Writing in November

Right now, I'm feeling very happy about my writing. Not that the writing is especially fabulous, but I'm meeting my schedule, so that makes me happy.
November is NaNoWriMo which stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is 50,000 words in a month.
I have a careful schedule that requires me to write 2000 words per day, along with editing my other novel.

Here's a book cover that I rejected for my next novel. But I'll reveal the new one soon. 

Of course, my family hasn't disappeared, so I also have some things to take care of there -- cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, talking to them, listening to them!
Plus, there are those pesky classes that need care and tending too. I've put grading on my schedule too. And, truthfully, that's the only place I've fallen behind.
But I gained an extra hour last night, so I'm going to try to catch up today.
It looks like my computer and I will be spending the day together.
How bout you? What does your Sunday look  like?

Customer Service - A Thing of the Past for Best Buy

Eight phone calls.
Two hours and 28 minutes total on hold or explaining my problem to a "Customer Service" representative.
That has been my experience with Best Buy in the past 13 days.
And my $32.01 problem has not been solved yet.
I considered myself a loyal Best Buy customer. In the past year alone, I've purchased three laptops from Best Buy. Apparently, I thought the store was reliable because I never had problems with any products.

Woe to ye who must sit on hold waiting for a Best Buy "Customer Service" agent.
Nevermind the fact that the speakers and the hold music on Best Buy are horrendous. If you ever listened to the hold music on Best Buy, cracking and popping its 1960s tunes, you would never buy any stereo equipment or phones at Best Buy. You'd expect a cutting edge technology store to have at least decent technology. Believe me, I've had 148 minutes of mostly hold music, rarely interrupted by a representative, to listen to.
The original problem was complicated. I tried to buy something as a download and I got an error message. It didn't download.
So, I tried to buy it again, and again. Each time it seemingly got turned down. Then I looked on my checking account and saw that I had been charged for it four times. I still didn't have the darn product. That was my first call to Best Buy "Customer Service." When I couldn't get a person, I drove to the bank for help.
Now, all of the mistaken charges have gone away, except for the original charge of $32.01. Because it was a download and I don't have an actual product to return, they can't seem to wrap their head around me getting a refund.
The next day, I went to an actual store -- Target, not Best Buy -- and bought the product I wanted. Now I have the product, but I've paid for it at two places and only have it one.
"Take the product back to the store," one of the Best Buy reps told me on the phone today.
I never went to the store! I have no product to return.
"Well, why'd you leave the store without the product?" she asked.
I wanted to bang my head against the wall over and over.
I thought I was onto something last week. I got a southern accented man who told me the refund would be processed by Wednesday. It wasn't.
Today, I got one hour and six minutes into a call. The woman was helping. She said, "I'll stay on the phone with you while you talk to this department." She walked me through three different departments without success. Then she said she knew the right department and she put me on hold. That's when my call got lost. The loneliness overwhelmed me. She was the only one who understood my problem and she drifted away on the crappy phone system.
I went to the end of the cue again as an operator said, "Please tell me the problem so I can direct your call."
"No, no, no.... Give me back to the woman who was about to solve my problem," I begged. They couldn't. And the system is set up so she can't call me back or even notify a supervisor that the person she has worked with for an hour got dropped.
Sorry. Start over.
And that's why I question whether it's actually customer service. Service would indicate that someone got some sort of help, which I haven't gotten.
The supervisor I insisted on speaking to today was a little surly.
I mean, I wasn't his cheeriest customer, I'm sure.
"What's your last name, Mike?" I asked.
"I can't tell you that," he said.
"What's your supervisor's name, Mike? Even if he or she isn't there, could I have a name?"
"I can't tell you that," Mike said again.
Maybe the CIA should take some tips from Best Buy because they appear to be good at keep information on the QT.
Unhelpful Mike left it by saying he had to send a note to another department. A note? Really? Is he sending it by pneumatic tube? Is he handwriting it and dropping it in interoffice mail? Where's the technology?
I would hear from the mystery department when they had resolved the issue, unhelpful Mike said.
"So, if it isn't resolved, I won't hear anything?" I asked. "I'll just have to use another 148 cell phone minutes on the phone with Best Buy?"
He didn't have an answer.
Neither do I, but I know where I won't be turning for help next time.
Addendum: About a week after I wrote this blog post, which I sent to Best Buy, I got a call from a Best Buy representative. At the beginning, I wasn't hopeful, as she again reiterated that her records showed I had purchased the software at the store.
Trying not to get frustrated, I promised that I had been sitting in my dining room at the time of purchase and that there was nothing I could do other than forward her the email the company sent which showed the day and the price, nothing else.
She suggested she could give me a credit to Best Buy.
I declined, saying I didn't plan to shop there any more.
This customer service rep was apparently allowed to take a little initiative though. She said she couldn't reimburse me for something bought at the store (I didn't scream at her when she said this) but she did credit me the same amount on a computer I bought online the month before. So, after much frustration, I did get my money back.
I'm not sure that's true for most people who get caught in the ring of hell known as "customer service."

Laptop Life Spans

My laptop is on its last legs.
I guess I've know this for awhile, as it started to move more and more slowly. Calling up papers to grade takes extra seconds to download. And when there are 100 papers, those extra seconds add up.
I can't remember how old my laptop is, but somewhere around 4 or 5 years old. I think that's pretty good for a laptop, which sometimes has the life expectancy of a squirrel. I wrote three years ago about how many laptops I've had to buy, so apparently they've gotten a little more reliable.
In 2009, this one went to the shop for a complete overhaul. Now it's showing similar signs of aging.
Back when it was healthy, I could have 5 or 6 windows open and switch between them, along with having music or NPR playing. Now the computer balks, as if it can only think of one thing at a time. I click on email and it pauses as if wondering, "Now where did I put that?"

A stack of my laptops that had died in 2009.

Along with slowing down, the computer has started to overheat. I have my own remedy for that. I vaccuum the vents to try to remove dust and cat hair or whatever else might be causing it to overheat. This time, that did not solve the problem.
As I'm typing, I can feel my left hand getting hotter as the heat from the computer vent rises. I remove my hand as often as possible, both to help the computer and to help the hand cool down. One day last week as I was trying to finish grading papers, the computer got so hot that it shut down -- making that little zzzeee noise that it does then going black. If you've ever had a computer spontaneously shut down, you'll know what I mean.
So I started working on my computer in small bursts. Half an hour here, half an hour there. I put it to sleep every time I walk away from it so it can cool down again.
Yesterday after work, I woke up the computer to check my email, check my blog and saw  the final sign that my computer is dying. The clock is off.
It's not like the clock has moved to another time zone, telling me West Coast time or even France time. No, the clock is off by 35 minutes.
That is such a startling time mistake for a computer. I'm kind of embarassed for it. So now, although it's 5:57 a.m. according to my healthy cell phone, the computer says 5:22 a.m.
The clock is one of the most basic computer features, if it can't keep up here, well I think this computer may be headed to the computer rest home to chug along with the other computers that remember the day when they were the fastest and the best, and when they never lost track of the time.
I'm not in a panic though, afraid of losing all those photos and teaching plans. Because I have Carbonite. I don't want to sound like some kind of commercial, but Carbonite is a backup plan. I pay $59 for the year and if I buy a new laptop, because mine dies or just because I want to, Carbonite will download all my old files to my new computer.
So go ahead and overheat,  little computer, but first, let me check my Quicken account to see if you've stashed any extra money that I can use to buy a new laptop.

Electronics Crisis

Last year, right around this same time, in the middle of grading final exams, my computer stopped working. Guess what? It happened again on Sunday. The screen just went black and it turned off.
That evening, as Tucker was begging for more time on his XBox, I asked him to work his magic on my computer. Whenever anything in the communication world goes down, I turn to Tucker -- television, cable, DVD player, computer, iPods, phones. He's my go-to guy.
So, he unplugged everything, blew on it and plugged things back in.
It worked. For about three days.
Yesterday, it succumbed again to the black screen.
I had deduced that the problem was either the battery or the cord, because when the computer came back on Sunday, the battery charge was very low, okay, nonexistent.
So this morning, with the black screen facing me, I unplugged and replugged. I took out the battery and replaced it. I turned to Tucker. Nothing worked.
I had grades to finish for the other college where I teach, so I completed those on Earl's computer then hoisted my computer into its bag.
I took it to IT department at the college.
The computer geeks there suggested that -- since the cord had been kittenized -- I should probably start with a new cord. The kitten chewed on the cord when he was little. We have it wrapped in electrical tape and it has carried on for nearly a year.
This evening, after some amazing swims at a swim meet, Tucker, Grace and I returned home.
"Can I have more time on the XBox?" he asked, his hair still wet and his trunks soaking through his shorts.
"Fix my computer," I ordered as I picked up a dish towel and began to dry the "clean" dishes from the dishwasher.
He unpacked it from the case and 30 seconds later said, "Mom, I got it to work."
I walked in and, sure enough, the lights were glowing and the battery was charging, slowly but surely.
"Can I play XBox?" he asked again.
"Have at it," I said.
Could it be that he does something to the computer so that he can fix it and gain more time on his video games? Very possible. For now though, he's just the electronic miracle worked.

Why I Can't Afford Not to Buy a Mac

You know those commercials for PCs? The ones that show ordinary people who need computers. They say what their requirements are and then they go into Best Buy and shop for a computer. The Mac always looks tempting, but it's out of their price range, so they buy a PC and walk out happy. They are especially happy when someone hands them a wad of cash, reimbursing them for their PC purchase.
When we started out with computers, about 1994, we bought a Mac. Then about five years later, we bought another -- an iMac that was blue. It was big and took up a lot of the desk, but I was so glad that it didn't have one of those crazy PC towers. Sometime in the 2000s, my boys started lobbying for a PC so they could play games. Well, games were not a high priority for me, but I did want a laptop so I could take my computer out of the house and away from children. I bought my first laptop about 5 years ago. It was a black Compaq and cost around $1500. It did what I needed it to for a few years then it died, taking many of my digital photos with it. I had a new hard drive put in for a few hundred dollars but it didn't run well, so I bought a small compact silver Compaq Presario. It lasted a year and half or two years and then the motor started making a strange noise. I kept backing it up and sure enough, one day, it wouldn't start. Again, I had a new hard drive put in and it works like a glorified word processor. Not to worry though, I'd taken the plunge at Circuit City as it was going out of business. I bought a Toshiba PC in late November, spending only about $900 on it, plus the $199 for Microsoft Office. And now, only six months later, I am unable to turn on my shiny blue Toshiba. I'm only in a mild panic, since summer quarter started today and all of my prompts and lesson plans are on that computer. Not to mention, Quicken, which keeps track of how much money we have in our accounts, all of our digital photos, my previous novel Trail Mix and my current novel The Summer of France, and a list of agents I've sent query letters to. I'm in a bit of denial that it has given up the ghost. Everytime I turn it on, I expect that this time it will boot up. No... maybe this time... No.
So, I'm contemplating whether to contact Toshiba. I know Circit City has gone under, much like the computer. Then it hit me. The company I really need to contact is Apple. I'll tell them my story, how I ended up spending $5000 on three laptops in five years. How I could have spent that money on a reliable Mac that would have lasted five years. And if I'd wanted to upgrade, I could have sold the used Mac for some good money. I could point out that if I'd bought a Mac, I'd have all of my children's photos and I would currently sound like a more persuasive teacher than the woman who hems and haws, trying to remember what was on that lesson plan.
Then, maybe Apple will send me to Apple store to pick out a sleek laptop and when I walk out case in hand, they'll reimburse me the money, just like on the PC commercials where those suckers are buying a PC, not realizing they'll be back at the store within two years to buy another, then another, then another.