Waiting in the airport now to fly to Michigan, my flight’s on time,
and I have an exit row for the red-eye segment so I should be able to
sleep.
Woke up at 6am so I’d be tired for the flight, mowed the grass, got a
haircut, got some money from the ATM, bought some cigars for my uncle,
and then returned some hole saws to OSH that I’d bought last weekend
for a project but didn’t end up needing . . . all before 11am. Then,
Without warning, things began to go wrong.
Jeff texts me that my website says the server’s being shut down. Huh?
It was working last night. I IM with Startlogic, who proceed to tell
me that the transition their new hosting platform had a “problem”. No
kidding. I tell them I need my website (I mean seriously . . . the
only time I’ll probably ever use it every day), and that the timing
for this change couldn’t be any worse. I had gotten an e-mail in
mid-March saying “we’re about to move you to the new version. . . but
don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything! We’ll do all the work and
then tell you when it’s done!”. Apparently they forgot that second
part and so never got to the third. The IM guy tells me they’ll have
their engineers “work on it” and have it up within 12 hours. If
you’re reading this, I guess they fixed it.
The solar pool guy came to look at the “champange bubbles” that I get
from the pool outlets when ever the solar is on. He says I just need
to clean my filter and or get a bigger pump and that it doesn’t matter
anyway. I run out of arguments. Those little bubbles drive me
irrationally crazy though.
I wanted to make sure that my air conditioner, which started leaking
from the “schrader valves” ever since I made the mistake ofgetting an
“inspection” from an HVAC company, was still up and running. So I
turned it on . . . nope – it’s lost all it’s refrigerant again (for
the second time). Called the AC guys back but they won’t be able to
deal with it until tomorrow, and I’ll be gone, so I have no choice but
to saddle Cynthia with it. They’re going to try to tell me it’s not
their fault, and I’m going to have to fight them and it’s going to be
annoying. Argh.
Cynthia wants to take some music off of the iPod Dave “permanent
loaned” me before I leave. Dave’s already been given me crap that I
haven’t added any music to it (it was almost full), but the thing is .
. . I don’t *have* any music. I mean, I have a bunch of stuff on CDs,
but I’m too lazy to rip it. I deleted all my college mp3s in a fit of
moral integrity years ago. Plus, the music Dave has on there has been
fun to explore, so I’ve been going with the flow. Anyway, being the
iTunes newbie that I am, I learn it won’t let you take things off an
iPod, only put them on. Super. Plus my computer is from 2002, so it
has a 40GB hard drive which is already full of 35GB of stuff . . . and
it’s a 60G iPod. I download and fire up ephPod to work around the
iTunes problem, figuring Cynthia can just pull the music she wants off
in 4GB chunks (that’s all her nano holds anyway). When she walks in,
looks at the monitor, and says “I hate ephPod. This is dumb. Why is
it so hard? Just don’t even bother”. I sigh and give up.
Today I found out that my brother is having a graduation party the day
we were planning to leave Michigan, so it makes sense to extend the
trip another day. Cynthia grudgingly admits it’s worth missing a day
of Cancun. This means I need to change our flight on Spirit. The
website says flights are avaialble at the same price. This should
work right? It finds my reservation, I hit the modify button for that
segment, it lets me pick a new day, then . . . “A notice about fees
and taxes” which is just a disclaimer, but there’s no button to
continue further or confirm or whatever. A dead end. So, I’ll just
call on the phone then . . . dial the 1-800 number (which is not on
the website, bad sign), press one for English, press 2 to confirm or
modify a reservation . . . busy signal. Huh? I try again, hitting 0
instead . . . busy signal. No message. No “Sorry, we’re all in a
meeting”. No “we’re having technical difficulties”. The news doesn’t
say anything about Spirit falling off the face of the earth today
(they are denying they will have layoffs, but this seems unrelated).
Maybe they just have one dude who answers the phone, and he was
talking to someone else who got stuck at the notice about fees and
taxes.
This luck is going to need to change starting now. My luggage will
not get lost. There will be an actual person at the Spirit Airlines
counter at Detriot Metro tomorrow mornign, and said counter will not
have just burned down. I will not get lost driving to The Hook and
Horn. The Pere Marquette will be cold and the fish will be hungry.
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