Hmmm…

I used to read widely and profusely. These days I don’t have as much time for literature as I’d like, and mostly read fluff speculative fiction. I’ve been having fun with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series lately – it’s mostly comedic fantasy (Pratchett has a wondrous sense of humor), but buried in the humor are some deep thoughts. I found this to be an interesting, and disturbing, quote:

“The Patrician took a sip of his beer. ‘I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

Excerpt From: Pratchett, Terry. “Unseen Academicals.” HarperCollins, 2009. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

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Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve at Mother-in-Law’s House.

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FedEx is inferior

What’s Wrong with FedEx?

This is a picture of Mick, our UPS man, showing how it’s SUPPOSED to be done. 

The Photography Shipment

Last October we finished the last of our wedding photo shoots for the season. As is standard I ordered a custom DVD case and DVD as a presentation piece for the couple. I’ve done this many times with no problems. I placed the order and received a confirmation saying the order would be delivered a few days later on that Thursday. Great, no problem. I e-mailed my customer and said I’d have the photos ready for them by the end of the week. They were very excited and anxious to get their pictures!

The next day I received an e-mail from the photo lab saying I’d made a mistake on the order and they couldn’t start the processing until I fixed it. No biggie, I fixed the problem, and called them to upgrade the shipping to next-day to ensure the product still arrived in time to meet my deadline in spite of my goof. It cost me about thirty bucks, but I’d rather lose the money than have a product go out late and lose a customer.

The photo lab always shipped UPS in the past, and both the lab and UPS had always been very, very dependable, so I was surprised with Thursday slipped away into evening and there had been no delivery. I checked the tracking info – for some reason the lab had shipped the order FedEx instead of UPS. My heart sank. FedEx has a nasty habit of delivering our packages to a post office in a town 25 miles away and letting the United States Postal Service make the actual delivery. This would be fine, except when FedEx hands the package off to the USPS they mark it as “Delivered” and claim the package was delivered on time, yet it may take the Post Office several more days to get the package to us. It’s very, very inconvenient when you’re trying to plan something. Sure enough, the package was marked as “Delivered,” yet I had no product.

I e-mailed the photo lab and told them the shipment hadn’t arrived, even though I’d paid quite a bit extra to ensure it would get here on time to meet my commitments. They never answered me. I e-mailed FedEx as well, but I received no response from them either.

The package finally arrived in the mail the next Saturday, and my customer was very understanding about getting their order a day late, but it wasn’t a fun experience for me to explain to them that I couldn’t meet the deadline.

The Gift

Beloved Wifey and I don’t have much money at the moment, but we did decide to treat ourselves to one holiday gift this year – a cast-iron stovetop grill that caught our attention. “Voodn’t it be nice to be able to grill up a nice chicky-breast?” she said in her neato Germanic accent. “Und you could make sandviches und grilled pineapple. Ve could eat healthy!” So we waited a few days for a sale, then ordered the $25 gadget online (originally $48!) from Amazon.com and called it a Christmas present for both of us.

About a week later I looked up the tracking situation on the griddle doohicky to see when it would be delivered. Hooray – it was to be delivered that very day! Yay! Then I saw who the shipping vendor was and my heart sank. FedEx. We’ve had very bad luck with FedEx in the past. “Well, the tracking software says the grill thing should get here today,” I told Beloved Wifey, “but they sent it FedEx, so it’ll probably be next Monday before it gets here.”

Sure enough, the day came and went with no sign of a FedEx van. We weren’t surprised. The only thing they actually deliver on time is Beloved Wifey’s weekly medical supplies (more on that later).

The next day I waited until past FedEx’s normal delivery time, noted that there still wasn’t a neat grill/griddle thingy sitting by my door, and decided to let Amazon.com know that the delivery was late, just so they know. I went to their website, clicked on the “I Haven’t Received My Package” button, and wrote a short note saying the package isn’t real time-sensitive and it’s not a big problem that it’s late, but FedEx hasn’t delivered the package yet. I turned back to my work and didn’t think any more about it. Until half an hour later when I noticed another tracking e-mail from Amazon.com in my inbox.

Amazon.com had immediately shipped out a duplicate order, with rush shipping and a guarantee that the product would arrive the very next day (a Saturday). I was VERY impressed at how fast they handled it! But I was also rather embarrassed – I didn’t need the grill/griddle doohicky the next day, I just wanted to let Amazon.com know that their shipping vendor bobbled their order. I went online and hit the “Life Chat” button at Amazon.com and explained the whole thing to a very nice lady, “I don’t need the second order, I was just letting you know FedEx isn’t very trustworthy around here.” But I was too late – they’d already shipped the duplicate. (It had only been about forty minutes since I’d pushed the “Shipment Did Not Arrive” button. Amazon is GOOD.)

The next day, Saturday, came and went with no shipment. I e-mailed Amazon.com and let them know (this time explicitly stating I didn’t need them to do anything to fix the problem other than let their shipping department know that FedEx missed a “guaranteed” ship date).

I e-mailed FedEx to let them know I was not amused, and that Beloved Wifey gets very expensive medical supplies delivered every week. “It’s not a big deal that our Christmas present was delayed, but the medical supplies are fragile, perishable, and if my wife doesn’t get them on time it could mean some serious health issues for her. Please, when you say you’re going to deliver something to our door, DO IT. Don’t send it to the post office.” (I got a message back about five days later saying, in its entirety, “The package was delivered on the 17th. I hope this resolves the issue.”)

We did get our Christmas grill/griddle chingus the next week, and a duplicate a day later that we now have to ship back. I’ll ship it via UPS.

The Medicine

As I mentioned before, Beloved Wifey gets medical supplies shipped to us on a weekly basis. We were sad when we learned the pharmacy was using FedEx rather than UPS, but there’s not much we can do about it. These shipments are the only time I have any interaction with a FedEx driver as most of the time they choose to send our shipments to us through the post office rather than do their job and deliver the packages to our door – but they must have instructions not to do that with Wifey’s medical treatments as they do deliver them personally.

When we order things that are shipped via UPS the delivery is a glorious occasion. We know about what time Mick, the UPS driver, will be by, so we can watch out the window for him. He always pulls up with a smile and a wave, hugs our dogs, gives them puppy treats, chats with me for fifteen seconds, then smiles and waves and off he goes!

The FedEx guy, on the other hand, has never once smiled. He doesn’t interact at all with our dogs and tries to sort of kick-push ’em out of his way (he’s not kicking our dogs, but he’s not being nice to them either) when he comes up to the porch. He doesn’t come at the same time of day, so I can’t be ready for him and have the dogs kenneled – which I hate doing anyway. He has to know that the packages with the big medical stickers all over them are important, but he just throws it on the ground anyway. Last week I saw him coming up the driveway, kenneled the dogs, and opened the door to see him standing there. He’s literally six inches away from me. He knocked on the door, looked me right in the eye, dropped the package, and walked away without a word. That could have been a $1,500 thud he heard when he dropped it. (The infusions were okay, but it worried me nonetheless.)

This morning Beloved Wifey got a call from the pharmacy in Omaha. It turns out FedEx says they may not be able to deliver her package this week (no explanation), so the pharmacy is sending someone to drive the package up to us in person today. That’s a round trip of about 260 miles that someone has to make because their preferred shipping vendor can’t handle the Christmas rush.

When we use UPS, we never, ever, ever have any problems. The packages are delivered on time, every time. But when we see we’re getting a shipment from FedEx it’s always a crap shoot…

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Chris & Dagmar Radloff

Indeed…

It takes a special woman to say “Yes” to a man who proposes to her just moments after wearing falsies, a dress, and combat boots. But I’m glad she did!

How I Proposed

How I Proposed

I’d been rehearsing a production of “A Tuna Christmas” lo those many years ago when I decided the time was right. The play had just two actors, myself and friend Ross Janes, who had to cover some fourteen characters, half of which were women. Each actor played seven different characters throughout the play, which meant when one actor was onstage delivering a soliloquy the other was backstage changing from Bubba to Bobby Sue. The quick costume changes (some of them had to be completed in less than seven seconds) meant that we had to have someone backstage helping us.

I conned Dagmar into it. She had a rack of costumes right offstage and would help me change characters every night. After a week of rehearsals it felt normal to be wearing a wig, falsies, and a dress overtop a man’s western shirt and combat boots.

The play opened on a Friday night and everything went well. Saturday night everything went off without a hitch as well – except Dagmar asked me several times, “Did you notice how many of our family and friends are here?” When we got to the final scene (for which I was, thankfully, dressed as a man), Ross (the other actor) slipped the ring to me. Moments later when we went out for our curtain call, we went out as planned, then motioned for our dressers who came out for their bow as planned. Then the spotlight narrowed down on me and Dagmar. Very awkwardly I stammered out a proposal… I thought she was going to pass out! All our friends and family cheered. (Two elderly ladies who had been sitting in the front row asked me later if that last scene was some sort of a segue into a sequel. “No,” I replied, “I actually just proposed to my girlfriend. We’re really getting married!” The ladies hugged me.)

But it all turned out well! Nearly a decade and a half later we’re still happily plugging our way through life…

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The Insecurities of Modern Life

You know, there used to be a time when I could think for myself, at least a bit. But no longer. I now have Technology. Now Technology thinks for me.

Example: Yesterday I had a business meeting at a coffee shop in Sioux City. I knew exactly where the coffee shop was located – I’ve driven past it a million zillion trillion times (or six anyway), it’s right across the street from one of our favorite pizza places, and my band used to play in the bar next door. This area is not a mystery to me. I know where I’m going. Yet for no apparent reason, as soon as I got into town I pulled out my iPhone, “Siri, how do I get to Coffee Works on Pierce Street?” Sure enough, my phone knew where the coffee shop was, too, and successfully guided me to a place I knew how to get to on my own.

Why did I feel the need to have GPS guidance to an address I already know how to get to? I don’t know. Insecurity? (Maybe I’m thinking of the wrong street.) Boredom? (Sitting at a stop light for twelve seconds with nothing better to do than play with my phone.) Testing the system? (Does my iPhone really know where it’s going?)

In a very similar pattern, when I’m cooking something I KNOW how to cook, I’ll still Google the recipe anyway. “Let’s see, grilled cheese sandwiches… I’d better look that up.” I don’t know why, other than to verify information that I’ve had tucked securely in my head for over three decades.

This all leads up to a wonderful thing.

We picked up a cheap steak at the store the other day. Steak is a rare luxury for us, so I fell back on my habit of, “Gosh, I should look up how to apply heat to meat,” and Googled the process and tripped over this very fun recipe: CLICK HERE. It made my day much brighter!

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Friday! Hah.

Daddy Needs a New Pair of Socks

The lottery is up to $400 million. I’ve spent roughly three quarters of that in my head so far this morning.

Cause and Cure

I have figured out the cause of my insomnia. No money. I have figured out a cure for my insomnia. Money.

Choices…

I hate being fat. But I hate being hungry worse.

Uphill both ways, in the snow

When I was a kid just starting out in the graphic design business I remember the shock I felt when someone provided me with a graphic for a publication that was over 100k in size. One hundred kilobytes! HUGE! I remember backing up my files later – that one graphic took most of the floppy. HUGE! Seriously, who needs a graphic with any higher resolution or size than can be had at 30k.

Now I routinely deal with photos in the 20+MB range (20,000kb) and motion design files in the 1.5GB zone (1,500,000kb), and have five 1T backup hard drives (well over 1,000,000,000kb when it’s all added up), four of which are full. I fill a 1T hard drive about every nine months or so, roughly.

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For Facebook fans…

When you see these happy little blog posts in your FB feed, all you need to do is click the link to see the rest. Just one little click is all it takes…

Doh!

“Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure. That’s a verifiable fact — as is Santa.”

– Megyn Kelly, FOX News

Doh!

I’m always disappointed when people ship things to us via FedEx. They quite often deliver the package to the post office in a town 25 miles away instead of delivering it here to our house. They then say the package has been delivered “on time,” but we still have to wait for several days for the US Postal Service to get the package to us. The only exception to this seems to be Wifey’s weekly medical supplies (thank goodness).

UPS delivers to our door on time every time, and has treats for our doggies.

Doh!

I use Adobe products a lot. Lightroom for photo shoots, PhotoShop for serious photo editing, InDesign for print work, Muse for web design – I think I have around 15 Adobe software packages that I use on a regular basis. I use Adobe Audition for mixing audio and manipulating voice overs and soundbeds – it’s fun to do. But the ten-year-old in me giggles every time.

At one point in time the filename extension for Audition “sessions” was .ses – which made sense. But for no apparent reason, a few years Adobe changed the filename extension to .sesx. Which makes me giggle.

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Winter. Blah.

Help Wanted:

I think I’m at the point where I need to hire someone to come over here and shovel food into my gaping maw as I work. I’m hungry all the time the past few weeks. If I’m not stuffed to the gills, I’m starving. I know I’m gaining weight… Icky. Poo.

Strange

I had a Captcha that I could actually read today! Huh!

*cough*

I like this wine, sorta, but every time I take a sip I make a funny face for about three minutes. Sorta like this guy, but with a beard. I have a beard. This guy doesn’t.

He could use one.

All male-type personnel should have beards.

The Unmet Yearnings of Country Living

Wifey has been moping around for weeks wanting a Jerry’s Pizza, and the cravings I’m having for chicky wings are nearly paralyzing. But the nearest Jerry’s Pizza is about 20 miles away and they don’t put their mystical magical food in boxes but rather just put it in a thin paper bag. It’d be cold by the time we got it halfway home…

Me No Likely that Negative Sign

Me No Likely that Negative Sign

Heh…

Beloved Wifey is now taking subcutaneous infusion treatments for her illness (CVID). They seem to be working (yay!), but I have to laugh…

They ship her treatments to her weekly via FedEx. Our UPS guy, Mr. Mick, is fantastic, he knows us and our pups, and is a wonderful person. The FedEx guy, while I’m sure is a wonderful person, doesn’t know us or our doggies. Each week he shows up to drop off the box of assorted goodies (plasma, needles, IV lines, etc.). The box has various scary warnings on it (not quite “CONTAINS HUMAN PARTS,” but close), with lots of big red scary stickers on the side. I’ll peek out the window when he pulls up to see him very, very gingerly carrying the box, eyes wide as he reads the warnings, trying to pull off the miracle of carrying the package without actually touching it. Invariably, just as he walks past the window on the way to our door, Buttercup Pup will see him and go into her “BARK BARK BARK LOOKIE AT THE PRETTY DOGGIE BARK BARK” routine, which generally includes hurling herself bodily at the window, wall and door (thud BARK BARK BARK thud thud BARK BARK jump thud). Invariably the FedEx guy, eyes still glued on the scary package he’s carrying, will jump about six feet. He never makes eye contact but instead sets the scary package on the deck and scampers back to the safety of his van, most likely wondering just what the story is behind the folks who seem to be ordering body parts online to feed their killer dog…

If Wishes Were Fishes

I’d be out of tartar sauce. But I do wish the Publisher’s Clearing House folks are taking my application very seriously this year. We could sure use the money. And I also wish I had a chicky wing to eat. Om nom nom.

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