Heat Sucks, Sick for Other Reasons (USPS, Dell), and Laptop Mice Whoring

Yeah, I'm still sick, and it's HOT!

On to the quick-hitters:

- Gotta love it when your room temperature is 82 degrees...at midnight! I love my place in the winter--I hardly have to turn on the heater to stay warm during the winter months--but I can't stand the heat of the spring/summer.

(And I don't want to hear anyone complaining about how cold it gets in the winter where you are. You get to suffer extreme cold in the winter; I get to suffer extreme heat in the summer. So there.)

Temps were in the high 70s-low 80s last week, which were very enjoyable. I fired up Accuweather.com today, and look at what I saw! I should be happy, though; last night, when I went to Accuweather, they said it would be 99.

I should have listened to Krunk and ran down to AM/PM for an Icee, even at midnight.

- I was going to save this blog entry for a quick, "first look" at the Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop that I was supposed to get today. DHL's website says that my package, which is coming from Sparks, NV, has been in the "shipment acknowledged" phase--basically, Dell printed out a DHL label--and it's been there since the fourth of May. At the very least, the package should be en route to CA, and not stuck in Nevada!

(At least DHL's IVR (Interactive Voice Response; those automated menus you hear over the phone where you have to speak to it to navigate through their menu) works quite well.)

- As much as DHL is pissing me off, USPS is pissing me off even more. For some reason, they decided to ship a package that was supposed to go to Lafayette, CO (800xx), to Lafayette, CA (9xxxx)! I called the USPS annex near Lafayette, CA, this morning, and spoke to a woman who was utterly useless. She kept asking where in Lafayette, CA, the package was supposed to go to. I kept telling her that the package wasn't even supposed to go to CA. She put me on hold, and then explained that the seller probably made a typo on the To: field of the label. Never mind that 1) I'm the seller, 2) I printed out the label electronically, and 3) I had the shipping receipt, with proof of the correct address, right in front of me!

The woman told me to call back within two hours. When I called back, she said that she hadn't looked into the matter, and gave me the phone # for the Lafayette, CA, post office! She gave me a person's name that I had to speak to, so I called that number, got the person on the line, and she told me that she couldn't research the matter today because she had to go to class. However, she would be more than happy to look into the matter on Thursday (???????????).

I told her flatly, "Look. I've been calling phone number after phone number. Get someone to research this matter!" She said she would look into it, and call me back within a few minutes.

That was at noon.

(Apparently DHL may not be at fault after all; according to the DHL rep I just spoke to, Dell never handed DHL the package! Now I get to speak to Dell's CS *shudder*)

- I'm a laptop mouse whore; there's no other way to say it.

(YAY! The Dell CSR told me that somebody had stolen my laptop from their Nevada plant. A new one is now in-production, and even though Dell was nice enough to upgrade me to next-day delivery, I probably won't get it until next week, at the earliest. Not to mention, next-day delivery isn't that much of an upgrade, since the laptop only has to traverse the distance from NV to CA; that would have taken one day via Ground shipping anyway. On top of that, it appears that they removed the 3 year warranty upgrade I ordered. Freaking Dell.)

Anyway, I went ahead and bought this laptop mouse yesterday from Amazon.com. This would make the fourth different laptop mouse I've ever owned; the previous three either broke down after a couple months of use, or were given away because they sucked. It's a good thing that the combined cost of all four mice was somewhere in the $10 range :P.

Hopefully this one works out better than the previous three. It is, after all, a mouse for Macs, so it must be good, right?

Well, Dell decided to be "nice" and give me a $50 concession coupon for my troubles. I guess that's better than their first offer to me: the rep was going to take "special care" in tracking my shipment for me.

Until next time!