1:20pm: One Feel-Good Story and One Real Bummer
Feel-Good Story: Having been a writer since before the computer age turned a page on the industrial revolution and space-jammed into the 22nd Century, I had completed five novels on manual typewriters and early model IBM computers (DOS-based, pre-Windows). Naturally, there was no means of editing this early work aside from re-entering all text into a new word program. But with the advent of scanners and OCR software, these texts could be scanned and converted: hurray for me and my five novels sitting at the bottom of my drawer! So, I bought a scanner last year (actually June of 2000), and got the only one with a 50-page document feeder (so I wouldn't have to sit there and feed every page of five 500-page novels into the thing one by one) a Visioneer 8650, and it worked like a charm, great scanner, people, and for only $250.
Then in January the ADF (Auto-Doc-Feeder) got sick, couldn't hold anything down, violent convulsions, and running a high fever. Hello tech-support: 5 emails later I get a phone number to call, your scanner is sick, call to replace. Come to find it's 5 months out of warranty, the repair cost exceeds the price of a new one, and I can't buy just a replacement ADF. WHA*!?
Well, so I wrote off a nice letter...but really, a NICE letter, just wanna let you know type of deal, nothing nasty, just feeling a little jobbed here.
Get this, I get a phone call a week later from Visioneer: "We'll go ahead and replace that for you."
There's a first time for everything! Thank-you Visioneer, you've won a true believer over in this corner.
One-Reel Bummer: What is it that gets into people? There's this real sweetheart of a girl I know, kind, gentle, intelligent, fun to be with. She's got a serious boyfriend, been together for years. If they have their ups and downs, what couple doesn't, right? But it's common knowledge she's not looking for any replacements, now or ever.
So along comes this heretofore nominally nice guy, who knows her through work, and at the first sign of trouble in paradise this guy is sending her flowers, coming to see her at work, and she's making it very clear to the guy that he's way off base with this, you know.
Well, he starts coming on a little too strong, and he's writing her letters and leaving his number. So she calls to just let him know that, hey, it's not that way, I'm sorry, you know. But now he's got her caller id, and he begins a campaign of demented, sick phone calls, nasty, threatening, totally delusional, like "how could you do this to me?" and, I mean, she knows him from across the hallway for chrissake!
Well, so she has to call the cops, there's a cease and desist issued and an order of protection, and the guys not allowed in the same state with her, etc., blah blah blah, but the point of it is what the f__k gets into people's heads? I mean, there is NO WAY this woman gave this guy any iota of a hint of a signal that there was anything there other than oh, hi, how are you today? And now she's subjected to this sh_t, and altering her whole routine, and diminishing the quiet enjoyment of her life because this idiot has deluded himself into thinking he's...what? Her what? She says hello to him across the hallway for chrissakes, where is he getting this from? Jesus, if you're that f__king sick then keep it to yourself and don't subject the rest of the world to your particular disorder of dementia.
And get a f__king life. Nuff said.
Posted by cronish at March 20, 2002 02:24 PM