Sidetracked Charley

I live in rural America. And I love it here. I even most times love what I do not have because I choose to live outside cities. But some of the things I do not have cause problems defining where I live. I do not have a zip code. I borrow neighboring zip codes depending on who is asking. In the United States of America a zip code is five or nine numbers that are added to a postal address to assist the sorting of mail. There are about 43,000 zip codes. They are attached to post offices which the USPS wants to reduce. Post Offices are attached largely to cities these days. Once Black Lake had a post office and our zip code I am told was 87734. But the USPS deleted that post office because there was no city but just a large rural area with farms and ranches and people like myself which loved living in rural areas.  When the Black Lake post office was closed the zip code was moved to Ocate, NM which is over the mountain and through the canyon and most notably in an entire other county. ...

Where Fedex seems to think I live I was standing outside with some visitors to my studio yesterday afternoon at 2:00 when I watched the Fedex truck first go one way on down State Hwy 434 and then a few minutes later the other way. Yes, I can see the main highway from my house. And traffic on the road can see me. I have been known to wave at passerbys. I do not live in a cliff dwelling in the wilderness. The urgent package from HP,that I had paid to be delivered on second day, (mind you not next day because I know better) was not delivered. Why am I not surprised? Had it been UPS it would have been here. I groan when service or order departments tell me it is coming Fedex. I beg for alternatives. I have been known to whine when the product like a fix for my computer is sorely needed. So last night after my visitors from Florida (who found the studio) left I got on the internet on my laptop and tracked the Fedex package. It is in Eagle Nest. Why Eagle Nest? There is no Fedex fac...

After having put Fedex and HP down in a couple blogs I thought I ought to say something good about a company. After the external hard drive crashed last October and then the computer service tech I took it to erased the hard drive on my desktop I signed up for the Carbonite Cloud . It is an ethernet back up service that takes the worry out of backup. I am an artist and I admit for losing complete track of time about backing up my computers. Or loading photos into my FlickR account. With the cloud I just have to be on line and anything new I post is backed up. And I can be on any device to access the cloud and pluck down information. I first used it when I had forgotten to download a file from my desktop to my laptop before taking off to a fair. Then again when the desktop failed yet again. I bought a new computer and upon receipt of it could immediately get the backupped data from the cloud and put it on the new one. Now my desktop (still under warranty with HP) has failed and jus...

Ernestine In the old days before technology ran wild you had a chance of talking to a real receptionist or a real operator. Note I did not say human. Ma Bell, the mega telephone company we insisted on breaking up, gave all their operators and service personnel a list of questions and responses from which they could not vary. One of Ernestine's lines on the old Laugh In comedy show was, "Is this the person to whom I am speaking?" I was reminded of Lily Tomlin that made Ernestine famous yesterday in a series of telephone calls to HP and Fedex concerning the undelivered package to ship my broken computer back in. Both have a set list of questions and responses from which they are not allowed to vary regardless of how inappropriate the are.  "Your driver failed to deliver the chemo drug package this week and my husband has died." " We are sorry for your inconvenience." "The funeral is Wednesday." " We apologize for any inconveni...

I told HP on Sunday I wanted a shipping notification within 48 hours or I was canceling the replacement HP Pavilion order and getting a refund instead. And low and behold the HP Case Manager did indeed get a shipping notification to me. However, Fedex has yet to receive the HP desktop computer to ship. For a while this morning the Fedex tracking number provided me by HP even said it would get delivered today. Frankly I was leery of that one because it gave a ship date of the 11th and I didn't give them my ultimatum until the 12th. I must admit this was a rather clever ruse. Too bad they are not as clever at giving good customer service. Meanwhile someone is marketing is sending out e-mails saying I can still order a computer today and get it before the end of the year. Interesting since I have been told I would be very lucky to get the one I essentially ordered in November before the end of the year. Really HP get your script straight. Is this sort of game playing really das...

Another Internet purchase has gone astray. I love to shope on the Internet but it comes with certain inherent issues; mainly shipping address. I live in a rural area and have a postal box up by the highway. And a street address. If a package is being shipped by United States Postal Service they will deliver only to the box. And if UPS only to the street address. Fedex in the area is so screwed up I don't even want to hazard a guess. But everything only gets more complicated from that point. Because my street address is technically one zip code and my box address another. I live in the unincorporated area of Black Lake which technically does not have a zip code. UPS and Fedex are not suppose to use zip codes for delivery, but they do and if I have my box address on a package then UPS gets it on the wrong side of the mountain and Fedex puts it in the wrong distribution center. If I put the street address on something which is being shipped by US mail it winds up in general delivery a...