Archive for June, 2007

Two nights ago, I had a nightmare that I still had my job. 

One of the things about being a Mac Genius is that you hear the same junk repeatedly. 

• It’s broken.
• It just doesn’t work.
• It just stopped working.
• I was using it, and then it, like, stopped working.
• I get, like, stuff on the screen.

In case anyone here ever gets support of any kind and does not already recognize this, let me tell you now that these are not helpful comments. Whether it’s an iPod, a computer, a car, a TV, your phone service, or a pair of shoes, if you call or go in for service, don’t say any of those things. So many appointments were almost exactly the same. The number of questions it would take to get valuable information out may vary slightly, but it would generally go something like each of the above statements with a variant of “can you please describe what happened in more detail?” before each one. Then I can finally ask “what kind of stuff?” 

I really hate repeating the same crap over and over all day long. I’m not sure if I hate it because it was such a prominent feature of my job, or if it’s a character trait that made my job less enjoyable for me. Recently, I’ve had several events that have caused an inevitable barrage of the same questions over and over, and I really hate it. I’d be with a group of people, and someone would mention my last day at work was coming up, and someone else would perk up. “Your last day? You’re quitting? When? Why? You’re moving? Where? Denmark? Wow! Why Denmark? You got married? How’d you meet? Do you have a job lined up?” 

It’s not that I’m annoyed that people are interested in my life. Quite the contrary, I’m glad that I have friends and acquaintances that are interested in my life’s events. But for whatever reason, answering those questions over and over for the past couple of MONTHS has really worn me down. Not having to do that has been a highlight of being in Florida.

We gave up on finding a place to rent in Denmark, and decided to look for a place to buy. After talking to the bank, it took less than a week to find a place, and the current owner has finally accepted our offer. Now we just have to close and move in is the first! I’m finally joining the adult world.

Just as an FYI, when I moved to my most excellent new webhost, DreamHost, I decided not to use a catch-all email anymore. For those of you who might have been using alcyone@ this domain name for an email address of mine, I have disabled it. About 99% of my spam was going to that address, and I have not received any legitimate email (other than a couple of lists I can resub to) on it in a very long time. For those who were using somethingreallyrandom@ this domain name, it will no longer work either. Sorry! I know it was fun, but it was just too much spam.