A typical Friday.

Sort of.
 For the last few weeks,  German Teacher Dude has been coming for his weekly visits on Fridays.   He seems to like Fridays,  it's OK I suppose.  Just means some extra cleaning up to do is all,  but that's pretty much par for the course on a Friday.
So,  in addition to that,  I'm also occupied with moving some files from one drive to another,  since I had another one delivered this morning.
Now before you start wondering if I'll have to build a separate storage facility for all these drives,  let me explain.   It was a replacement.
 A couple weekends ago,  Travelling Companion and I were watching a movie,  and at one point she said, "What's that high pitched sound?".   I hadn't really noticed since I have this thing called tinnitus,  or at least that's what I think it is, so I just figured the high pitched sound was coming from inside my head,   like it always does.   So when she said something,  I realised that maybe it wasn't just me after all,  and started to try and figure out where it was coming from.   Turns out the most recent Seagate drive that I had bought was running a tad hot and making a bit of a nasty sound.   Eventually we ended up with an "I/O Error"  on the screen.

Not good.

 After letting the thing cool down,  I managed to move the files back onto my back up drive and ship it back to Media Markt on the Monday morning.  
They give you 14 days to send anything back,  pretty much "no questions asked".   They do include a form to be filled out with whatever box that needs to be ticked off.  Mine was "defekt".
Now,  I realise that I'm probably not a very trusting person when it comes to dealing with bureaucracy,  so I wasn't about to order a new one until the money was safely back in our bank account.   This took a few days.  They actually answered one of my fill in the blanks kind of correspondences,  and explained that returns are done on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Whatever.
I still wasn't giving them any more dough until I had my money back.   This ain't no factory here,  and it's not like we have some sort of revolving account going on.
 Anyhoo,  I remembered to check the account on Wednesday and lo and behold they had actually done what they said they would do (although it did take them a few days)  so I placed and order for another drive that afternoon.
Funny thing though,  I think they process their orders in a similar fashion,  since nothing started to happen until the next day.
Here's the thing,  and I'm sure I'm the only one on the planet that thinks this is cool,  but as soon as they ship, they send an email,  with a link to the postal service letting you trace your package.
I didn't even have to look anything up.
So I had a pretty good idea this morning just when the delivery guy would show up.   It wasn't the little guy this time,  but another of the postal delivery dudes whom I had seen in the past.

Track & Trace

Status	ZIP	Date/Time	LKZ
Shipment data received	BizTalk	3/3/2011 1:45:15 PM
Item distributed	1005	3/3/2011 8:39:04 PM
Item distributed	1005	3/3/2011 8:40:10 PM
Item distributed	1005	3/3/2011 8:41:07 PM
Item distributed	1005	3/3/2011 8:42:20 PM
Item is out for delivery	1727	3/4/2011 6:45:37 AM
Item delivered to consignee	1727	3/4/2011 9:11:42 AM

Not quite sure what was going on between 8:39 and 8:42,  but that box was getting scanned a few times there.
Mind you,  I'm not overly thrilled that they use the term "zip",  when they're actually referring to a post code,  but I'll suppose I'll have to let that one go.


I'll just repeat now that I'm not much of a "city boy",  but am I that much of a bumpkin to think this is pretty neat?   Maybe I'm just showing my age.   I do still remember how to use a rotary phone after all.

There's a dial on the front.....

oh never mind.



Have a fine weekend.







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