Imagine a World Where People Actually Do As They’re Told
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could count on people to do their jobs properly?
In the modern world, simply expecting people to do what they’re paid to do is, sadly, often expecting too much. What’s worse, sometimes this happens despite all of your careful and meticulous planning and research, the point of which was to avoid getting shafted by incompetence. It’s at times like this that you wonder whether all that time you waste doing your “due diligence” is actually just time you’re going to wish you had back later in life, because in the end it rarely does you any good.
Ever feel that way? I’m just asking.
This came to mind recently because of the quagmire I’m presently embroiled in concerning the shipment of my GTO from Florida to our new home in Texas. For some reason, the auto transport industry is perhaps one of the most corrupt, crime-laden, incompetent industries in the entire nation. I’ve had more anxiety with shipping cars than I’ve ever had with buying them, which is supposedly one of the most anxiety-fraught retail experiences that your average American can name. To be honest, though, I have only shipped one car before and I didn’t have any problems, but the whole mess is just such a convoluted spaghetti-mess of brokers, contractors and sub-contractors that it’s a wonder these shipments ever go off without a hitch.
Some time ago, my parents told me that they had planned a five-day trip to Florida, so with those dates in hand, I decided to set up my car shipment. They need to be there when the GTO gets picked up, because most auto transport trucks won’t fit down their street and so my dad would have to actually drive the car out to meet the transporter somewhere else, like at the supermarket down the road. Since the car is a stick and I don’t know anyone else in Florida who could drive it, I’m kind of starved for options.
So I spent hours researching reviews and opinions of auto transporters online, not just by reputation but also by route. After all, since most of these companies simply sub out your job to a local or regional carrier at the origin, the only thing the main company’s reputation can really tell you is how well they handle dispatch and how good their judgment is when it comes to picking that local carrier. You don’t have end-to-end control over who will be handling your vehicle, which is where this whole process always goes down the shitter.
Musical Driving Sequence 2011
You can always tell when I’m really back in the saddle here at Oddball Headquarters when I resume posting directionless drivel at one o’clock in the morning. Tomorrow is my weekly work-from-home day, so to celebrate I’m staying up a bit late. Not that I planned it that way, mind you. But at the present time my head is awhirl with recklessly careening thoughts that won’t stay tamped down long enough for me to sleep, so I’ve got to get some of it out of my system.
I spoke in my last post about the impending once-in-a-decade event of me getting authorization to purchase a new television, and all the gadgety goodness that goes along with such an occasion. According to the local Fry’s Electronics, they’ve got their first batch of the model I want en route to the store, possibly to be delivered by the end of this week. My hope was to carve out some time this weekend to run down there and see it in person, so that may yet come to fruition.
More importantly for the present time, however, I discovered that I was about to fall unexpectedly into another fairly rare situation of a kind that I very much enjoy. Legendary composer and musician Don Peake announced at this past weekend’s Knight Rider festival in Las Vegas that his next three volumes of original television scores from Knight Rider are to be released imminently on CD, by as soon as the end of March. [!] Baked, mastered and pressed by Hitchcock Media Records as always, the next three volumes in Don’s revisitations of his work on Knight Rider will feature near-complete scores from five episodes, including three of my all-time favorites.
Catching Up, Settling Down
So we’ve been in our new home for almost a month now, and I think neither Apple nor myself could possibly be any happier. We really lucked out with this place, that’s for certain. When I think back to all of the dozens of homes that we toured over the last few months, and how none of them had the critical-mass amalgamation of features and perks that this one does…well, it’s clear we made the right choice. Not only in making an offer on this home, but in fighting for it when it looked like we were going to lose it.
As Apple and I were remarking whimsically the other night, most of the time I prefer going along to get along. But every once in a while, something really big and really important comes along — and if it looks like that something is about to slip away, I go all Jean-Luc Picard on it, like: “The line must be drawn HERE!” A few weeks ago, before we closed on the house, I was one signature away from canceling the contract on this house altogether when I decided that I wasn’t going to puss out that easily. And now here we are today, witnessing the results of that decision. It’s a decision I’m glad I made.
In lesser (but still important to nerds) news, today is also the first birthday of my Xbox 360. To be honest, I wouldn’t have remembered if not for my own blog’s “One Year Ago” sidebar that directed me to this post, wherein I giddily recounted the unboxing of my new Xbox 360 Special Edition console. It was just last night that I finally got to turn on that very Xbox again for some well-deserved gaming, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in weeks, thanks to the endless litany of stuff that’s been on my to-do list — an occasion that was well-enjoyed. Today also marks the first day that I can use Microsoft’s Xbox software license transfer tool again, which they restrict you to running only once in a 12-month period. Which only means, of course, that I am *ding* now free to buy another Xbox. (Which I really shouldn’t do, but I’m considering putting one of those nice, glossy, black, utterly-silent ones up in the game room, along with a Kinect peripheral. But it’s only a fringe consideration, honest.)
Speaking of busy, I spent an inordinate amount of time working over these past few days. Last month I designed a website prototype for an old contact back in Florida, who had subcontracted said work to me. I then proceeded to hear nothing from them until a few days ago, at which point they came flying in asking if I could take the whole site from its current state (Photoshop mock-up) to real, live functionality in four days. Sure, why not? I said. I mean, I always love it when people hand me a spanner and tell me to take apart the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan by lunchtime. (Sarcasm implied.) But it would net me a cool $500 in short order, so I complied, and I worked my ass off, and I complained a lot and spent the whole weekend admiring how beautiful the weather was from the inside of my study’s windows. But I got it done. And now I’m going to get paid, hopefully in equally short order.
