We have officially relinquished our keys to the old apartment managers which means we’re now out of the old and in to the new.
But as anyone who has moved can attest, that is only half the battle. The ceaseless work continues as we attempt to coordinate some kind of system that results in us not beginning every single conversation with the phrase, “Have you seen…?”
Not that progress hasn’t been made: The Ikea blitz has yielded plenty of usable furniture and our bedroom is more or less furnished and probably 95% unpacked (it was mostly clothes anyway which are sort of hard to go without for very long unless you belong to some sort of commune). I also was—finally—able to get the Internets piped into the new place and the important stuff like the TV, TiVo and XBox hooked up. It wasn’t easy.
Basically it required me to spend the entire afternoon yesterday on the phone with one tech support group or another, the net result of which was heightened agitation and nothing that really qualifies as “assistance.” The calls were all variations on the following theme:
Tech: Can I get your phone number to verify your account?
Me: <gives number>
Tech: That’s not pulling up your account.
Me: Can you look it up a different way?
Tech: Not really.
Me: Oh? Not even with my name and zip code? How many ‘Paul Hamiltons’ can there be in this town?
Tech: (sighing) Okay I’ll try it.
Me: <provides information>
Tech: That still doesn’t work. While I’m trying to access your account, what seems to be the problem?
Me: I’ve followed all the instructions carefully, checked my connections and read through your support docs. Can you give me some suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong?
Tech: Did you make sure the device was plugged in?
Me: Don’t start with me.
Tech: Try power cycling.
Me: What is this? Windows?
Tech: Did you power cycle the device?
Me: (sighing) Fine. Yes, I’ve power cycled it. Still nothing.
Tech: Did you try running through the automated configuration utility?
Me: Your automated configuration utility was developed by orangutans.
Tech: You may need to try running it a few times.
Me: That’s… that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
Tech: It’s step two in the troubleshooting process.
Me: Your processes were developed by plankton.
Tech: Are you running the utility now?
Me: (lying) Oh yeah. (tries something completely different involving manual configuration)
Tech: Did that work out for you?
Me: You know what? Nevermind. I just figured it out for myself.
Tech: I’m glad to have been of assistance!
Anyway, as with all my technical accomplishments, everything worked out in the end, but I literally have no idea what I did to get any of them to work. Which usually means that it will be fine… for now. Eventually I’ll need or want to make some kind of adjustment which will asplode the whole thing and I’ll go through the dance again until I blindly stumble on the correct combination of voodoo chants and animal sacrifices that make everything all better. Although, come to think of it, perhaps the self-inflicted misery of calling tech support is the trick, it just works differently than I expect. Perhaps I only need to suffer through the indignity of the calls in order to coax cooperation from my devices. Once they see the level of pain I’m willing to subject myself to in order for them to work, they relent. “He must really mean it,” they probably say in their cruel binary tongue.
But now that the technical work is (almost) out of the way, it’s time to get down with the real unpacking so this weekend should be fun long.
