Count-dawn.
I did a long “Mercury is backwards who cares” wander along the eastern loop of the trail.
I was going to describe it as “6 miles, 5 tacos,” but then I ran out of stuff to count. Or stuff I wanted to count.
I passed a guy flipping a Texas-rigged chartreuse Zoom worm, and I popped the earphones out long enough to watch him land a tiny bass, the fish wasn’t more than five inches long. That worm? It’s seven inches long.
I detoured several times, and I stopped off at a favorite fishing spot, and while peering in the water, I could see a couple of my buddies, guarding a nest. Another place, there was a big old bass cruising the shoals, close to the dam.
These are “city fish,” and if they can see you, forget trying to dangle something in front of them. Unless it’s a day when they have that attitude. Which wasn’t the case for me.
But that “attitude,” whatever it is, I mean, I can safely attribute it to the planets. Seems like there’s a lot of it going around. Then again, it might just be me.
Nota Bene:
It was a lot more like 8 miles, but who’s counting?
(See if anyone recognizes the mural & location.)
More “Mercury freak-O-meter”
Subtitle: This time? It’s personal.
(I guess I should trademark “Mercury freak-O-meter” but really, ™ is too much work.)
The story starts with the way families, at least, the way my family interacts. Computer hardware used to be handed down, looking every bit like a typical patriarchal tree, where out-of-date and otherwise abandoned hardware goes from Father to first Born Male child, and from thence, on to the last in the line, Youngest Female.
I tapped the Apple website to see if the warranty was still good on an older model laptop, now in Pa Wetzel’s hands. I paid for the extended warranty because, in my experience, computer hardware either fails in the first 30 days, or shortly before the extended warranty period is over. 3 years on the old Titanium, and it didn’t break (freak out, really) until that 2.5 year mark. That’s a lot of miles, and a solid piece of hardware.
The extended warranty got the TiBook out to a service center and back in less than a week, at no cost to me. Other than not having the CPU handy.
I passed another laptop onto Pa Wetzel, and its warranty is still in effect. He called Wednesday morning, and I assured him that the hardware was still covered. Then I logged onto Apple, to check. According to the website, all they had a record of was 90-day “toll free tech support” for two items (I’m guessing last year’s second iPod, a business tool. No, really, it saved me money.) And who needs tech support on an iPod?
So I called. I had trouble speaking. I couldn’t articulate the problem. When I finally got it out, I was able to confirm that the ‘book was still covered and that the extended warranty was tied to the machine’s serial number. Not to my address. Not to Sister’s address, although, I did have to cough up her phone number.
There wasn’t any level of frustration on my part, except for one area, in the whole series of information transactions: website.
Information I was attempting to get from the Apple site? Click here, click here, click here, and still, the site didn’t have what I was looking for. If I can’t find data on a website in under three minutes, or less, I’m like so out of there. Why I called.
Made me think of a valid question, though, I mean, I know where everything is tucked away on my site, but how is the usability? Find what you want? Quickly? Easily?
