Yesterday I almost got suckered by a predatory sales call to me at my University of Minnesota office. The caller said that he had a deal on printer cartridges available since another department cancelled at the last minute. He said it would fit the main office printer, and specifically mentioned where in the office the printer lives, and identified who sits next to it. "OK," I thought, "this must be our usual supplier," so I told him to send over the order. Later the department office specialist told me that this company is NOT authorized to sell us stuff, and that this was a scam. Luckily they called back later to verify our address, so I referred them to the department administrator for processing. This is what I should have done in the first place, but I think they count on getting unsuspecting department chairs to agree to what appears to be a good deal and then not going through the hassle of doing a return later. Man, capitalists can be so devious!
Amazon.com now has author pages, so of course I had to create one. Check it out!
I recently received a bill from Qwest about a collect call: $10.31 for a 1-minute call (!). Actually, it was more like 15 seconds, as a transcipt would read like this:
"Hello."
"Hey, I left my cell phone at home. Can you come and pick me up?"
"OK, be there in 5 minutes."
"Thanks. Bye."
"Bye."
I called Qwest and was informed that the charge was not a typo. Wow!
Today I had an 8:00-12:00 window for service on my kitchen range. I was shocked when the repair person showed up at 9:30, as they almost always show up in either the first or last 30 minutes of the window. Also shocking: $230 for 10 minutes of work to replace one little ol' part....
Today is Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer (Memorial Day-Labor Day). I think that the summer of 2009 saw me visit movie theaters only 7 or 8 times; normally I'm well into double digits. In 1999, for instance, I moved to Minneapolis in June and probably went to the movies every week with my buddy Tom, who was single at the time, as was I. That pales to the summer of 1989, though, when Tom and I saw 37 movies 46 times (!). Those numbers might not be exactly right, but I do know that the number of titles was in the upper 30s, and the number of visits was in the mid-upper 40s; we saw some movies more than once, such as When Harry Met Sally... three times (we saw this at least once at a unique old Minneapolis theater &mdash The Cooper &mdash that was later demolished for a cookie-cookie development). Those were the days....
The ghost who lives in my house pulled another prank last night: she pushed a glass to the edge of a shelf inside a cabinet, so that when I opened the door this morning the glass fell out and shattered on the counter. I can put up with little things like this, though....