Death of a Traveling Salesman
Jan. 21st, 2009 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI would never have made it in outside sales. Days like this drive me absolutely mad. Seven outside appointments, keeping me from home and office from shortly after 8 a.m. until just before 6 p.m. None was particularly unsuccessful or stressful, but I just get too emotionally involved with the people and situations I deal with, and having that many all bollixed together is enough to make me a tired and cranky camper while it's all going down.
9:30. Stop #1, in Rochester (as all of these were, at least in the Greater Rochester Area sense) to meet a prospective client I'd never met at an office I'd never been to. Went reasonably well and surprisingly quickly, giving me time for....
10-something. Up to the Ridge to drop off Eleanor's laptop at the House of Frankenstein, where my own computers have gone to die and occasionally live again on many occasions. It would just figure, wouldn't it, that as soon as she needed to stay at home and sit on her tuchus for two days, her power supply would completely shit the bed on her. I'd looked into replacements last month, and was given obscene quotes for universal adapters retailing for more than the damn laptop was probably worth. Vinny plugged in such a beast and in ten seconds, it was charging again. Yet, as long as it was there, I thought, maybe he could figure out why it seemed to be running increasingly slower when I was running all the same anti-virus/spyware/whatnot tools on it and things like Defrag said they weren't necessary. He promptly offered to jack up its RAM from 256 meg to over a gig. How does one say no to this? I left it in his hands and proceeded forth to Stop the Third.
11:00. The court appearance that was, officially, my reason for traveling today in the first place, but which I resolved by phone yesterday and kept to record the settlement in person only because of all the other stuff I'd piled on my travel plate. Once we got through one of those Cases From Hell that seems to haunt every court, mine was settled in quick and friendly terms.
Noon. Lunch, duh. With a former co-worker and still fellow referrer-referree of many things, who ordered out for subs and proceeded to place a freakin yard-long in my lap, half of which will be tomorrow's lunch. Left there just as his 1:00 appointment showed up, giving me just enough time to get lost on the way to my....
1:30. Not much to be done. Sad case. Have given it my best and will continue to do so. Put in call to the I'll-call-you-when-I'm-done client when I was done, which got me to her place by....
2:45. Picked up a shopping bag full of receipts that need to be analyzed, organized and copied. Couldn't decide whether to travel clockwise or counterclockwise around Rochester's Outer Loop, which I was virtually at the bottom of, until the 20 percent grade hill I was parked on strongly recommended the counter route, getting me back to Vinny's by....
3-something. The new RAM hadn't arrived yet, but showed up a few minutes after I did. We then spent the better part of an hour turning off a huuuuge number of unwanted and unrequested "services" that had wormed their way into the registry, most from reputable sources like Java, RealPlayer, HP and AOL. The final step was Vinny turning off System Restore, which he said is singly responsible for gumming up the most number of drives he'd ever seen. Eleanor's now been restored to something resembling a 21st century computer, and it was time for me to head home, arriving ten hours after I left, almost to the minute.
Not counted in the above was the morning stop for coffee; the mid-morning search for a Rochester branch of a bank I never banked at when I lived there; the mid-afternoon time-killer to get a tall latte at the Twelve Corners Starbucks, which they screwed up but made up for with a freebie on my next visit, as always; or the end-of-day runs for mail and groceries and wine that kept me from home until about 6:15.
Also not counted is the sheer joy that arrived, not quite two hours ago, when I was finally home, safe and warm with those I love- and with two working computers, for a change:)
9:30. Stop #1, in Rochester (as all of these were, at least in the Greater Rochester Area sense) to meet a prospective client I'd never met at an office I'd never been to. Went reasonably well and surprisingly quickly, giving me time for....
10-something. Up to the Ridge to drop off Eleanor's laptop at the House of Frankenstein, where my own computers have gone to die and occasionally live again on many occasions. It would just figure, wouldn't it, that as soon as she needed to stay at home and sit on her tuchus for two days, her power supply would completely shit the bed on her. I'd looked into replacements last month, and was given obscene quotes for universal adapters retailing for more than the damn laptop was probably worth. Vinny plugged in such a beast and in ten seconds, it was charging again. Yet, as long as it was there, I thought, maybe he could figure out why it seemed to be running increasingly slower when I was running all the same anti-virus/spyware/whatnot tools on it and things like Defrag said they weren't necessary. He promptly offered to jack up its RAM from 256 meg to over a gig. How does one say no to this? I left it in his hands and proceeded forth to Stop the Third.
11:00. The court appearance that was, officially, my reason for traveling today in the first place, but which I resolved by phone yesterday and kept to record the settlement in person only because of all the other stuff I'd piled on my travel plate. Once we got through one of those Cases From Hell that seems to haunt every court, mine was settled in quick and friendly terms.
Noon. Lunch, duh. With a former co-worker and still fellow referrer-referree of many things, who ordered out for subs and proceeded to place a freakin yard-long in my lap, half of which will be tomorrow's lunch. Left there just as his 1:00 appointment showed up, giving me just enough time to get lost on the way to my....
1:30. Not much to be done. Sad case. Have given it my best and will continue to do so. Put in call to the I'll-call-you-when-I'm-done client when I was done, which got me to her place by....
2:45. Picked up a shopping bag full of receipts that need to be analyzed, organized and copied. Couldn't decide whether to travel clockwise or counterclockwise around Rochester's Outer Loop, which I was virtually at the bottom of, until the 20 percent grade hill I was parked on strongly recommended the counter route, getting me back to Vinny's by....
3-something. The new RAM hadn't arrived yet, but showed up a few minutes after I did. We then spent the better part of an hour turning off a huuuuge number of unwanted and unrequested "services" that had wormed their way into the registry, most from reputable sources like Java, RealPlayer, HP and AOL. The final step was Vinny turning off System Restore, which he said is singly responsible for gumming up the most number of drives he'd ever seen. Eleanor's now been restored to something resembling a 21st century computer, and it was time for me to head home, arriving ten hours after I left, almost to the minute.
Not counted in the above was the morning stop for coffee; the mid-morning search for a Rochester branch of a bank I never banked at when I lived there; the mid-afternoon time-killer to get a tall latte at the Twelve Corners Starbucks, which they screwed up but made up for with a freebie on my next visit, as always; or the end-of-day runs for mail and groceries and wine that kept me from home until about 6:15.
Also not counted is the sheer joy that arrived, not quite two hours ago, when I was finally home, safe and warm with those I love- and with two working computers, for a change:)