Well, after much stress today, I think I’ve finally gotten things sorted with Apple. I hope so anyway. At least now I have the one thing I was craving - information. I have a name, and a way of following it up, and a person who knows what the problem is, and has taken responsibility.

Thank you so much - yay =)

So far, I’ve cleared out about 10 cubic feet of paper alone from under my desk… I haven’t gotten to my wardrobes yet, but I’ve found many interesting & unusual items, that I really, really don’t need. Among them:
1 Fog Blaster (large)
1 Fog Blaster (small)
1 bottle Fog Blaster fluid
3 bottles absinthe (1 large, 2 small)
1 plush Winnie-the-Pooh
1 plush Novell chameleon
2 Tuxen (1 stress-toy, small, 1 inflatable, large, burst)
1 space-age ant-farm
1 box Pixelblocks (large)
1 bottle bubble-mix (incl bubble blowers)
1 jester hat
1 CD, containing TIFs of pages of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
1 Eason’s voucher (€20)
2 book tokens (€5 & €10)
2 packs Top Trumps (Winnie-the-Pooh & The Lord of the Rings)
4 contact lenses (mismatched)
1 long-lost necklace
2 long-lost rings
Several keys, unknown provenance

I really ought to hoard less. I’m a fatal cross between a magpie and a squirrel…

Well, it’s been a hectic wee while. Details on the holiday are at ~/nyc. The Apple store was a bit crap, but Tiger is fun.

Apple in Ireland, however, are uber-muppets. More than a month ago, they recalled batteries for some of their laptops. My iBook was one of those. More than a month ago, I ordered a replacement battery from the recall website. According to Apple, a replacement battery was sent, more than a month ago, to $MyStreet, $MyArea, GBR. Now, I’m presuming GBR stands for Great Britain, where I do not live. But regardless of that, that battery was never going to make it to me. “$MyStreet, $MyArea, Ireland” could have had a chance. But it still would have been unlikely. MORONS.

About two weeks, and at least as many phone calls, after this, I finally find out that’s what they’ve done. First, I get told “The batteries are taking 15-20 working days to get dispatched”. A few days later, I get told “No, your battery was dispatched two weeks ago, to $StupidAddressAbove”. The person who tells me this assures me that another battery will be sent, to a real address.

A few days after I’m reassured that a battery will be sent to a real address, I call again. I get a curt “it was dispatched”, and get hung up on as I’m asking this person to verify the address it was dispatched to. So I call back, and about ninety minutes later finally find out that it wasn’t dispatched. They didn’t even try - because it’s the second attempt to send me a battery, they need my credit card details (in case I don’t return the faulty one). There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m giving them credit card details without some way of tracking where the battery is in the system, which I’ve been told repeatedly they don’t have, and can’t give. So I get put on hold for another twenty minutes, while they figure it out.

They finally decide that they can send out the battery without my credit card details, but it’s going to take two days to put through the system because it’s a “special case”. Fine. It’ll then take three days to be delivered - awkward for me, but whatever. Two days later, I ring, and am told they can’t track where it is in the system, whether the order has been put through or not. I’m further told that it should arrive on Friday (how they know this without knowing if the order has been put in, I don’t know), and not to call before Monday.

Well, that was last Monday. That Friday, when the battery should have arrived, was almost ten days ago. And you’ve got it - no battery. Meanwhile, I’ve burnt my leg with the old battery, and am well fed up. GRRR! GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER, APPLE!

MORONS.
MORONS.
MORONS.

Why is it that some people are so thick? I don’t mean people with specific learning disabilities - or whatever you choose to call them. I don’t mean dyslexics who can’t spell, or people who just don’t “get” statistics, or even people who, for whatever reason, aren’t wired to learn as well as some do. I don’t even mean people who have the odd “moment” - even frequent “moment”s are forgivable, if they’re somehow distinguishable from the rest of one’s existence. I don’t even mind the occasional dose of laziness.

I mean people with total, complete, clue-blackout. People who should be capable of learning, but just won’t? Normal, adult human-beings, who are probably of reasonable mental capacity, but are just as thick as two short planks. Why? Can someone please tell me?

Learning facts & figures is hard for some people. Fine. Grasping abstract concepts is hard for others. Also fine. Specific skills, from teaching, to explaining, to repeating from memory, are hard for various people. But for the love of the divine - how hard is it to keep your mouth shut? Or use Google? Or ASK SOMEONE WHO CARES - ideally just one person, not a whole group of people who are already talking about something different, and really don’t give a toss.

And, while we’re on it - OH MY GOD, THE APOSTROPHE… It’s not a complicated piece of equipment. School-children can cope with it. Hell, even low-grade idiots can work out how to avoid it. So why is it that some people just can’t resist it!? LEAVE IT ALONE! STOP ABUSING IT! PLEASE!

Thank you.

Well, I’ve been all dizzy and disorientated today… I splatted myself fairly spectacularly at the LUAS station at Harcourt St, and scraped my knee & elbow, bashed my hands & head… General ickness. I have a headache now, and my wrist & shoulder alternately ache lots, but I’ll be good soon, I’m sure…
Colm bought a new laptop - a most impressive Sony Vaio, that suits him perfectly. He’s most impressed with it, and I’ve gotta admit, it looks very sweet.

In much more important purchasing-news, he also bought some Kandoo foaming wash mittens, because Kandoo have the coolest ads, and I always ooh when I see them =) The product doesn’t disappoint either. They’re definitely not made for big hands (even ones as small as mine), but they rock! Foamy and soapy, gentle (ok, still stingy if you get bubbles in your eyes, but not half so bad as shampoo bubbles), and OH-SO-COOL =) They don’t get rid of everything - sticky-plaster-residue was beyond them - but they rock more than enough to make up for it.

I can do it too, with Kandoo! =)

Grandad’s out of hospital now, and hopefully much less grumpy for it!

Also, I’m officially not any kind of official DB admin - I’m only Colm’s DB-person, cos he hates MySQL, and is too lazy to learn it

The Management

Well, it’s been a while…

BBQ on Saturday was fun - we had *way* too much food, and about 2l of Club Orange each, but everyone stayed around until after Doctor Who, so we managed to eat a surprising amount of it!

Saw grandad - man, he didn’t look well He’s fed up and miserable and doesn’t like hospitals… Can’t say I blame him, but it’s sad to see him looking so rough Dropped by Grandma’s afterwards too; she seems to be coping ok.

Rosie’s having a ball in Uganda, and doesn’t want to come home - poor thing, it’ll be a major anti-climax to be back in a big brick house, with more rooms than people, cool weather, and being able to wear some of her shorter shorts again…

Colm’s laptop died again - the screen’s doing all kindsa weird & funky stuff, with multicoloured lines where he doesn’t want to have multicoloured lines… It looks a bit modern art-y, but that’s not really what ya want from your laptop, I guess Apple didn’t update the iBooks, and with their upcoming move to Intel, he doesn’t know what he wants to do regarding a new one… So for the moment, danann is hooked up to the projector, and a wireless keyboard! He figlet’d stuff for me last night - figlet’d text, several feet high - how cool is that!?

Eoin’s gone off to Prom - I don’t think the overnight in Heathrow was all he had it hyped up to be, but he’s in Arlington now, and having a ball

So that’s all for now - be good