“Houston we had a problem.”
All I can recall is that the term is a parade ground order, the basic, “get everyone moving” and then all the guys line up and parade pass the boss. Or something like that. What I remember, anyway. The affectionate term was, “piss in your shoe,” and I was wondering if, for some reason, a yearly review which is days late, I was wondering if that term fit better.
We all got high points and low points. Depends on how it’s called. I recall watching the election returns, two points, one that the border counties in Texas were blue – El Paso, along with Houston, Dallas, obviously Austin, and San Antonio, and two, the talking head called it for the current president-elect as soon as the Midwest was through – before the Left Coast was even finished voting.
“California, Oregon, Washington State? All for Obama, done deal.”
Pundits can be right, huh. Who knew?
In other reviews:
I got to London and Paris, summer of ’08. That was cool. That was way cool. Midsummer Night’s Eve was Shakespeare’s Midsummers Night’s Eve. Pretty incredible. That, along with the The Merry Wives of Windsor, which, it can be argued, is the most obviously “pagan” of Shakespeare’s Canon.
No new markets, another book manuscript finished but unsold, still need an agent. I looked through the reference book I used, I counted close to 200 addresses I sent query letters to, all for naught. Well, not all for nothing, just affirmed my faith in myself.
Have to put all those agents on the “You had your chance when” list.
New Hardware:
So far, just the new iPhone. But a recent experience reminded me of my experience with AT&T – the Apple experience I get? Usually excellent.
I have a sick laptop, more than two years of road work, some international travel, yeah, the computer was worn out in spots. CD burner wasn’t always burning. Off to the Apple Store. Appointment, on time, tech looked it over, we wiped the hard drive clean, rather erased it, and the computer went off to Apple someplace, the mother ship? To get fixed. All good. The tech next to mine was joking, and I made the red shirt comment again.
Always get that geek laugh. Star Trek joke. Anyway, he activated an iPhone and then he was momentarily idle. I asked about the weirdest questions, strangest things they’d seen.
“Guy came in looking for a Dell?”
Not what I was looking for
Still, there’s always a rare insight into the inner-workings of largely successful enterprise, one that’s doing well even in the face of the “economic decline” we, as both a country and a planet, have found ourselves in. The “irate customer.”
What I gathered, as I grimaced inwardly, the lady – someone’s mom – was missing an Apple laptop that was in for repairs. Dropped off at an Austin Apple store, then supposed to be returned, to a San Antonio Apple store, and the hardware was headed to Houston. About covers the Texas Revolutionary War, and apparently, that laptop was also covering the same time frame, about six weeks.
The iPod/iPhone tech smoothly handled it as a best he could when someone is yelling, before the customer could say, “Let me speak to your manager,” the tech was already dialing that number, “Let me get you someone with authority to expedite this.” Ugly scene. I don’t know how it played out. I grabbed my paperwork and beat a hasty retreat.
Would’ve been good to watch, the store was way crowded. Me? I’m prepared. I have two full back-ups, but then, I’m used to equipment failures at mission-critical times. I have a Plan B, and for that matter, plans for the rest of the alphabet.
It’s not a matter of if a computer will fail, it’s just matter of when.
Funny, that’s a comment I’ve made about the Texas Coast and hurricanes.
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The election, definitely a high point for the year. For me, personally, deciding when to retire, also a high point. Equipment failure? I’ve been told there are two categories of computer users: There are those who have hard drives that have crashed and there are those whose hard driver certainly will crash, sooner or later. Your backup A-Z? Smart man.