call next week. The parts are in they just have to be assembled and shipped. Another month goes by with no notice of the status of my order whatsoever. I call, email, and try their live support with no success to get through. I finally leave a message on their voicemail. I get an email saying the parts arrived damaged and were unshippable and that I should try to substitute for another case. I tell them i’m willing to substitute for this case. They want more money for it.

I sent the following email to them:
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