Mortaine’s Blog

It was bound to happen. Yes, they’re going to donate “some” of the profits to help the families.

Some. Good word: not really binding in any significant way.

When Florence was here, she discovered belatedly that she had left her jewelry on the sink in her hotel room. We called on Saturday and got blown off. We called Saturday night and got blown off. I called Sunday and got blown off and told they would call back on Monday. I called yesterday and got so pissed off at being blown off again that I hung up on them.

Today, I called between 7 AM and 4 PM, the hours in which the manager is actually there. She apologized that they hadn’t found the jewelry, and that she’d spoken with housekeeping, the manager as well as the person who had actually cleaned the room, and that they hadn’t found anything. She comped Florence’s room (big deal– her company paid for it), and when I pointed out this had been a business trip with a personal disappointment, she said she’d comp Florence’s next stay as well.

I told her that it was very frustrating when her staff just blew us off all weekend, especially since she told me she had just found out about it this morning. Boy, that had me especially pissed off. How dare they not tell the manager about a brewing customer support problem like this! At this point, there’s not a whole lot that can be done; I emailed Florence and told her to call the hotel if she wanted them to have her number in case they find it in the laundry, though that seems unlikely.

I feel very defeated right now, even though I did get Florence something for her trouble. The ring and necklace weren’t worth much, but they were pretty and she liked them and they even had some sentimental value that’s especially hard to part with. In the grand scheme of life, I suppose it’s no bigger of a loss than me losing the blue earrings Andy gave me in high school. But they were my favorite pair, I wore them every day for about 4 years, and I loved those earrings enough that I still wish I had them back.

So, yeah. Life is sometimes about loss and letting go. But it’s pretty hard to let go when a stupid freak mistake takes something you care about forever.

I just hung up on somebody.

After getting blown off about 6 times by the hotel staff at the Oakland Hampton Inn, I told them today that I would be calling back at 7 in the morning to speak with the manager, that we’d been blown off 6 times already, and that they were going to hear about it. And then I slammed the phone down, pissed as hell.

I really hope that this doesn’t result in Florence’s necklace walking home with some housekeeping staffer tonight. . . . .

Argh!

Wow.

I just discovered how much I have matured as a technical user of computers.

I want an email notification program for Windows NT that will flash an icon in the taskbar when I have new mail in my scottrell.com POP account. Korn (for KDE) is the Linux equivalent.

I did a search for freeware with that functionality, and found quite a few little programs.

Mind you, this is for my work computer. I currently have three unauthorized programs here at work, all three of which are open source, and all three of which I can do without if needed.

I did not download any of the WinNT programs because decided I just didn’t trust software that I couldn’t see the source code for. I mean, I don’t want to break my system or lose data or anything. But also, I don’t want to be responsible for bringing in a virus to our network, which is already fragile enough (being a Windows NT/2000/XP network).

I might have posted this previously, when I first found it, but it’s so great, it’s worth posting again, especially since there’s been an update.

A very disturbing response to the Nigerian money scam spam-mail.