I went to the doctor about my sore wrist. he sent me to a specialist who told me i’ve torn the sheath on one of the tendons in my wrist and it must be immobilized. so i’m in a cast up to my armpit for the next two weeks, and then a smaller cast with strict orders to keep it pronated for another four weeks. no flying, no kayaking, minimal driving, and typing is very difficult. this fucking sucks.
Category: Rant
What a weekend!
Saturday, I woke up to an email saying that my waypoint generator had a bunch of Canadian airports with US-style identifiers (instead of CYRP, Carp was KYRP). I fixed that first. Then Vicki and I replaced the outside front floodlight which had a wonky socket. And we replaced the floodlights over the garage, which supposedly had a light sensor (although it was more of a randomness generator) with one that had a motion detector. Since we can’t find a switch for these lights, I like the idea that they won’t be on all night. This involved hacksawing off a bit of iron pipe conduit that was sticking out too far to put the box where I wanted it and some simple wiring. Or at least it would probably be simple wiring for somebody who isn’t scared of ladders and electricity (gee, my brother used to shock me with electricity and throw me off barn beams – see a connection?). But we got it done – I’m so domestic it hurts.
Sunday, I got up bright and early to be a safety pilot for Paul P. He’s been my safety pilot in the past, so it was only fair, even if it did mean getting up ungodly early. I took some pictures while he was buzzing around, but most of them sucked. Here are a few that didn’t suck too bad.
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Back at the airport, there was an ancient Dornier flying boat re-engined with modern turboprop engines. Cool!
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After that, I went kayaking again. This time I went a little slower, and went up all the way to Blossom Road. The river was still quite shallow, and fast. I lost track of the number of times I had to put down my paddle and push down and forward or backward on the bottom of the river because I was bottomed out. (Try that with a canoe!)
On the way back I took one of the other branches because this canoe full of girls can careering across the river and rammed me without making the slightest effort to slow down or avoid me – after they saw they were on a collision course, they all stopped paddling – and when I got to the fork there was another one of these canoes full of girls sideways in the river. But it worked out well – there was a Great Blue Heron on the bank of the river that I got a couple of shots of, and then some “ducks in a row”, and then a Green Heron, which I ‘ve seen very few of over the years.
The best pictures from today’s paddling.
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Unfortunately on the way home I noticed that I had a really badly sprained wrist. Unfortunately it’s my left one (I’m left handed), but I suppose the right would have been worse since it would be hard to shift my car like that. It was literally a big pain trying to put my kayak away afterwards.
Forgot to mention…
That this iPod came FedEx. And everything that I complained that you used to be able to do with UPS, FedEx does right. The door tag had the address of the local depot, their hours, and the information that you could come by the depot after 5:30pm to pick up the item, or if you didn’t come, they’d re-attempt the delivery the next day, and if I wanted I could sign the door tag in lieu of signing for the package. You could even give them information on a secure place on your premises for them to leave it, if you wanted them to put it behind the door or in your garage or something.
I got the same information when I phoned from work (before I saw the door tag). No muss, no fuss, no bother.
Freecycle, the last straw
Ok, that’s it. I want to recycle as much as the next person, but the local moderator is a moron. This time I have a bunch of moving boxes. I’m going to put them out for recycling, but I thought I’d tell the Freecycle community that they’re going to be there in case somebody wants to pick some of them off. But I don’t want to be answering every email about them or holding them for pickup – so I put my address in the message and said when they were going out and when they’re going to be picked up. And the damn moderator rejected the message saying “No addresses allowed”.
I thought it was my call whether I wanted to expose myself like that, not some over blown facist moderator?
Anyway, I give up on Freecycle. Given a choice between dealing with that asshole moderator and her made-up rules and putting stuff in landfill, I vote for the landfill.
When did UPS become a bunch of fuckwads?
Years ago, UPS would attempt to deliver during the day, and if you missed it, you could phone up and find out your local depot, and after 8pm or so, after the trucks had returned, you could go down to the depot and pick it up. But if you decided not to pick it up, they’d automatically attempt delivery the next day. But not any more.
They attempted to deliver a package yesterday. We weren’t there to recieve it and the Post It note says that they’ll try the next day (today). Nobody was going to be around today to recieve it, so Vicki called their 800 number, and used some automatic system to tell them not to deliver it today. And according to their on-line tracking system, they got that message on time, and they weren’t going to deliver it today. Except they *did* attempt to deliver it today. And so I called to complain about this, and to ask if I could go to the depot to pick it up, they told me I couldn’t change anything because there was a pending change request. For the hold that didn’t happen. But the “helpful” clerk said they’d call the local depot and have them call me. Which they didn’t do, of course. But for some damn reason, the on-line site now says that the customer requested that the package be held at the depot! And still nobody has told me which depot it is. So I had to call again to find out what depot it’s at. And it turns out that this depot is closed to the public after 7pm, so no wonder you can’t come in after the trucks return.
So they’ve taken a system that was extremely flexible and useful, and replaced it with a system of automatic voice response systems that put in holds that don’t work, and the sort of inflexibility and user hostility that would make a Soviet civil servant blush.