random thoughts – Day 1,192 – (Thursday) – bizarro

It was another bizarro WTF day. It kicked off with technology fun and programs not loading automatically like they usually do. It took 1.5 hours for me to realize Teams Chat wasn’t open, and only when I went to message a colleague.

Mid-morning, there was suddenly major lag, screens froze, and everything bogged down. The mouse battery was checked. Internet connection was checked. A question was floated to a colleague to see if anyone else was having issues.

The next step was an hour-long call with our internal help desk where more than once the tech very politely said, “hmmmm…. That’s new.” We chatted while waiting for programs to troubleshoot and reload, and the tech agreed that, yes, friends in an old job who declared I had BTK (Bad Technology Karma) were probably correct in their assessment.

Things finally got sorted after rebooting the computer and the router, then resetting some things. When things were finally well again, 15 new emails had arrived during the problem-solving time.

Cool, in Cali!

During the afternoon, a delivery alert from Amazon arrived about the Nature’s Miracle order due today. Yesterday’s tracking check showed it in Manchester, NH, a mere 37.8 miles away. Today’s update said it would now arrive between the 23rd and 25th. The amusing part, if we can call it that, is in the tracking details. The package was in Manchester, NH at 5:41 pm on Wednesday. Did Manchester move away overnight? 

Today’s tracking details show it arriving in Chino, California, 2,987 miles away, and noted with “Possible delay in delivery.” Ummm… you think? Two other entries flag it as “Delayed in transit” at 3:00pm and 8:00 pm today. WTF, Amazon? Apparently “Free Prime Shipping” now means a nice cross-country tour for the items.

As if that wasn’t enough fun for one day, shortly after 4:30, as I was wrapping up things for a Friday vacation day, a backyard neighbor started blasting music. It 80s and 90s songs which wasn't bad in theory, but they were crappy covers in a mashup medley with only a few lines of the song. Just as the song became recognizable, it would change to a different song sung by the same crappy vocalists.

Closing the kitchen windows didn’t help. The racket was briefly and blessedly drowned out very loud power equipment, but it was brief and the music outlasted it. Then, at 5:00, it magically stopped, or the medley ran its course, but in any event it ended. It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if the whole song had played instead of jumping from one song to another. The best part was when it ended.

After that, the evening was peaceful. The sunlight was pretty, the temperature was comfortable, the groundhog was hanging around in the back yard. 

Long Sands Beach, York, ME, 2013.

This date was very different from the same date ten years ago, when my family stayed at a rental house at York Beach. 

On that date, as several of us sat on the living room sofa and various chairs which faced a set of windows where the blinds were stuck in the raised position, a woman in the house next door was in her living room, exercising in her underwear in front of her windows with open blinds and curtains. If she turned around, she would see us seeing her, and we ended up avoiding looking out the window and laughing like maniacs. One friend in Facebook comments said we should make score cards to hold up like competition judges if she turned around. We did not do that, but the idea was hilarious.