I received my subscriber copy of Cemetery Dance #60 earlier this week, so it should be in the hands of most people by now or will be shortly. Now all I need is some time to read it. My work schedule has been pretty crazy this week, and next week is only going to be marginally better. I had a neat web conference with my Japanese counterparts last night (6 p.m. central time, 8:00 a.m. the following day in Japan!) We used WebEx and Skype together, and it worked out brilliantly. I could even hear the jet fighter from the US air base near the Japanese factory fly overhead during the conference.
I now loathe and detest T-Mobile. Yesterday I merely disliked them. I’ve never had such a problem with a company before. They are simply incapable of clearing a flag in their software that says the prepaid phone I purchased is awaiting activation. In fact, the phone has been activated for 2-1/2 days now, but because the software insists it isn’t, I can’t add any time to it. I spent over 45 minutes on the phone with them at one point today (at least half of that on hold) and was nor farther ahead at the end than at the beginning. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” one person asked. “You haven’t helped me at all,” I replied. Interrupting their pre-canned scripts is a real challenge. “Stop talking and listen to me,” I’d say when they would start spouting the same crap I’ve heard ten times in the past two days already. I’m rarely rude to people, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want them to lead me around in the same circle that I’d already worn into the ground. The case has been escalated so high that it must soon come to the attention of Catherine Zeta Jones. And yet I still can’t do one simple thing — add time to the phone. Give them money, in other words. Idiots. Oh, boy, is the letter that I write to Customer Service going to scathe. I’ve been drafting it in my head for two days now. They’re going to need asbestos gloves to get it out of the envelope.
I finished Cemetery Dance (Child & Preston) this morning. Dreadful, dreadful book. It was like a long episode of Scooby Doo in the end. I remember enjoying both Relic and Ice Limit, but this one was bad, bad, bad.
I found out today that AT&T is dropping usenet, so I had to find another nntp server. Fortunately, a helpful poster on rec.arts.mystery pointed me to a free server. It doesn’t have binary groups, but I don’t want them, anyway.
I enjoyed the first episode of the new season of Raising the Bar (although the Chief Prosecutor –or is he the D.A.? is getting sleazier all the time), and Burn Notice was pretty good, too, although the reverse interrogation was a tad of a stretch. Fiona’s birthday present to Michael, referencing trench warfare, was pretty funny.
