The Mandelbear's Musings

A pretty good day, I think. At work, I finally got the last few bugs out of my code, though it needs some more testing before I'll call it done. I spent my lunchtime on the phone with Apple, registering my complaint about "PeekabooTranny". I went in through their "small business" number, on the grounds that I'm a musician who sells through the iTunes store. The inability of their speech-recognition system to get usable keywords from what I was telling it and the bafflement of their call center people (possibly in India, from the sound of it) when I finally got through to them made for a rather frustrating experience, but the second try got me the corporate number, 408-996-1010, where the word "complaint" got me through almost immediately to a helpful woman who took my comments and also referred me to the website. She had some trouble looking up the url, but I already knew it. Which says something, I guess. Not sure what.

You'll find the text of my second comment, written after I realized that I might have more leverage as a musician than as a random non-customer, up there under the cut.

A little singing, but I stopped after two songs because congestion was making it difficult. Nasal semivowels, in particular, rapidly ran up against the lack of a functional nose. I spent the rest of the evening eating chili peppers and horseradish in hopes that they would loosen things up enough not to need another dose of topical decongestant. They didn't help all that much, but between that, diphenhydramine, phenelephrine, fluticasone proprionate, and a hot bath, I managed. Grr.

Hmm. The only link I see up there is to our new VP of Engineering's a cappella group, Curious Blend.

I made a double batch of fried rice for lunch -- Colleen liked it. Afterward, we went out shopping, mainly to buy a new lightbulb for the fan in the back bedroom. FAIL. We took it in to the place where we'd bought the thing, Galaxy Lighting, only to find that they no longer sold that fan and didn't have the bulbs. They sent us to Batteries and Bulbs on El Camino, where the expert took one look at it and said "buy a new lamp". Apparently it's a custom job. He'll look... The topper is that when we brought it back home, thinking I'd swap it with the known-good one in the living room, I found that it worked fine there. Apparently the problem is in the controller.

So... no more buying fans -- or anything else -- at Galaxy. They're also expensive. We'll stick to brands that are likely to still be around in another decade, and only use standard Edison-base bulbs.

On the plus side, we found a lovely little grocery store with inexpensive, fresh produce and falafel chips. Win. We're guessing they'd taste really good with hummus. We also checked out a discount store called Tuesday Morning, which Colleen had heard of but I hadn't. They had discount luggage, but not nearly as good prices as Ross.

I didn't take a walk, but got a little exercise wrangling the scooter in and out of the car.

Got a moderate amount of receipt-sorting done.

I see that I listed my mood as "unusually happy". I have no idea what caused it, or where it went. I found a self-help book about "structured journaling" earlier in the week, and was on the edge of buying it until I realized that it was all about "managing your [presumably, excessively-strong and out of control] emotions." That's not my problem; I just want to find my emotions. I don't recall ever seeing a self-help book about that.

Thanks to tetralizard, who brought back my box of random health-care receipts, neatly sorted. There are a few missing, apparently. Grump.