Corner of Bourbon & Division

I had to call Logitech back this evening because, of course, the guy I spoke to yesterday never replied to the email he requested I send him.

I spoke to a MUCH more competent woman, although we suffered from serious audio issues on the call (ironically). She kept breaking up, so the whole thing took a lot longer than it otherwise would have. Anyway, turns out the guy from yesterday had me download a diagnostic software that's incompatible with my headset.

She had me download a new software, which then tried to access what felt like every single other software on my system. HEY, I AM YOUR NEW DIAGNOSTIC SOFTWARE, CAN I HAVE ACCESS TO YOU DISCORD ACCOUNT? Uh, how about no? Blech. Fucking third-party marketing schemes.

We did more resets, more diagnostics, and lo and behold she confirmed it was a hardware issue! *insert eye rolling here*

I am one week past Amazon's 30 day return policy, of course, so Logitech has to send me a replacement. For that, I had to hand-write the ticket number and today's date on a paper and photograph it next to the headset with the serial number visible. Then I had to send the photo AND a copy of my invoice to them along with the answers to a fairly lengthy questionnaire. By the end I wasn't sure if they were going to ask me to sign away my firstborn, I'm not going to lie.

And just now the tech i spoke to earlier emailed me to say the replacement is out of stock and won't be replenished for at least 3 weeks.

I am really, really frustrated. How is a company out of stock of their own product? I have no recourse, unfortunately. Right now the product is under Logitech warranty, so I have to work within their shoddy, shoddy system. I'm definitely never buying any of their products again. I have learned my lesson.

I'm serious. They've been preparing for a winter that hasn't arrived in well over five books. If they were in Canada, they'd be all set. Plus, we have snowblowers. They'd be amazed.

I, however, fan of winter though I am, am 2000% done. There's a winter storm warning for Cornwall, Lancaster, and western Quebec for later today. Guess what day it is for me? If you guessed COMMUTE DAY, you win a prize! It's a crappy prize comprised mostly of slush, black ice and utter frustration, but whatever.

No matter which way I look at it, today is going to suck. If I stay here in Ottawa and sleep until early afternoon, I'll have to drive home through the worst of it. If I leave now(ish), right after packing up and having a quick breakfast, I'm going to hit rush hour traffic in Ottawa and add on about an hour to my two-hour drive, while going on no sleep. Which is the better option? Who the fuck knows?

I'm opting for driving without snow, but it means rush hour traffic and sleep deprivation. I mean, more sleep deprivation than usual. If I get home early enough, I'll try to take a nap before Bean gets home from daycare. In theory, that should be doable. I can't imagine that driving conditions will be so bad that it'll take me eight or more hours to drive home. (Famous last words. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything)

Compounding all this is the fact that I had a rather shitty time of it at work last night. Maybe Mercury is retrograde again, maybe the moon was full, I don't know, but all my systems shat themselves and died. They took turns to do it, very politely, too, so that I ended up spending the entire night on the phone with multiple help desks trying to sort things out. Also one of the alarms went off at work: a really loud, really shrill alarm that's right outside my door and that can't be turned off. And because it wasn't deemed a "priority" alarm, I was informed that it would wait until regular hours started this morning. So I got a good seven hours of that to add to everything else that was going on. All the help desk people asked me what the sound was.

"That's not your fire alarm, is it?"

"No, no, it's fine."

"What did you say?"

"I said it's fine! Can we go back to fixing the network connection please?"

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well."

Etc.

Anyway, I am having breakfast. There will be more coffee in a minute. Because I'm leaving early, it means I can't pick up milk the way I'd intended (milk in Ontario is much cheaper than in Quebec, so I try to stock up on my way home usually). So thank you, weather, for fucking things up for me even more. After coffee I'll finish packing and be on my way. I have to get gas for the car (yet another delay), and I may try to aim for a Tim Horton's as well mid-trip, in an effort not to fall asleep at the wheel, which would be so many levels of disastrous I don't know where to start.

Wish me luck!

My morning so far:

EVERYONE: "Hi Phnee! Be a doll and put out these five fires and fix these ten problems? Thanks!"

Also, even though there are six people working this morning, apparently everyone else has broken both their arms, since they can't seem to answer the damned phones.

AUGH!

I haven't felt this stabby in a very long time. I have been going to bed early every day this week, and it's not helping. I want to drive something long and sharp and hurty into someone's eye.

In the meantime, I am struggling with this stupid baby blanket. Again. After getting through four repeats with no trouble, this fifth repeat is threatening to claim my sanity. I've had to rip back about six times this week, and I've just found yet another mistake. Gnarr.

*glares at knitting*

I suspect this will be ten times worse when I try to knit that shawl next.

I don't know how I managed it, but I knitted half a row backward.

I am NOT enjoying this particular learning curve. Not at all.

:::ETA::

Oh, God. I think I borked it four rows back.

*weeps more*

I'm going to leave it as is, and hope for the best.

Okay, it may be called "slip slip knit," but it's more like "struggle struggle curse."

It seems my purling tension is too tight. Gnarr. Must fix this the next time around, or else this blanket is going to get finished somewhere around Christmas 2015. :P This one row took me nearly 45 minutes.

The supervisor I want to use as a pinata just told me to smile.

I did not kill him. I was reasonably civilized in my response. I did not give him a lecture on how he is an ass who is not entitled to a smile or anything else from me.

I also refrained from hitting him when he said: "I was just trying to be polite!" as though I was some kind of shrieking harpy.

I did not tell him that ordering me to smile as though I somehow owe him my goodwill is not polite, but condescending and chauvinistic.

On the whole, I think I did pretty well.

I need a sport that involves hitting something repeatedly with a stick. Hard.

Or at least that involves throwing something hard at something else.

It's either that, or I use one of the supervisors here as a pinata. The man has made me murderously angry over something that should have been of no consequence.