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Moving Experiences
Nov. 29th, 2017 09:14 pmYesterday- I think, I hope- was my last day in the most ancient circle of Computer Hell. The emailed gift card arrived early in the day, and I planned to do some Office Depot shop-PING as soon as I got out of work.
First, of course, was the getting out of work part. My day wasn't that busy, other than the endless waiting round for programs to load and things to print through whipping-round of flash drives between old laptop and borrowed desktop. Plus, the county clerk's website was down, so I couldn't look things up for a potentially important new client. But one of my co-workers was clearly having it worse than I was.
Her client was stretching the limits of residential real estate practice- selling a home and then buying the new one on the same day. Problems arose when it suddenly dawned that the new buyer of the old home would greatly appreciate the seller removing himself from his place of residence. Faced with no way to get everything packed, moved and unpacked in the day provided, my coworker was asked, in essence, Where do they expect me to sleep tonight? When years of experience resulted in her suggesting a hotel for such situations, the client took umbrage, took it up the ladder of complaint, and took all her hard work on both of these deals completely for granted.
I had to go to Wegmans anyway to pick something up, so I decided that something was needed to lighten up the situation. I found most of it in their bakery, but then stopped back home to give the gift that real "home"-y touch:
I brought them in to the conference room. She first saw just the desserts and started to thank me, but when she saw the add-ons, she went from laughter to tears in about 20 seconds. It was just was she needed to get over the bad taste of an undeserved bad experience. And the final irony? That problem I had with the county clerk website wasn't a problem on my end; their whole office was down, and as of the time I left for the day, nothing had closed. So it was all, more or less, for nothing. But chocolate always beats nothing, anyway.
----
Once I finished my own run downtown, dodged a nasty accident and dropped off some papers for a client, it was time to begin my own process of moving- moving files. Here's the floor model I tried out: it's a Dell, dude.
I had $300 of gift card to spend at Office Depot; my guess was that a comparable laptop, plus purchase protection, would exceed that by at least 500. There really wasn't much choice; the only other models with my non-negotiable demands (a full keyboard with number pad and an internal CD/DVD drive) were either way too expensive or too cheap/cheaply built. This was it in the range- $650 list, reduced by a post-Cyber Monday sale by 200. With a (now-cheaper) two-year protection plan on it, I brought it all in for under three bills out-of-pocket. (That's soon to go above that, though, since this one's power supply is not compatible with any I now have, and I will need at least one more for my one more office, and I stupidly left behind the one they sold me in Rochester.)
Buying it was the quick and easy part. Then began the days-long process of getting it up to speed with what I need it for- but even that, so far, has been quicker and easier than any prior transfers. By the end of last night, I had cloud access to my work documents, my specialty softwares installed and running, and Office back onboard. I took it to Rochester this morning and it got onto their wifi, printers and network with minimal delays; Mozilla got re-installed and all settings restored; email also got set up, back files restored in Outlook, and I now have full access to all my history going back to 2012. Tonight, I got my journaling software going (or will have, If U Cn Rd Ths), and really all that's left is getting my scanners functional (tomorrow), and then tackling the untamed beast of importing music and syncing it and the rest of my stuff to and from my phone through iTunes (pretty much the whole damn weekend).
Thanks to a last-minute settlement, I did not have to stay over there tonight, and have the whole day tomorrow to do those things and catch up on the rest of work from days and computers away.
----
Other things happened, too, but you can't write about everything.... /mysterious
First, of course, was the getting out of work part. My day wasn't that busy, other than the endless waiting round for programs to load and things to print through whipping-round of flash drives between old laptop and borrowed desktop. Plus, the county clerk's website was down, so I couldn't look things up for a potentially important new client. But one of my co-workers was clearly having it worse than I was.
Her client was stretching the limits of residential real estate practice- selling a home and then buying the new one on the same day. Problems arose when it suddenly dawned that the new buyer of the old home would greatly appreciate the seller removing himself from his place of residence. Faced with no way to get everything packed, moved and unpacked in the day provided, my coworker was asked, in essence, Where do they expect me to sleep tonight? When years of experience resulted in her suggesting a hotel for such situations, the client took umbrage, took it up the ladder of complaint, and took all her hard work on both of these deals completely for granted.
I had to go to Wegmans anyway to pick something up, so I decided that something was needed to lighten up the situation. I found most of it in their bakery, but then stopped back home to give the gift that real "home"-y touch:
I brought them in to the conference room. She first saw just the desserts and started to thank me, but when she saw the add-ons, she went from laughter to tears in about 20 seconds. It was just was she needed to get over the bad taste of an undeserved bad experience. And the final irony? That problem I had with the county clerk website wasn't a problem on my end; their whole office was down, and as of the time I left for the day, nothing had closed. So it was all, more or less, for nothing. But chocolate always beats nothing, anyway.
----
Once I finished my own run downtown, dodged a nasty accident and dropped off some papers for a client, it was time to begin my own process of moving- moving files. Here's the floor model I tried out: it's a Dell, dude.
I had $300 of gift card to spend at Office Depot; my guess was that a comparable laptop, plus purchase protection, would exceed that by at least 500. There really wasn't much choice; the only other models with my non-negotiable demands (a full keyboard with number pad and an internal CD/DVD drive) were either way too expensive or too cheap/cheaply built. This was it in the range- $650 list, reduced by a post-Cyber Monday sale by 200. With a (now-cheaper) two-year protection plan on it, I brought it all in for under three bills out-of-pocket. (That's soon to go above that, though, since this one's power supply is not compatible with any I now have, and I will need at least one more for my one more office, and I stupidly left behind the one they sold me in Rochester.)
Buying it was the quick and easy part. Then began the days-long process of getting it up to speed with what I need it for- but even that, so far, has been quicker and easier than any prior transfers. By the end of last night, I had cloud access to my work documents, my specialty softwares installed and running, and Office back onboard. I took it to Rochester this morning and it got onto their wifi, printers and network with minimal delays; Mozilla got re-installed and all settings restored; email also got set up, back files restored in Outlook, and I now have full access to all my history going back to 2012. Tonight, I got my journaling software going (or will have, If U Cn Rd Ths), and really all that's left is getting my scanners functional (tomorrow), and then tackling the untamed beast of importing music and syncing it and the rest of my stuff to and from my phone through iTunes (pretty much the whole damn weekend).
Thanks to a last-minute settlement, I did not have to stay over there tonight, and have the whole day tomorrow to do those things and catch up on the rest of work from days and computers away.
----
Other things happened, too, but you can't write about everything.... /mysterious