I just had to share: my Dell replacement computer crashed twice today — while I was filling out a customer service satisfaction survey for them. Does it get any better than that?
I can but laugh. By all means, share your latest poetic moment!
This one isn’t flashy. It’s just exquisitely tasteful. It’s Carolina Herrera, after all. Click through and take a close look at the gorgeous combination of sequins and embroidery — the flattering crossed seaming at the waist. Perfection.
Anyone who lives in New York or follows the national press on public health issues is probably aware that Mayor Bloomberg has been pushing a nutritional agenda whose primary method of implementation is to force New Yorkers to eat better whether they like it or not. Recent measures have included banning the use of trans fats in restaurants and requiring chains to prominently post calorie counts for all of their foods. His latest hobby horse has been pushing restaurants and manufacturers to reduce sodium levels in their foods. Well, the New York Times today ran an article discussing Mayor Bloomberg’s own eating habits, which apparently include copiously salting pizza. I can’t quite decide if this is hypocrisy, or if it just means that Bloomberg’s sense that New Yorkers needs the food police to watch them is based in his own need to have the food police watch him.
Having spent nearly two months watching design shows and saying increasingly rude things about the owners’ color choices (apparently I’m picky), I am delighted to say that I am fully technified again at long last. Granted, this computer does not have Microsoft Office installed on it (who needs a word processor, after all?), and I don’t yet have access to the information on my old hard drive, but after two months I’m plenty grateful just to be able to read the Times online.
This seems like the time when I should stop to meditate on what I got out of my time away. I’m afraid given that I spent all that time in New Jersey and not at a yoga retreat in the Bahamas, what you’re going to get ain’t deep, but here are my thoughts.
Tentative good news on the computer front, I’m happy to say. Dell has supposedly shipped a refurbished replacement system that will supposedly arrive tomorrow and will supposedly be functional. They will supposedly also be shipping the disc for Microsoft Office separately, so someday I will again be able to word process on a keyboard larger than three square inches.
Lest I disappoint, however, my interactions with Dell have gotten no less ridiculous since my last post. Now that there’s some reasonable prospect of my getting some kind of functional system back prior to retirement, the total confusion at Dell customer service has passed beyond frustrating to fascinating. Despite the fact that I wrote a letter to Dell’s president for consumer products and the customer service folks are clearly taking me seriously, they cannot get their s*** together to save their lives. It is like watching the fall of the Roman Empire. I really think this is how it happened. One side of the empire doesn’t know what the other side is doing, communication lines fall, a few key shipments are lost, and the next thing you know, the barbarians are sweeping down from the north waving bankruptcy papers.
I’m now dealing only with the escalation department. That’s nice, since they speak better English and seem to have slightly more ability to take actual action than the regular customer service people. Even they, however, cannot get themselves straight. I have been receiving multiple daily phone calls from different people, who, as always, have conflicting stories to tell me every time they call. Your computer will ship Friday! Your computer will ship tomorrow! You will be able to access your old hard drive! You will not be able to access your old hard drive! How do they not know when they call that someone in their department called ten minutes earlier with a different story? Being as they are a computer company, surely they have a computer system recording this stuff. (The opinion of a friend of the family at IBM? Dell’s lost my system and doesn’t want to admit it. Did I mention I’m glad I didn’t send my hard drive?)
The latest? A replacement system will be shipped to me. And Escalation Guy #1 will have my old system shipped back to me SO THAT I CAN SHIP IT BACK TO DELL. Seriously? Dear God, people, what kind of ship are you running? I have to admit that despite earlier posts I had been sort of hoping Dell would wow me (with say, a new system) in such a way that I could go back to being a Dell customer in good conscience. But this? This is the path to bankruptcy, folks. Don’t count on buying a new Dell and being able to rely on your warranty, because if they keep running things like this, they won’t be around long enough to back it up for you.
Just enough hardware for this fall -- from Boutique 9.
Let’s hear it for fall! The weather has definitively turned, and the fall fashion offerings are reaching dangerous levels of irresistibility. I mentioned a few months ago the arrival of grey and purple everywhere you looked. The stores are still bursting with grey and plum, with the result that I am feeling the burning desire to buy grey and … burnt orange. What can I say? I have a little perverse streak. Thankfully, J. Crew is encouraging me to get my fix with a slew of jackets in warm coppers and sweaters and tops in peachier hues.
Amazingly enough, all this time on enforced hiatus from online shopping has actually let me give some thought to updating my wardrobe for fall. Not that I don’t usually make some updates, but the process usually resembles a blackbird piling up shiny objects rather than the organized approach of a methodical mind. So, here are the basic items I’m looking to buy this season. read more »
MAC's Nightfall
Here’s why. Upon hearing that my computer was going to be gone until OCTOBER (grrrr), he went out yesterday morning while I was still groggily attempting to turn over onto my back and brought me back an iced caramel macchiato and the fall fashion issues of In Style, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle. Is it any wonder I love this boy? Having spent all day yesterday getting my fashion fix at long last in despite of my inability to access the internet, I am now feeling much better about my fate, if still mildly annoyed about having to wait two more weeks to catch up on online fashion week coverage. I was somewhat disturbed to find myself looking at a picture of Susan Boyle and thinking “ooh, I like those shoes!” (hey, they were Giuseppe Zanotti!) but a few moments of hilarity courtesy of Uncle Karl pretending to be Coco Chanel in Harper’s Bazaar made all well. (See today’s thought of the day for a representative sample.)
I am now in full swing fall mode, starting with an urgent need to Goth it up with some of the dramatic, hard-edged nail polish colors to go with this fall’s style warrior theme. Even though recessionary caution is still very much with us, a few new nail polishes always seem like a reasonable indulgence when the less-reasonable Hermes bag is taunting me from afar. read more »
Dell has finally broken my spirits. I’m not sure I have the strength to go into the ridiculousness that has occurred since my last post. Suffice it to say that it involved representations that my computer would be overnighted to me by tomorrow (not gonna happen) and a circus of different people telling me conflicting information about what was wrong with the computer, sometimes several times a day. Finally, Dell has achieved an indefinite delay to replace a part that was in perfectly good condition when I sent it to them and that the service depot apparently broke. Is it just me, or should I not have an additional month’s delay because DELL broke something?
They now claim I’ll have a refurbished system in two weeks, but I’m not holding my breath. It seems like it’s just about time for me to start looking for a new computer, and I sure as hell won’t be buying another Dell. Of course, I can’t shop for it online, but I guess there are always computer magazines. Anyone have recommendations?
So, if you’ve been watching tv, you may have seen the commercials for the upcoming season of “America’s Next Top Model.” Bravo has been trying to present the next season as a groundbreaking search for women who aren’t tall enough for traditional model standards. Look at us! We’re broadminded and forward-thinking!
I am far from the only person to comment on this, but they’ve been using Kate Moss as an example of the trail these women are supposedly going to follow, referring to her as “petite supermodel Kate Moss.” Uh, yeah. A quick Google suggests that Kate Moss is in fact my height – 5’7″. While that admittedly makes us at least two inches shorter than most runway models, it also makes us taller than approximately 85% of American women. Kate Moss is not a role model for “short girls,” people, and she’s not petite compared to anyone but models and basketball players. 5’7″, incidentally, is the maximum height for the upcoming season. Exactly what sort of modeling career are they expecting women who are genuinely petite to have?
It is like the Keystone Kops over there, folks. After posting Wednesday, I got an email telling me that the computer (which I’d been told Monday had been fixed, remember) had been shipped out. I replied to the email asking again if a tracking number was available. Well, yesterday I got a call telling me that there had been an update that morning saying that not only had it not been shipped, it had not been fixed, and was waiting for a part on backorder so that it could be fixed. ”I am going to ask you to wait another five to seven business days.” Right. When asked, he had no idea why I’d been told it had been fixed, what was wrong with it, what part was missing, or why I’d been told it had shipped, despite the fact that he’d been the one who sent the email saying it had shipped.
Come on, people. I realize that repairs can take time, but what kind of part could my computer need that could possibly take the manufacturer over three weeks to get? I would be okay being patient if I was getting the impression that they knew what they are doing over there, but after the it’s fixed-it’s shipped-it’s not shipped OR fixed debacle, I am starting to get the impression that my computer is caught in a vortex of incompetence that may not even be aware that there’s a computer in there. And for more than a month. Good God. I was originally happy my computer was still on warranty, but I’m starting to wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off buying a new computer from someone else. This level of confusion from a company the size of Dell is pretty impressive…