R was looking through the photos of the baby shower (see previous post) and saw a few other good ones that she asked me to post. So here they are. There's a really nice one of R with Debbie and Elaine and there's also on of Ademski and Talia helping R open presents.
We now have a room in our house that is "the shower presents room". Previously, that was the "moving boxes room" from when we moved 2 years ago! We are looking forward to putting the shower gifts to good use -- particularly the books and the clothes. It will be fun to pick out a book to read to Jennifer Rose and I'm sure R will be all over picking out the outfits.
So this weekend we are doing various things in the getting ready for China category. As I type, R is going through stuff in the room next to the baby room to get ready for delivery of a desk this morning. We are going to use that room as an office so we won't have to keep the laptop computer on the dining room table as we have been doing.
I'm also planning on opening the boxes of technology items that have arrived over the past few weeks. One box contains the laptop computer. Another contains the mini camcorder. Another contains extra memory for the camcorder. We always have the same ritual when new technology arrives. I try to set it up and pretty rapidly become flumoxed by the fact that computers basically suck. Then I spend 2+ hours on the phone with Dell or Verizon (or to be more precise, I spend time on the phone with Dell or Verizon's call center in Bangalore, India). I have no complaints against the friendly folks in Bangalore. I have found they really know their stuff. My issue is with computers in general and the fact that there is no party who accepts responsibility for the minor fact that THE COMPUTER DOESN'T WORK. Dell will say it's a Verizon problem and Verizon will say its a Microsoft problem and Microsoft will say it's a Dell and/or Verizon problem. So I always end up forking over additional money to Dell to take responsibility for all problems for a brief period of time. Last time, I paid for unlimited tech help to resolve "four incidents". So when I had the incidents, I really wanted to get my money's worth.
I don't want to be a pessimist and say that I'll have problems with the new computer setup. But I start to break out into a cold sweat when I think of trying to get the new laptop to talk to the wireless router/DSL modem (which I'm sure I can't find the password to). So I'll reset the password on that and the current laptop won't be able to talk to the modem/router anymore and will no longer forward mail to R's Blackberry. You get the idea. I know this sounds pessimistic but it's simply the way it has always worked. (ok Mac users, now's the point in time where you go into the comments section and type "why don't you buy a Mac - they work right out of the box!") I have been very tempted to buy a Mac but the Windows propaganda has me scared into thinking things like "maybe I won't be able to open a Word document". In any case, I'll try to think positive thoughts when I setup the new laptop.
Reminds me of the first time we got our Verizon DSL and wireless modem and a new computer. Our good friend and neighbor Martin Rofheart (PhD in electrical engineering and CEO of a wireless chip company) told us it was going to take us about 4 hours to get everything to work properly. I couldn't believe it had taken him that long given his tech expertise. But sure enough, when all of the equipment didn't work right out of the box, I had the 4+ hour investment of time with the folks in tech support. So if it took Martin 4 hours with the folks in tech support to get his computer to work, I don't feel too bad that it happened to me as well.
Ok - that's it for now. More later.
J.
No comments:
Post a Comment