I hate calling tech support!

Have you noticed that whenever you have to call any technical support, you invariably end up calling anywhere from Bombay to Botswana? They give their call center people very American sounding names like "Arthur" and "Samuel" and "Emily" despite the heavy accents. You explain to them all of the steps that you have taken to resolve the problem yourself, and then they ask you if you did the very things that you just described having tried. They seem to stall for time to keep you on the phone asking you all kinds of inane questions when all you want them to do is to fix the damn problem! I do have to say, however, that AT&T used to have absolutely abysmal customer service and yes, you STILL have to talk to a robot when you call their main number, but if you insist enough times that you want to talk to a REAL PERSON, they will eventually direct you to someone, usually half way across the world in some call center in a third world country, but oh, well, at least you get a real human being if you demand of the robot  to PLEASE send you to someone! So they have at least made it possible to talk to a real person a lot faster than they used to. They're still too slow about sending out a technician when you need one, but at least they will eventually get someone to you. Their advertisements make it sound as if moving your cable/phone/internet equipment is as simple as boxing it up, unpacking and turning it on at your new house, but as I discovered last year when I moved, it can take up to a month to reconnect your service even when you notify them well in advance that you're moving. But they do seem to have upped their game in the overall customer service thing, so I have to hand it to them for that much. 

It has begun to get very, very cold and snowy and it's not even Thanksgiving yet! I'm glad that I finally got a pair of new boots at the very end of winter this past year, which is a challenge because of my short leg that requires all of my left shoes and boots to be outfitted with a one and a half inch lift. I found a pair of black knee high shearling lined boots to keep my feet warm on these frigid cold days like what we are having now. It's too early for it to be so cold, but if this is a harbinger of things to come, we're going to have another horrible, cold and snowy winter. Last year was the Winter From Hell. I hope that we don't have another one of those. I am not a winter person, but the fact that I am retired now at least means that I do not have to risk my neck on the daily commute like I did for 30 years, and for that I am grateful. I always hated when a heavy snow fell and we did not get a snow day at work. Unfortunately, many libraries are now having to serve a double function as both a library and a homeless shelter in inclement weather, meaning that library staff have to risk life and limb to provide shelter to the homeless due to budget cuts to social service agencies that used to serve that function. Churches can't do it anymore because they, too, lack the budgetary resources to care for the homeless, so it falls to libraries to fill that gap. I'm glad that I don't have to drive through heavy snow anymore just to spend a day babysitting homeless people. I do miss being around books and knowing who the latest authors and what the latest titles are, but with coming changes to the state retirement system, I had to retire when I did, and even so, heavy cuts to retiree benefits are coming for all of us fairly soon, so I guess it really did not matter whether I stayed or left. I was afraid of a pay cut this year due to steep cuts in hours to our library system, so it was probably just as well that I left when I did. Winter is a time to curl up and hibernate!