O'Bunny's Hutch

I seem to have become curmudgeonly as I age... (become curmudgeonly?)

I'm annoyed with Staples, the office supplies and copy/print place. A couple of weeks back, I was looking for a specific organizing calendar, by request from a friend of mine. This calendar apparently comes in three different variants; I'd found two but wanted the third.

There is a big fancy customer-usable screen/keyboard/mouse setup by the cash registers, inviting one to search for stuff that could be bought. Fancy splash screen, bright red design, kinda cool looking. Neat!

I walked up to it and pressed the Enter key on the keyboard. Nothing happened. Did it again, same result. Waggled the mouse, nada. Waggled further, further nothing.

Well, it turns out that the screen is a touch screen. One must poke the screen to get any sort of response from the system. Seems counter-intuitive to me; shouldn't a user action get some sort of response from a system that is designed to attract user action?

Anyway, got to the search screen.

So I tried to look up the calendar. The system claimed that one of the two calendars that I had in my hand was the only one that existed. The other that I had in my hand, and the other (that was shown on the fancy in-store display) did not appear.

So I went and found a Staples employee, who went and looked in the back to see if they had any of the one that I wanted. Seems to me that the customer-usable computer should have made that step unnecessary, allowing the employee to do other things.

And then...

I tried to place an order for business cards at a Staples store last week, and it was a disaster. The person at the counter was pleasant though not terribly knowledgeable, but the process was ridiculous. We had to switch back and forth from one computer to another (bolted down on opposite ends of the counter) to see pricing, find options, and be able to upload my design. I was quoted one price (regular delivery) but attempted to be charged another (same day service, although same-day service was not available). Uploading my design from my USB stick to the computer in the store took several minutes (c'mon, folks, it's a two-colour business card) and had to be repeated every time we made a change or fixed an error, and to add insult to injury, Staples charges to allow me to supply my own design! After what seemed like forever but was likely only about 30 minutes, I gave up.

When I tried to do the whole thing at home on the Staples Copy and Print website, which by-the-way is not available from the Staples website, I was not able to upload my design. The Staples website requires Adobe Flash, which I do not use on my computer. More annoyingly, when I clicked on the "I can't see your Flash animation" (well, words to that effect) on the initial page, it took me to another page which displayed everything just fine, except that I needed Flash to be able to upload my design to their system. And they would then charge me extra to use my own design.

By comparison, uploading to an online service and sorting out my details took under five minutes from deciding which provider to use to getting my receipt mailed to me. It took under ten seconds to upload my design on my home residential internet connection.

It seems to me that Staples is trying to minimize costs and maximize profits at the cost of customer satisfaction with the user experience.

I'd pretty much recovered from my whatever-it-was, and was looking forward to a quiet evening at home. Heidi, her mother, my mother, and Heidi's sister Ellen were going to have a "Girls' Night Out" and have dinner together. My mother is just about to move to a retirement residence, and I think this was a sort of celebration of not having to cook any more.

Heidi went off to pick up my mom, and was then to pick up her mom, then the three would meet Ellen at the restaurant. My sister Judy and her two daughters had dropped by to visit, and were leaving when Heidi arrived. So far so good...

Then about 4:30 or so I got the first phone call: "Your mother slipped and fell on the ice, and seems to have hurt her leg. I'll let you know what happens."

Okay, if there's anything that can be done, Heidi can do it, no probs.

Then the second phone call: "It seems to hurt quite a lot, so we're going to the hospital."

Okay, I guess I'll pick her up at the emergency dept., I can handle that. There goes my thought of climbing into my jammies and an Ian Rankin novel.

Then: "The ambulance is here, we're off to the Civic."

Dang! Oh well, the book will keep. I called and let Heidi's mother know that Heidi and mom would likely not make it to dinner.

I made it to the Civic Hospital (well, the Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital, but that's a lot like calling Hull "Gatineau"). Into Emerg (sorry, the Emergency Department), and spoke to a lovely woman who told me "Yes, follow the green dots, she's in Bed 18."

The green dots on the floor took me to the Observation area, and Bed 18 was easy to find; it was the one with my mother lying in it, with Heidi and my sister in attendance. There sure was something wrong with mom's ankle; the ambulance attendants/paramedics had splinted the ankle, the pain was bearable, but her right ankle was badly swollen. We settled into waiting to get x-rays done and a doctor to visit and stuff.

Eventually that stuff happened, and it was determined that mom had broken her ankle. My mother, not being one to do things by halves, broke her ankle in three places: where the tibia hooks into the talus, where the fibula hooks into the talus, and somewhere on the back of the ankle as well. This all makes the ankle completely unstable, and so screws and plates are required to hold everything together, and to put this stuff in means surgery.

So she got a splint, a sort of temporary cast (we got word today that she goes into surgery tomorrow morning to have some amount of hardware installed).

I made it home about 5. Saturday morning. For those of you in the know, you can see where that leads.

Saturday's Dates

Saturday was the second day of the Ottawa Winter Jazz Festival, and I was doing sound for two events: Michael Occhipinti's Sicilian Jazz Project, and the John Abercrombie Quartet. The venue was the Library and Archives Canada theatre, a very good-sounding room that I've done zillions of shows in.

That meant picking up a complete sound system and getting it to the theatre and installed. My good friend and esteemed colleague Mike Kay had arranged to meet me at the rental shop at 10AM. Load-in was set for noon, sound checks were at 2-3 and 4-5PM, showtimes were 7 and 9PM, load-out afterwards.

The setup and sound checks were straightforward and uneventful, pleasant even, except for dealing with a bunch of minor equipment failures (and people wonder why I travel with a van full of spares (though none of the failures were my equipment :-) ). The shows, however...

The shows were magnificent! The Sicilian Jazz Project was fascinating, musically rich, and technically marvellous. And John Abercrombie and friends were obviously having such a good time that one couldn't help but be drawn into the fun. Both bands brought good music, great attitudes, and smiles to all involved.

My goodness I'm tired. But it was worth it.

For my grammar geek friends

http://assets.amuniversal.com/f361c000ec1001300ada001dd8b71c47?width=900

You know who you are...

Image By Silver Oak Online Casinos

Edit:Fixed a busted tag.

For those of you who haven't seen it, you really should:

A true Irish standard.

Heidi has just invented popsquash.

Today at 10AM was my father's funeral mass, followed by interment, followed by a reception.

Many thanks to all who came out, who sent condolences, who thought about us. It all helped immensely.

In today's episode of Sentences You Never Hear Spoken¹:

Stay tuned for more episodes of Sentences You Never Hear Spoken

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¹ Actually, considering our friends, this is a sentence that might well be spoken, and often. Hmm.

Merry Christmas, folks.

I mean, if you celebrate something else, have a happy one of those, but from my point of view -- Merry Christmas.

For those who were wondering:

• Heidi's mom did have a small stroke. She was home later that afternoon (!), and is recovering very well. She has essentially no mobility or speech problems, and the doctor has said that her prognosis is very good. She can't drive for three months, though; that will put a bit of a crimp in their lifestyle.
• The actor in the Oz play did not have a heart attack. It turned out to be a strained diaphragm muscle. He was back the next day, looking better than he had before, and is going to take a month off now that the festival is over.

And I'm nearly caught up on my sleep, I think.