Package Drama

 Too much drama going on here. Bullets will be the only way to go.

·         I won an E-bay auction for a set of 11 rare bricks. These bricks were shipped out in three packages from Lawrence, KS on June 26th.

·         Package #1 was delivered on Saturday the 29th.

·         Package #2 was delivered on Monday the 1st.

·         Package #3 was missing in action from June the 28. That was the last sort date in Des Moines.

·         Package 1 & 3 were on the same initial route from Lawrence, KS sorting through Des Moines, IA while package #2 went through Chicago.

·         To cut to the chase, I went to the Tuscaloosa post office this morning armed with the print-outs of packages 1 & 3 on the chance #3’s label was destroyed and the bricks might be in some kind of limbo. Whenever I ship out a package I also include another address label inside the package.

·         I was given a phone number to call to check up on this mess.

·         After “voice mail hell” I get a help desk guy who spoke only broken English. I was so frustrated at that point in time.

·         I must have been on the phone with him for half an hour trying to explain I’m trying to track down this missing package. I was convinced it fell off the truck at the Birmingham sort and the label was destroyed meaning there was no way to identify where it was supposed to go.

·         As we were speaking he said, “Oh, it has been shipped!”

·  &n

bsp;      Sure enough I pulled up the tracking screen and that damn package went through the Atlanta hub at 10:16 this morning! Why it took five days to get from Des Moines to Atlanta is beyond me. Hopefully in a few days I’ll have some new brick pictures to post!

Early this morning I pulled all the information together so I would have the print outs of the shipping information and tracking numbers. My printer died. It would not accept any info. It was locked up as there was a “line of jobs” to print. I figured out how to get into my system tools to cancel out the jobs, but the printer still would not function.

When all else fails I did the time honoured technique of fixing computers. I unplugged the printer, waited 30 seconds and gave it power again. It made that happy noise and printed out the offending job which botched everything up.

Just to be on the safe side I went to do a “system restore” thinking that would help to clear things up. My system restore was disabled! All I can think is when I had the tower in for service this past spring it was disabled at that time. I figured out I had to sign on as administrator and reconfigure the system restore function. That was easy enough to do, but there was no previous time for the system restore to fall back on! Fortunately I back up every couple weeks so I could use my external drive if needed. I now have a bast time to work from. Decided to just let things ride a bit.

It had been quite a while since I checked for Malware, so I did a scan. There were over 900 tracking cookies and one Trojan mess that were removed.

I guess I was on a tear as my nephew posted how he had gotten a call from Microsoft informing him his computer was downloading malware… this is nothing but a scam some poor people fall for. This man in Great Britain did a you tube of how he handled one such scammer.

It rained during the night so I was only able to paint the loose light post pieces in the garage this morning.

It will be nice and muggy when I set the brick saw up for the next project in a few hours. Yesterday afternoon I ripped out one of the levels to the patio. I’ll relay this with the new patterned bricks. It was a real chore to break this all out. The old mortar was so rigid and the bricks were so soft, there were few bricks salvaged.

When I laid these pads I did not have a brick saw and was still pretty green as far as working with bricks goes. Those huge mortar joints are strong! I’m not using the sledge hammer gently on this job!

 Before I forget: I do own other Utilikilts. My Tan kilt is currently my "good public" which I need to get demoted to be my everyday working kilt. I lucked out on winning an E-Bay auction on another dark brown Utilikilt which should be my "good public" one. I think back to my old factory days when Al and I would see who could make their clothes last the longest. Some of the rags we ended up wearing just to annoy our co-workers! It is so hard for me to change…. at least I admit it and can laugh at myself over it!!