What a Weekend
When my Friday morning started out with sirens and an unfortunate car-pedestrian wreck I should have known the weekend would be wrecked as well.
I awoke to at least two fire trucks and three police cars outside my apartment; apparently a woman was hit by a car while trying to cross the street at a crosswalk. This is what I heard from a friend anyway, and having not heard any authoritative news to state otherwise I’m going to believe it. This is not the first time a car accident has occurred at this intersection during the time I’ve lived here, back in August there was a wreck, and about a year before that another.
In any event, my heart goes out to all of those involved.
The rest of Friday actually turned out nicely. Work went by quickly and afterwards was dinner at CPK in Northgate with some friends.
Saturday is when things got nasty. A small argument with Ash put in me in a foul mood and things just seem to get worse and worse after that. We rarely fight or argue, so it’s especially unpleasant when we do. After patching things up we decided to go out to Kirkland so I could pick up some new guitar strings and a Bluetooth adapter. Why Kirkland? CompUSA had a pretty good deal on an IOgear BT adapter, but it was only in stock at their Kirkland store; that, and Guitar Center is out there as well.
As soon as we got out on the roads we ran into wicked traffic. Apparently some bridges were closed in addition to the Mariner’s game and this caused a huge flood of traffic. It ended up taking us almost an hour to get there. I got the feeling I wasn’t the only person on the roads having a bad day because I was getting cut-off constantly.
The real fun began after getting back home. I immediately attempted to install the Bluetooth adapter. This is something I have had on the back burners for about nine months. The whole reason I upgraded my cell phone and plan was to have the ability to use mp3 ring tones as well as take pictures and put them on my computer. I figured BT would be great for this.
I installed the drivers exactly like the instructions said to, multiple times. I read everything there was to read about my cell phone, about my BT adapter, and about using them together; nothing helped me solve the problem. I decided that I probably needed something called “Mobile phoneTools” by Motorola, which is basically a program that helps users sync their phone to their computer. I caved in and paid the $30 to download it hoping this would cure the problem; wrong again.
So here we are:
- IOgear BT Adapter: $30 + tax
- Motorola Mobile PhoneTools: $30
- Time spent on configuration: 3+ hours
- Number of successful file transfers between the phone and my computer: 0
You can imagine my frustration with the situation. I’ve not only spent the above money and time, but the money for the phone in the first place, and what did I get for all of that? Well I got a cell phone that has a bunch of pictures on it and a generic ringer, topped off by raging headache.
Finally around 2am I gave up frustrated. While trying to get to sleep I was bombarded by the sounds of our neighbor’s party. What a wonderful ending to a beautiful day.
Sunday started off about the same as Saturday ended. After waking up and taking one look at my phone I was reminded of how swindled I felt. That is exactly how I felt, swindled out of my money by AT&T, by IOgear, and by Motorola. The only thing I like more than getting ripped off is getting ripped of twice.
Ash and I decided to go back to my parents’ place to get some errands done and this is where things started to turn around. Just getting out of the apartment for a while helped. I also decided I was not going to help anyone at home with their computer or network troubles this weekend; if I saw one more “wizard” I think I would have gone insane.
So that’s basically how my weekend went. Anyone who wants to come over and try to “fix” my BT situation is more than welcome. I know how exciting that sounds, so volunteering will be allowed on a first come first serve basis.
I’m hoping the upcoming week will be more productive and fun than this weekend has been.
October 4th, 2004 at 5:12 pm
Can I just fly there an throw the whole thing out the window
Office space styles…
October 4th, 2004 at 6:30 pm
Haha, not unless you want to pay me $30 for it. I have a feeling it’s going back to CompUSA next weekend even though the 15% restocking fee sucks.
October 11th, 2004 at 10:50 pm
So, wait… does it work now? You showed me those pics from last quarter the other day. Or did you do something else?
October 11th, 2004 at 11:23 pm
Nope, the bluetooth on my phone is disfunctional. I ended up buying a usb connector for my phone instead. It’s low tech, cheaper, and actually works… go figure.
October 26th, 2004 at 8:24 am
Aw dang. What a weekend. At least you’ve found a cheap alternative to bluetooth, heheh. Yeah, so I just realized that you weren’t on my blogroll in bloglines and haven’t been getting yours posts. Weird. But am now back, to read Kevin’s writings… haha.