journal for 2002-09-15
the weekend
We had a mostly uneventful weekend, although we did a lot of driving around.
New York Joe was here, and he wanted to get some pictures of the Steel and of a tunnel in Hellertown, so we drove around South Bethlehem for a few hours. We went to the mall, we went to Easton for Indian food, and we did our normal Downtown Saturday Stuff. Still, it was mostly a relaxed weekend.
I played a decent amount of Animal Crossing, of course, and I finally met K.K. Slider, the dog that comes to down every weekend and plays music at the train station. He was pretty cool, and I finally have a tape to play in my huge collection of stereo equipment. I also got my house expanded and got a basement dug, which is great. I can store a lot of stuff down there. I have a huge block of fish; Nook is closed for renovations, so I’ve got a queue of things to take over and sell, come Monday.
That, of course, assumes that I have AX, come Monday. I had to return my rental copy today, and EBX claims that they won’t be selling until Tuesday. That’s what they said about Mario and MB2, though, so I’m not too too worried. Even so, I can probably survive an extra day without AX. I might try to actually finish Corona Mountain in Mario.
barnes and noble
So, yesterday I mentioned an annoying experience at BN. Here it is:
I had ordered three things from bn.com recently:
- Shadow Puppets
- Negativland's first album, Negativland
- Negativland's second album, Points
BN sent me the book and two copies of Points. (Strangely enough, their website no longer seems to indicate they even sell the first album.) The receipt said that I could return the item to any BN brick-and-mortar store, and their website agreed. Gloria and I drove the ten miles out there, and the clerk said her manager wouldn’t let her accept the return. “We don’t sell CDs, here.”
I called BN customer service, and they assured me that any BN would accept the return, regardless of whether they sold CDs. I waited for the manager to become free, and then asked her about it. She said, “No, we don’t sell CDs.” I patiently explained that everyone else claimed that was not the policy, so she finally said, with quiet annoyance, “Fine. I’m with a customer now, you’ll have to wait.” She wandered around, and finally, unable to find the customer in question, took the return. “We don’t usually do this,” she said, “because we don’t sell CDs here, you see.”
I will not get into the argument that they do, on a limited basis, sell some CDs there. The point is that Barnes and Noble has a policy, and it’s very clear, and this lady just didn’t want to deal with it because it’s a hassle. BN is not only further from home than Borders, but also a poorer store, and yet I order from them and go there relatively frequently. Are they trying to go out of business?
Time to write an Angry Letter!
oh crap
Well, about a third of the way through this entry, Gloria came in to tell me that The Leak Is Back.
Much earlier this year, we had our landlords over to look at some problems in the apartment: we had a defunct washing machine in our closet that they’d been promising to remove (they finally did, a month after that and hence over a year after they first said they would); our bedroom door wouldn’t close (they fixed that, about nine months after we first reported the problem); our office ceiling had a huge waterstain from failed pipe repairs upstairs (still unfixed); and we have noticed a leak in the bedroom closet. They said that the roof had just been redone before we moved in, and were dubious of our leak claim. Still, they said they’d follow up.
Well, some nine months later, ceiling is leaking again. We’ve had some serious rain yesterday and today. There’s a large area of ceiling that I’m pretty sure I could just pull off, if I wanted. Landlord #1 said he’d talk to Landlord #2 about it. Our landlords are both really nice guys, but I feel like we’re really good tenants and we still don’t get well taken care of.
If we weren’t so settled in, I’d want to move and get it over with. Meh!