David and I have taken a break from the holiday nonsense. Not that the holidays themselves are nonsense, but since Costo put Christmas trees on display in early October, it’s hard to focus. We would like to wish those who celebrate, a Happy Hanukkah, which I think started Thursday. Linda G. Hill gave us a nice Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt to wrestle with, so let’s get going.
“Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: ‘to me.’ Find a way to use the phrase ‘to me’ in your post. Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!”
If we were having a beer, you’d want short and simple answers.
“So, who did you want to hang up on, Dan?”
“Huh?”
“You one-liner post on Wednesday. I assume there was someone you wanted to hang up on.”
“Well, I hope it wasn’t me. I took a bunch of calls for takeout orders. You boys want your usual delights?”
“We do, Cheryl. And for the record, Neither Dan nor I would ever hang up on you like that.”
“So, Dan…”
“Well, hanging up was a metaphor in this case, since it involved tech-support, and you never actually get to speak to a human.”
“I doubt an AI chatbot would care if you slammed the phone down.”
“Yeah, and you can’t end an email with a slam.”
“Well, talk to me, boy. Who earned your wrath?”
“The usual suspects, David, Microsoft, Adobe and WordPress.”
“Here, David. You better drink this and order another. Sounds like you opened a bad door. Dan, here’s your beer. Slow down once in a while and take a sip.”
“I’ll make this brief, Cheryl.”
“Dan?”
“Yes, David.”
“When you say ‘brief,’ is that regular-people brief or Dan-brief?”
“Dan-brief — it’s all I got.”
“Okay. Cheryl, get another John Howell’s bourbon ready. Go ahead, Dan.”
“First off…”
“Ugh, it’s a multipart story.”
“No, but some background is required.”
“Dan, skip all the background. Just tell me who did what in generic terms.”
“It won’t be much of a story that way, David.”
“I’m counting on that.”
“Alright then. Some software from Adobe that always worked fine on my laptop from Microsoft, stopped working for no apparent reason.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard. Then what?”
“At the suggestion of the Adobe bot, I contacted Microsoft to see if I could get an updated driver for the Graphics Processor (GPU) in my older Microsoft Surface.”
“You’re slipping into geekspeak, Dan. You could have said, ‘an update for my laptop’ and it would have made just as much sense.”
“Well, they didn’t have one, but they said they had several Surface models on sale.”
“Wait, they couldn’t fix your laptop, so they tried to sell you a new one?”
“Precisely.”
“I would want to slam the phone on that. Go on.”
“I went back to Adobe, but they gave no answers. They told me to search their forums.”
“Which are full of useless advice, like “make sure your laptop is plugged in and the electricity is on in your house, and the earth is rotating.”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you have to buy a new laptop?”
“No. I searched the Internet, and after a few attempts at rewording my question, I found a blog entry by a guy who said there’s a box in a deeply buried settings screen that tells PhotoShop to ignore this issue.”
“Did that work?”
“I think so. I still get a warning message about the ‘thing that needs an update,’ but it doesn’t crash.”
“Very good. See, I understand your frustration, and we saved all that technical nonsense. Now, what did WordPress do?”
“What they always do.”
“I don’t have a blog, Dan. I wouldn’t know.”
“No matter how much information you give them, their first response is always things like, ‘uninstall plugins,’ ‘clear your cache,’ ‘try a different browser,’ ‘reset your modem,” or ‘try a different theme.’ All things I told them I did or wouldn’t do.”
“What wouldn’t you do?”
“Change my theme. They recommend that as if it’s as easy as changing your socks, but…”
“Dan.”
“Yes, David?”
“You digress. Did you end up having to contact them twice?”
“Three times, at least. The second response said they can’t recreate the problem on their system.”
“Their system, which I would guess is only set up to run WordPress. So, third time was a charm?”
“In once case. I have multiple open items. In my experience, after the initial delay of two to three days, the problem has either been solved by some other action on their end, or it’s one of those things that’s going to drag on for months.”
“Which is it for you?”
“Well, without going into details, I had three problems. One with people’s comments never showing up, and one where my posts and updates seem to process forever, and…”
“Without going into details. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Sigh. Problem A isn’t my problem. They told me to tell the people to contact them. Problem B looks like it will go on for months, and Problem C went away on its own.”
“See, now doesn’t that feel better? You related three stories to me, and I don’t want to slam a phone down on you.”
“It would feel better with a slice of pizza.”
All five of my current books are now available in audio book form thanks to Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice process. The voice is AI generated, but I can honestly say, it’s pretty darn good. The audio books are reasonably priced (all below $7 US) and, if you already own the Kindle version and want to add an audio version, you can do that for $1.99. There is a five-minute sample on the book page for each book. If you’re interested, click on any of the Dreamer’s Alliance book links below the image or on the link below for my latest book.
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