Dave vs Technology – The Saga Continues

What a fun couple of weeks! In March, I bought tickets to a couple of Astros games to celebrate my wife’s birthday. After I purchased them I realized I needed to have a smartphone to actually get them. I’m probably one of ten people in the whole world who still use a flip phone. (I’ll wait until the laughter subsides)

Anyway, I called the site from which I bought the tickets right away and explained the situation and was told to take my order numbers with a photo i-d to the ticket window and they would print the tickets for me. Cynical person that I am, I immediately sent an email to the Astros ticket department to confirm. The email came back a couple of days later as “undeliverable”. So I called them and was told that yes, they would print the tickets for a $5 per ticket fee. No problem. $20 is better than several hundred for a phone, right?

Game day came, we got to the hotel and after lunch, I walked over to Minute Maid Park, presented my receipts and was told “We don’t print tickets here. You have to find some print thing and print them that way.” I explained the situation to her, told her I called the Astros tickets office and was told you would print the tickets at which time the lady at the “ticket resolution window”, which was one window over, said she would take care of it. And she did! She also suggested that I use MLB.com in the future and their will-call feature would ensure tickets would be waiting for me.

When we returned from Houston, the computer that we bought less than three years, and gave us so many headaches, crashed. Hard drive failure was the official diagnosis. So we needed to buy another machine. Store number one only had the demo model left, so we found a machine at store number two. Spent the next hour or so getting it set up, got the files from the old machine transferred to the new one, and spent the rest of the week installing software and stuff.

Made great progress on Saturday getting the final stuff installed and working when the printer decided to Just. Stop. Working. The control panel just said HP and two lights were blinking and it was unresponsive. I followed the “troubleshooting tips” which basically have you turn off the printer and unplug it then plug it all back in. Not terribly helpful. Called tech support only to find out that we have a “business class printer” and those folks don’t work weekends! So I turned it off till I could call this morning.

Yesterday morning, while I was still in bed I remembered that at one time I had to call about the printer and they had me hold a couple of buttons down to reset the printer. I googled that yesterday afternoon and didn’t really find anything, so just for kicks, I turned the printer on. Everything came back on as normal, I plugged into the computer and it works just fine. Words escape me.

On a totally unrelated note, you may have come across traffic signals with those blinking yellow left turn arrows. That means you can turn left when traffic clears. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been behind someone who doesn’t know what it means and they just sit there waiting for a green arrow.

Have a great day!