UPS supposedly tried to deliver my new computer yesterday, signature-required for some idiotic reason (it's a hundred-dollar refurb job; they've dumped plenty of boxes worth way more on the porch without so much as honking the truck's horn.) Tam was home and in the office (just off the porch) all afternoon, so as near as we can tell, the driver parked a half block away, put on toe shoes, tiptoed down the walk, up the steps, and left a sticker on the front door as gently as a butterfly lands on a tiny violet, then turned and tiptoed away, pushing his truck a half-block further away before starting it and driving off, grinning and chortling like a Gibraltar ape at his great cleverness.
Why? I don't know why. Perhaps he has been driven mad by the demands of his trade, the constant push for greater speed and volume. They get dressed-down if they're seen so much as sauntering instead of scurrying or trotting. But compassion doesn't make me any less disappointed or Tam any less annoyed.
She is hoping to go pick it up for me today. We'll see how that goes.
Edited to add: the autocorrection feature in this version of Exploder is driving me as mad as the hypothetical UPS driver. It's got about a thousand-word vocabulary and "sauntering" ain't on the list.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
12 comments:
Could it *possibly* be the driver is annoyed by repeated deliveries in the one-thousand count package sizes of a consumer product traditionally manufactured of heavy, dense metals?
Maybe? :)
Anonymous, if so, then you'd think said driver should appreciate delivering a large, relatively light box to that address for the sheer novelty of it.
I've Flung Freight For Fred and have been flung unto and I can tell you there are much worse jobs out there.
I hope your UPS depot is closer than mine; I was once informed I had to pick up a package there; it's a 2-hour round trip. (I managed to argue the person on the phone into having it re-delivered to my workplace.)
My current UPS guy is great, but then again, I haven't ordered any "signature required" stuff in a long time.
FedEx did that to me years ago. I was sitting in my office (right by the front door) and never heard a knock or a doorbell, or even someone just walking up, and the next thing I knew, FedEx's online tracking said they attempted delivery, no one home.
The upsetting thing was, I was leaving town first thing the next morning and wouldn't be here for a second attempt. (I hadn't planned to take the computer with me; in fact, Dell had claimed it wouldn't even be shipped till after I got back.) So my wife (who also wasn't going to be here, she was going to work) had to call FedEx, tell them to hold the package at the warehouse, and then had to drive out to the airport to pick it up.
And then they gave her crap because her name wasn't on the package. Long story short, they gave it to her. Those folks are lucky to be alive, because she was steaming mad when she called me that night...
I once had to chase after a UPS truck that was preparing to just drive by without stopping. I was home specifically waiting for that delivery (about $400 worth of stuff), a good thing as it turned out.
Just last week, I mounted a PIR sensor on the porch ceiling. Now if anything larger than a dog sets foot on the porch a doorbell rings inside the house.
I was getting tired of the stealth sticky notes. Now I just need to work on the force-field that holds the truck in place long enough for me to get out the front door to greet them.
Choices besides "exploder." or the more recent offering from Microsoft.
In no particular order...
Firefox or Pale Moon (both Gecko based)
Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi or Brave (all Chromium based)
Both Firefox and Opera have started giving me grief lately. Though it is probably the raft of adons that are fighting off the ad sites.
There are more, but some of them - like Chromodium from Comodo are hacks in the waiting.
If the laptop/desktop computer is still not pieced by several rounds of bullets. And you don't need the hd. Pull it and replace with one of the same size and go to RestoreDisks.com and find the brand and model and order a set of dvd/cd-roms to install the makers siles as out of the box, and reinstall all your add-on software. If your Brand/Model isn't listed, emmail them, they can find and create a set if they don't normally have the needed file set in stock.
If there's stuff on the infected disk that you can't replace, one of those drop-in external USB conneced HD cases, and a Linux Boot cd/dvd *could* extract your files off the infected hd and transfer them to your old computer.
If you haven't already thought about this possiblity.
C-90
Anon 12:13 AM: I usually run Firefox. The sole exception: I have purposely done little to this Surface other than installing Scrivener and Q10. That may change.
On most machines (especially at work), I have Explorer, Firefox and Chrome available, because some UIs prefer one or other.
C-90: That's a good thought and I will try it eventually. At present, my goal is to get the new machine protected and running before I try recovering anything from the old one. I'm saving text and picture files from the old one to a thumb drive as a backup, but it won't touch any other machine for now.
The "false shutdown" behavior of the infected machine (which ended after I ran the virus-remover) was particularly disturbing to me, as it seemed to indicate pretty deep access.
Roberta, I've caught UPS drivers doing almost exactly what you describe ... except for the pushing part.
I think I'm responsible for the UPS driver not delivering a heavy box. They get all confused at how much a spam can of Greek .30-06 weighs when they deliver one to Fla from CMP.
Ammo is most often delivered FedEx ground. :)
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