Journal of a Sabbatical

January 11, 1999

frustration

I just took some trash out to the dumpster. The air smells like snow. One snowflake hit me square on the nose, but no further flakes fell. A man in a baseball cap paced back and forth in the parking lot continually redialing the same number on a cordless phone. I could hear the beep of the touchtones. It's a little after 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. The snow isn't supposed to start 'til tomorrow morning.

The left sleeve of my new purple turtleneck shirt is stuck to my arm in two places. Talking on the phone to Zsolt about his e-mail problems, I started absentmindedly scratching an itchy spot on that arm. Apparently the itchy spot was a cat scratch just starting to heal. Oops. I guess I picked the scab unconsciously. I didn't realize how much it was bleeding until I got off the phone and noticed the sleeve stuck to the arm. That's about the way the day has gone. Things are happening around me that I'm not quite on top of and I keep getting surprised.

Martha woke me up a little before 10:00 this morning. Actually, I was already out of bed and about to take a shower when the phone rang, but that doesn't necessarily mean I was awake. Anyway, her father-in-law, who's been very ill for sometime now, has died. We were supposed to have a Purrfect Companions meeting tonight and she wanted to know if she should cancel it or I would run it. Also, this leaves me as the only person to take cats to Brigham Manor tomorrow afternoon, as Antonia already said she's not available. The workaholic me wants to say I'll take care of everything. Instead, I suggest canceling the meeting tonight and taking only one cat to Brigham tomorrow if the activities director, Mary Anne, will accept that.

After I showered, I called Mary Anne, told her the situation, and asked if I could just bring one cat or should we cancel. She liked the idea of just one cat and told me I'm good with them - the residents and the cats - and they'd like me to come. At least that's taken care of.

My e-mail to Zsolt got returned with some kind of over quota message again, so I called him to tell him that and of course to tell him what I was gonna tell him in the e-mail. Someday I've got to learn Hungarian if I am going to continue to work for these guys. Anyway, somebody else had already told him about the e-mail problem but he's been unable to solve it. All day calls go back and forth - between other calls for cat related stuff and personal stuff.

The large, popular, e-mail service he uses has three levels of service. The basic service is free, but you can only get text e-mail. No attachments. Someone sent him an attachment. Since he couldn't read it with the basic service, it stays on the server taking up all his e-mail quota. To make matters even more interesting, there's no way to get rid of it without upgrading to the newest version of the software at the next higher level of service - the one that lets you read attachments. The large popular e-mail provider charges $2 per minute to tell him this. They claim they can't delete the offending attachment. So, let me get this straight. Someone sends an attachment to a customer with basic no attachment service and it prevents him from receiving anymore e-mail until he upgrades to the service that supports attachments? This can't be right.

I spent a lot of time reading every Q in the FAQ at the large popular provider's web site, and the entire help file, and determined it is indeed true. There is no way to get rid of the attachment he can't read without upgrading. I e-mailed the provider and got an automated reply listing the help file entries that might relate to words in the error message I forwarded to them. I would laugh, except I feel too frustrated.

They - the provider - sent him the software upgrade on a CD-ROM. It'll be here in a few days. They couldn't send it overnight? The laptop doesn't have a CD drive. They suggest downloading the software from their website. Catch-22. In order to download the upgrade to turn on the service, you have to already have the service or some other Internet access. In which case, why would you want theirs? I check the web site again to see if I can load the software onto a floppy. Nope. Too big. It goes on like this all day until we decide the only solution is to buy a CD-ROM drive and wait 'til the CD comes.

While I was on the phone with Zsolt and scratching my arm 'til it bled and ruined my new shirt, Kendra from the shelter called to suggest someone who might be able to help me out tomorrow at Brigham, but it turns out she's like totally brand new and might like to do it some other time after she's had more experience. While I have Kendra on the phone I try to get the missing phone numbers and addresses for the volunteer database so I can do the schedule and the newsletter. This proves more difficult than I would have thought. Some info she has, some info other people have, someone dropped a cat off without any surrender forms, a volunteer had a fight with a staff member and quit.... Kendra's only been on the job a week. No wonder the blood dried on my shirt before I noticed I was bleeding.