The laugh's on me. My computer hasn't worked right since I returned. I've not only reinstalled all the software twice but I've done a reinstallation of the freaking operating system. These are brand new computers. I used mine for all of four hours before it started corrupting files and erasing data. Repeat after me: Windows sucks, Bill Gates is a bloated vampire, and no one should ever have to use the horror that is MSOffice.

I've spent the better part of three days on the phone with tech support. Three different flavors of support, sometimes conferenced in together: SABRE (the database), Windows (the so called operating system), and TRAMs (the accounting database). My set controls the application which allows our computers to transmit the accounting data to the accounting system. No workee, no transmitee, heap big scrutiny from the Airlines Reporting Corporation, and fines all around. I've caught up with a number of diaries, gotten every single piece of paperwork off my desk, and spent about 12 hours chatting with tech support people about the superiority of Macs while waiting for my system to reboot itself over and over. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I think the problem's fixed. I actually got everything running simultaneously for the last 45 minutes of work. We'll see. I truly don't know how anyone can bear to work in tech support. I can hardly stand my end of things. Solving problems sight unseen just isn't my strong suit, and getting snarled at in the process affects me badly. I know, I was in customer service for six months once. I came home in tears almost every night.

Well, anyway, that's how my week's gone. No humorous client stories. I haven't had any clients.

I ran out of reading material right before my flight home on Monday, so I caved in and purchased George Railroad Martin's mammoth second volume of his Songs of Fire and Ice trilogy, A Clash of Kings. It was money well spent. I read it in four days. It has that essential epic quality, satisfactorily medieval and Edda-like. Now I just have to wait another year or so until he finishs the story. Jeez.

While in Wisconsin I finished the equally mammoth second volume of Tad William's Otherland trilogy, River of Blue Fire. Like Martin, his saga is intensely peopled and densely plotted. Unlike Martin, I find it a bit difficult to keep his characters straight. There's too many, and most of them don't really interest me. I get caught up in the story, but I don't actually care very deeply about what happens to anyone. Fatal; I probably won't bother with the third volume when it finally appears. It's too bad, really. I liked his hefty faux-Tolkien trilogy (Green Angel Tower, etc.) very well indeed, but even those were a bit unwieldy. I think he finally bit off more than he can chew.

Although I don't know, they're just the thing for those long waits on hold with tech support.

Past Life The Index Next Incarnation