Back when I lived in the UK, my sister sent me a mix tape of country music. It introduced me to the likes of Martina McBride, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and Patty Griffin. The outlier was Hal Ketchum, who died this past week aged 67 from dementia-related causes.
This is the song I got
more than 20 years ago, and it still breaks my heart.
This is the first Thanksgiving in several years that I won’t be sharing with friends. I was invited over, but since I’ve had workmen in my house over the past couple of weeks, I declined because I just don’t want the thought of being a potential infection vector on my plate alongside the turkey and mashed potatoes.
But let me say that I’m deeply grateful for the invitation. My feeling is that I can put on a Thanksgiving meal at any time of the year, and maybe I should do that. Just declare 29 April Thanksgiving and invite a bunch of people over to overdo on both eating and conversation. Or 16 June. Or whenever.
In the meantime, I’m grateful that I am in good health, have secure shelter and plenty of sustenance. My dishwasher is working, as is my new furnace. I can afford to toss out birdseed several times a day, even if those little landshark squirrels come along and vacuum it up. I’ve got books from the library on kitchen design to pore over, and a bottle of Roederer chilling.
And Cadet Bonespurs will
be out of the Oval Office in less than two months.
I was on my walk a while ago, and took a picture of this fountain in the grounds of the corporate HQ behind me:
Then I took a different shot:
But I didn’t realize what was in the frame until I walked a bit further:
This is as close as I could get to him:
It reminded me of the time I was on Chincoteague Island, and saw a fawn lying very still among some reeds across a stream. A troop of Boy Scouts rollicked loudly past me, too busy with loudness and rollicking to notice the fawn.
I wonder how many herons and fawns we miss when we do this?
So, on Friday the entire company was told we needed to create new passwords, but immediately, and yesterday was a complete…uh, you don’t want to know.
Let me just say that the Okta account management application apparently let me create a new passphrase that is too long for my Windows Active Directory login, but didn’t tell me. So, as of time of this writing, I’m logged into my laptop with yesterday morning’s password, but into the VPN with yesterday afternoon’s password, and I’m afraid to turn the machine off for the night, because I don’t know how I’ll get back in.
Also, I put my phone number in Help Desk’s queue for a call back around noon EST, which was more than six hours ago.
Good thing this is a short work week.
UPDATE:
I called IT before 0700 this morning, got straight through to an engineer and
within five minutes he fixed it. I am savèd.
My dishwasher stopped draining last week—well, it drained, but not completely. I did everything YouTube told me to do: cleaned the glass trap and the filter, scunged out with baking soda and white vinegar, unhooked and cleaned the drain from the garbage disposer. Nada.
The next YouTube step involved pulling the machine away from the wall and messing around underneath it, so I reckoned it was time to call in the pros.
Only it turns out that, in this the year of COVID, everyone’s appliances are breaking down, and appliance repairmen are booked up weeks in advance. Thursday morning, I got an appointment for 1 December from one company, but I called the last name on my list and struck lucky: they’d had a consolation, and the guy could be at my place between 1100 and 1400.
Well, let me say, that in two days of not having a dishwasher, I had quite the stack of dirty dishes piling up on my stovetop, so I was just elated.
He did come out, vindicated that everything I’d done was the right thing, but it just wasn’t the problem, so he pulled out the machine from the wall and started messing around underneath. Pump was working, but clearly not all the water was getting through the other end. So he pulled off the drain hose as the culprit. He tried without luck to clear the hose, but ended up replacing it instead.
Let me just say that I found the whole experience worth the $180 it cost me. I got the most interesting history about how he came to repair appliances (being able to fix lawnmowers in high school got him a job doing same at Sears in Bailey’s Crossroads; that morphed into fixing appliances—which you can do year round, unlike lawnmowers—and here we are, nearly 30 years later), and also a couple of recommendations for small restaurants around town.
And—my dishwasher is back in service, which is a massive relief. I understand this is decidedly a first world problem, but I’m grateful all the same. (Yes, I've cancelled the appointment for 1 December; I am not a jerk.)
Also—Cadet Bonespurs is
failing at every attempt to subvert the election. That’s a big, big load of
gratitude.
One of my favorite pop albums is Trio, with Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Their harmonizing is just fantastic and it lends depth to each track.
Trio was
one of ten tapes I had with me to augment FM radio when I drove across country
twice back in the 80s. Let me just say that ten cassettes is not enough to get
you through either Texas or Montana.
That to the contrary notwithstanding, here’s one of my favourite songs from this album. I believe it’s applicable to our current situation, and I offer it in honor of the three powerhouse women. And, especially today, Dolly.
News broke this week that millions of people around the world should thank Dolly Parton for funding early research on one of the apparently COVID-19 vaccines to the tune of $1M. The money went to researchers at Vanderbilt University, on whose work Moderna has developed its vaccine, which the company says is about 95% effective at protecting against the virus.
Let me
first say that this is one of the many things I despise about big pharma—the fact
that so much of their “research” is basically just topping off masses of work
done by academic scientists and then marketing the living daylights out of it.
When they tell you that their therapeutic for [diabetes, asthma, Multiple
Sclerosis, whatever] costs the patients $3,000 per month because they’ve spent
all this money on research, that’s largely a crock of moose milk. They pick up exploratory
work that was frequently funded by public and private grants and soak everyone
for those ads that fill up the magazines and air waves, instructing you to “ask
your doctor if [whatever] is right for you.”
That
aside, Dolly Parton is a goddam humanitarian treasure, and I love the dickens
out of her.
Oh, I think it’s time for a customer experience story; I’ve not done one of those in a while, I think.
Actually—let’s have a couple.
I have two bathrooms and a powder room in my house. The toilet in the master bath started running maybe a couple of years ago. Since I haven’t used it since the first night I was here, I just shut off the water. Then, the pull rod in the froofy top-mount flush device in the powder room broke, and I jury-rigged a kludge. That was in March But around April, the flapper started intermittently running, and I thought maybe I should not try to make it through the pandemic with only one toilet working, so I called a company a friend had recommended, Marines Plumbing.
Now, I knew they’d not be cheap—I had them out to give an estimate on installing new faucets in the kitchens and two of the bathrooms (along with a shower head in one of them) in 2018; their quote was ludicrously over the top and I got someone else to do the work.
Also, pro tip: any company with their name and red-white-&-blue artwork painted all over their vans has a lot of overhead. And their customers are footing that bill.
But I wanted to get the work done, so I arranged for them to come out; they gave me a window of two hours. When they blew past the deadline, I called to find out what was up. The chick who answers phones had no idea, but she thought the plumber would be here shortly. And she stopped with that. I had to ask, “Please call him to find out.” She rang back a few minutes later to say that his previous job had run over, and he’d be at my place in [some period of time; I don’t remember].
The kid did eventually show up, and he fixed the toilets competently, for which I was charged $346.67. (I told you they were not cheap.) It was high, but I knew it would be. What pissed me off was that for $350 they should have done a hell of a better job at communicating.
They’ve churned out the follow-up emails, including one wanting me to tell them how [name] did as a plumber. Marines: consider this my answer to your survey.
When I posted this on Facebook, an acquaintance said that the company is usually much better than that, and he could have a word. I replied that he could tell them why they lost my business, but I was not interested in speaking with them. I am done.
Well, currently I’m getting estimates from electricians for adding outlets and another circuit to my kitchen. I spent a week trying to get sense out of Autumn Electric, who have previously done work for me. I liked the guys who came out that time, so I was pretty much ready to just get an estimate and give them the job. But the guy who answers their phones asked a few questions, guessed the number of hours it would take and told me it would be about $650. Well, I’m not comfortable with verbal estimates, especially when someone’s not seen the physical layout, so I asked for someone to come out.
“We don’t send anyone out for a job that’ll cost less than $1000.”
Really?
Eventually, I emailed him photos of the circuit panel, the powder room and the entry hall (which are between the box and the kitchen). And, dear Lord, what a palaver; the company email address he gave me (nothing on their site) bounced, and eventually he gave me his personal/company address. That did not bounce, but neither did I hear anything back from for the next four days.
So I rang him again, early last week. He at first claimed he’d not received the email, so I resent it as we were speaking. Then, oh, yes—he had indeed got the email and tried “several times” to call me. (Rest assured, I have Caller ID and there was no call from Autumn Electric.) Yes, he would send out “Dave” to give an estimate. The earliest Dave could get here is the week commencing 23 November.
I bit my tongue and made the appointment. Then I reached out on Facebook for recos. I got two—a one-man shop and a company recommended by Mr. Marines.
Well, the one-man shop showed up yesterday, made a through inspection, asked me what I want to do (this is an extremely important question to ask; not what do I want, but what am I trying to do) and has gone off to work up a quote.
The other one, Beacon Electric, told me they’d be happy to come out to give an estimate, for $59. So, with one phone call they not only lost my business this time (possibly negligible to them), but forever. Yes, they apply the $59 to the eventual bill; I don't like ransomware of any stripe.)
And—as with Marines Plumbing—Beacon have also earned my low, low Net Promoter Score, in that I will always tell anyone who asks for a recommendation whom not to call. (Autumn is on the cusp, too.) They may be great technically, but even in “these challenging times” I do not have to reward people who don’t understand the concept of customer service.
Here are a couple of artifacts from my collection of vanity license plates.
I’m not sure, but I
think this Tea Bagger is sweet on a football player? (Tom Brady plays football,
right? He doesn’t own the team?)
I shot this one a while ago. I assume the car is registered to a United Airlines pilot. Now I wonder if s/he still has a job?
Ever since I first heard about Diwali from my physical therapist in the Valley They Call Silicon, I’ve celebrated it. I am so grateful for all commemorations of the victory of light over dark. Almost every culture has some sort of festival of lights, of clearing away the debris of evil and turning toward a more perfect future. Humans need these reminders of what we might be if we turn our will to it.
Especially in this age of nihilistic destruction, we need to mark the defeat of darkness. We need to shine light into the abyss and be beacons of kindness, strength and true righteousness.
So here’s my contribution over the weekend.
