All over the map
24 September 2005 09:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kinzelI drove all over the map yesterday, and... got in miles and miles I could have saved, as well as hours...
First ...drove to Augusta on the expectation that a needed, error-correcting reprint of Barnburner would be ready... but it was not. The "machine" had broken and the repair man was still there at the copy center shaking his head while speaking on the phone when I arrived... parts'll get in on Monday, before noon. Books will be ready sometime after. Sigh.
So, going north, I stopped into the stupid non-mall in Augusta where they've taken three times as much land as needed, carved hillsides and valley, and proceeded to build a bunch of random stores stuck all over the hill...and require that you get in the car to go from store to store. I was looking for Staples, to perhaps buy computer.
Except... that road construction had managed to block all but a single two lane entrance/exit... and once into the maze all the roads inside had been blocked by new construction, leaving a single path to the 20 or 30 stores... and meaning that it was impossible to cross traffic to get to the store I wanted to go to.
I ended up at Longhorn, having a coke and a cheesecake while, over nearly an hour, various police and traffic authorities eventually made it possible for the hundreds of cars stuck inside to leave.
Finally made my way cross traffic to the Augusta Staples, where I was very importantly not-waited on by a young woman who thinks that answering questions means reading the side of the box... which I'd already done. Requests for more information not being dealt with well, I left, got on I-95, where I was promptly nearly run off the road by a school bus traveling in the left lane when it needed to be on an off-ramp.
Thence to Waterville's Staples, where we're known (as it were) and where questions are answered by people who use computers, know what an OS and front-side bus means, and such... eventually arrived at a new box with circuits in it, stopped to pick up snacks, and got home -- about 4 hours after I thought I;d be home. Thankfully, the cellphone connectivity in our area is improving and I was able to apprise Rolanni of my location an changing ETA throughout...
Meanwhile, as I meant to mention but may have forgotten, the new Firefox 1.5 beta is out, for those who indulge in such things. Also, the OpenOffice Beta is getting real close to a release candidate; I've been using the latest beta for awhile and the improvements are many and useful. I've been using OpenOffice in various releases to write with for the last several years; my portions of the last two Liaden novels and several short stories were written in it, and IIRC all of Sword of Orion. I mention this in part in support of the Mass. decision to require open formats for documents, much to the dismay of MSFT who wants to lock cities and states into a never ending MSFT upgrade loop... while using front organizations to deplore the "dangers; of open formats. Front organizations you say? Well, here's some info on part of the situation and you can simply visit groklaw.net and look for the articles about the Mass. decision.
And, most all of the pre-ordered and many of the more recent softcover Liaden Universe(R) Companion have been shipped, none of the hardcovers have been shipped, since they still haven't arrived. We have one overseas pre-ordered LUC to mail Monday, and that should finish the pre-orders not tangled in with other orders.
First ...drove to Augusta on the expectation that a needed, error-correcting reprint of Barnburner would be ready... but it was not. The "machine" had broken and the repair man was still there at the copy center shaking his head while speaking on the phone when I arrived... parts'll get in on Monday, before noon. Books will be ready sometime after. Sigh.
So, going north, I stopped into the stupid non-mall in Augusta where they've taken three times as much land as needed, carved hillsides and valley, and proceeded to build a bunch of random stores stuck all over the hill...and require that you get in the car to go from store to store. I was looking for Staples, to perhaps buy computer.
Except... that road construction had managed to block all but a single two lane entrance/exit... and once into the maze all the roads inside had been blocked by new construction, leaving a single path to the 20 or 30 stores... and meaning that it was impossible to cross traffic to get to the store I wanted to go to.
I ended up at Longhorn, having a coke and a cheesecake while, over nearly an hour, various police and traffic authorities eventually made it possible for the hundreds of cars stuck inside to leave.
Finally made my way cross traffic to the Augusta Staples, where I was very importantly not-waited on by a young woman who thinks that answering questions means reading the side of the box... which I'd already done. Requests for more information not being dealt with well, I left, got on I-95, where I was promptly nearly run off the road by a school bus traveling in the left lane when it needed to be on an off-ramp.
Thence to Waterville's Staples, where we're known (as it were) and where questions are answered by people who use computers, know what an OS and front-side bus means, and such... eventually arrived at a new box with circuits in it, stopped to pick up snacks, and got home -- about 4 hours after I thought I;d be home. Thankfully, the cellphone connectivity in our area is improving and I was able to apprise Rolanni of my location an changing ETA throughout...
Meanwhile, as I meant to mention but may have forgotten, the new Firefox 1.5 beta is out, for those who indulge in such things. Also, the OpenOffice Beta is getting real close to a release candidate; I've been using the latest beta for awhile and the improvements are many and useful. I've been using OpenOffice in various releases to write with for the last several years; my portions of the last two Liaden novels and several short stories were written in it, and IIRC all of Sword of Orion. I mention this in part in support of the Mass. decision to require open formats for documents, much to the dismay of MSFT who wants to lock cities and states into a never ending MSFT upgrade loop... while using front organizations to deplore the "dangers; of open formats. Front organizations you say? Well, here's some info on part of the situation and you can simply visit groklaw.net and look for the articles about the Mass. decision.
And, most all of the pre-ordered and many of the more recent softcover Liaden Universe(R) Companion have been shipped, none of the hardcovers have been shipped, since they still haven't arrived. We have one overseas pre-ordered LUC to mail Monday, and that should finish the pre-orders not tangled in with other orders.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
2005-09-24 07:39 (UTC)And received...
no subject
2005-09-24 07:41 (UTC)yours is the first such acknowledgement...
thanks!
LU Compain Vol. 1
2005-09-26 07:53 (UTC)