A few Measly Steps a Day

My good customer service experience: (or at least one of them.) When I got a computer virus - a bad one that just about killed the computer, Stuart from Staples put in about five hours of overtime cleaning it out of my computer. Com to think of it, When the IRS totally screwed up and told me I owed I forget how many thousands of dollars, this wonderful H&R Block person, explained the problem in terms that an untrained monkey could understand, and the IRS was satisfied. (I was a nervous wreck.)

My bad customer experience - Comcast texted me. There's a problem with my wifi. Do I want to make an appointment with a tech to fix it? Press 1 for yes. (Yes, the text was from Comcast.) I pressed 1. The robot on the other end couldn't understand.

Please keep smiling and looking for the good. It's out there. We just notice the bad easier.

Probably too many times to recall, but when I'm focused on what will turn out to be a great idea for my life the gremlins show up in force! A routine stock transfer that should have been completed in less than a week is now at the 4 months mark and still counting.

Did seem to get news of a possibility that part of this is coming to a close. The other part might be near resolution but I have much to do on my end to double check their work.

So, I'm mellowing out this morning by sipping tea & putting some thought and feeling into a card for a talented artisan bread baker we've supported. Found out about him through Instagram and his home popup happened to be a few blocks from us.

Michael Pollan's Cooked has a chapter on baking bread. Gifting the book with a note when I pick up a loaf today. The calm part is the note ... R.

Both things made me smile; thank you!

I get the gist of that saying, "Don't jinx it by looking at it." When my washing machine broke during the pandemic, the cheapest replacements were $600+ and two week's delivery. Then I saw one that was "gently used" for $300. I didn't hesitate -- I just bought it and got it in two days. It was my first High Efficiency washer, and I got awful results. I could've "looked at it" and decided that it was lemon and returned it. But no. Eventually I learned how to tweak the settings and get it to perform well (less efficiently).

BTW, when it was delivered, the back door had to be removed, and the guy smashed the frosted globe from a nearby overhead light. He was very apologetic and said to send a bill for it's replacement. But I already had a spare because I bought one for another light that didn't fit. So I didn't care.

My wife does believe that when something good happens, something bad must follow. It was her mother's philosophy, too, and my wife adopted it even though she despises her mother. Also, bad things come in threes. I try to reject all negative belief systems that I'm aware of -- they serve no good.

Hope you and Revu2 are doing very well!

Hello pards,

When I correctly foretold that Barbara Sher would shutter her forums pages, I began to archive whole threads to archive today (also archive.is, and archive.pn) This was after I'd been booted off due to a price issue at Harvard's perma.cc service. I think I still have a few things left there.

So, now archive today seems a goner! I had 570 pages archived there!

So, my latest strategy will be to see if I can save a pdf of the page. Most times the links save as live and working. There's an extension for browsers which created links and archives a page to the Wayback Machine. Just read the consent agreement about the Internet Archive's injunction on distributing ebooks. Makes me nervous that some big corp won't sue them for saving their home pages or ads or video content. Etc.

Sad loss, life drifts on. R.

Companies need to heed:

“Customers reward companies that take care of them and that are on their side and and that create amazing experiences,” said Jenn Scheurich, head of travel at Capital One.

Is this temporary? Will it work tomorrow? Don't know. Had spotty luck with some links, and those that still interested me I began to down load as pdf files.

Then I tried the upstart browser: Brave. And it's working like nothing's wrong. Not sure what the Brave folks in SF CA have figured out, but I'm relieved.

Now, is this going to be OK, or only a pause and there will be more questions about archive today?

Stay tuned.

I'm here every day because I'm in the zone of most churn. I'm begging etrade/Morgan Stanley to do their job and a bit of data I need to gather to double check their work has triggered massive resistance. "Where is their customer service!? What are THEY getting paid for? Hello, can't you even pretend to care? I'm busy, you were supposed to do this in the background!"

Happened to get archive today back. Looked at the Barbara Sher threads today on resistance.
Let your resistance speak 1 http://archive.today/LvbjZ
Let your resistance speak 2 http://archive.today/cjExF

Just fabulous stuff. I'll resist a bit and see what this forum has on it. Deep down there's a carry through self that will get to it. Meanwhile, I persist in the resist!

Less about me and a focus on client work for a couple of days. Fitting in a walk with a friend, tho, today, if all works out.

In my life, I celebrate. It's punctuation. So, celebrating getting the condo's new siding on 3 sides completed. The bill just arrived, right at their estimate (swallowed all of the contingency because of a couple of repairs found along the way). It was swiftly done—on time—and on budget. Congrats to me and their workers!

I've been pondering Angela Duckworth's "1 hard thing" rule. I don't really need to subscribe because "many hard things" find me. Just about anything that I seem to want to do or help with is hard. Why hunt for it?

Barara Sher's mentee, Patty, is still around. I don't visit "Hanging Out" very often because I've seen everything on it, and I don't seem to get into the conversations like I used to. I should go check it out again, just for ducks.
Meanwhile, I have one more expensive thing to do to my house, and then hopefully, I'm done spending big $$$$$$ The subfloor under my bathroom is rotten. I have an estimate that I'm satisfied with, and I need to answer the contractor to get that job done.

Meanwhile, my sleep machine is in bad-customer-service land with no one returning my calls.

And I need to start the process for publishing "Refuge and Warm Tea."

So my measly steps are:

My measly steps are:
Call the doctor re sleep study.
return signed estimate to contractor
begin publishing (This is not a measly step. This is a complicated step that must be broken down into smaller steps and each step must be stated clearly.

That's it for me.

Good wishes to you. May all your steps be sure-footed.

p.s. To avoid the evil eye, you have to dry-spit into the air - make a sound like ptooi. Then you say , "chtob ne zglazeet" (That's the best phonic description I could come up with. The last 't' is a soft 't')
I hope you enjoy the Russian cultural info from me - such as it is.

Thanks for avoiding the evil eye tip. My family, aspiring to middle-class blacks in the south, didn't hold any superstitions. Just my mom going to church caused friction.

I didn't stray away from Sher's forums, and when she downgraded and finally cancelled it out, I came here. Thanks for tagging along. I drop an email once a month to check in on Inspire Success.

I'm finally getting to the detail compilation for my service challenge with Morgan Stanley. Seems they have a new CEO. Hm, I predict the same poor service tomorrow.

I've concluded, when I'm up to date on data, that I'll contact a higher-up and get their help finding a designated customer care person. Someone I will go to first and repeatedly while we work out the kink. This random calling in hasn't worked at all. Drafted my letter/email this morning as warm up.

The good part is my diligence will definitely pay me back. I'm putting in 52 minutes a day for 3 days, counting today. About 17 left, between my anger and how this work blends my brain cells, I'll be happy to hear the final buzzer.

Fun stuff. I have 2. Started a google doc to track our movies seen and discussed in the film club. Posted it to the list & asked people to crowd-source complete it. It's done!

Second is people are asking a lot what I'll do after I retire. I had the genius idea to lay out 54 things I will likely do as a grid keyed to a deck of cards with both jokers. I'll ask people either to pull a random card, or hold the list and let me pull the card. What is drawn is what I'll say I'll be doing!

Oh, I didn't say asking people to draw random cards.

HI, Steppers

The only steps I took were to start the publishing process.
R, I'm so glad that you kept this site going.
My next steps are the two from my last post plus:

card to Suzanne
laundry
do Swiffer
Apply for copyright

Spookiest day of the year. Yesterday's plans, poof, didn't work out. My plans yesterday for today, therefore, had to be re-thought. Had wanted to slip away for a bit of R & R, but couldn't make it work to get back in time for a zoomcall.

So, set today to tidying up several yuck tasks. They pool like this:

▶︎ Invoice for services
◁ 2 sets of minutes to compose
◉ Condo Financials
☞ Broker problems

On my side of this, will see if I can keep a feeling of drifting down stream rather than swimming against the current.

About this thread: I'd thought more would have come along, but alas, something passed with Barbara's passing.

Sorry that you're having so much trouble with Morgan Stanley, Revu2.

I might've mentioned that I needed to set up automatic withdrawals from my Roth IRA in order to pay the student loan. That's happening now, thanks to one very helpful customer service person at Capital Group. In addition to the form(s) I needed to set up the withdrawal, she also informed me that my state will impose income tax withholding, so she advised me to send a special exemption form as well.

The result of my neuropsyche exam is that I'm bogged down with depression. I've been advised to do Cognitive Behavior Therapy and take Effexor.

And I was assured that there's no evidence of dementia.

While I'm glad dementia is not likely, I am concerned that there's something physiological that's been overlooked. I really think I'm dealing with long haul Lyme disease.

But the therapy will be helpful as I deal with turning 60 year's old in a technology field.

An underground electrical cable has been degrading and finally caused the circuit breaker to trip. The massive amounts of rain we got a few weeks ago put the nail in the coffin.

Right now the two lamp posts are disconnected, but I got the outdoor wall sconces to light.

I'll be finishing the trench and laying the new wire down this weekend. Hopefully, the lamp posts will be powered up on the evening that DST ends.

Hi SPG, electrical degrades and necessary fixes, and no signs of dementia. Things find us, but in the case of dementia, you still roam free.

My partner left today for 8 days of being the assistant at a writer's retreat. She attended 2 years ago and accepted the chance to go back. She's now "the help" so a smaller room, fewer amenities, and lots of time when she's supposed to be helping out. She's a night person, but will be getting up around 6 am to help with breakfast. I'm looking forward to some interesting stories.

So, returning to a silent home after a movie, I felt a big dose of "I really don't have much planned for tonight." Ideas flurried in, but all externally expected and all to have their time & turn during the workweek.

I do have a friend coming over in about an hour to look over a bed I'm gifting to her. Thinking of ways I can help with the moving part. I do have a few movies to watch, maybe I'll set up the projector and watch one. Dog Day Afternoon is our next one to discuss, and I also have the script for comparison if I want. Director Sidney Lumet said about 60 percent is from improv (they would record their improv during rehearsals, type them up, and use the best one for the movie). He also said he left several for the filming on location.

Ah, practice for retirement. Speaking of which, I've discovered a way to have fun with the constant question: what are you doing to be doing? I have a folded half sheet of paper in my wallet and I ask the person to imagine drawing a playing card, they can also imagine drawing a joker. On the sheet I have keyed 54 activities to the cards (some doubles), and that's my answer or the start of my answer. It's been fun.

Hi, guys,

I finished all the jobs on m to do list. Yay! I wasn't finding any errors when I was editing. Yay! Then I ran into a snafu. The ending of my story involves bats in an abandoned mine in the Northern Yukon, in winter. They are important to the plot and they add a lot of interest to the story. So what's the problem? Only one species of bat lives in the northern Yukon. I don't know if it lives as far as where my story takes place. Apparently, these bats do not live in caves. And they migrate south before winter. So I'm editing out the bats. The story's much more interesting with the little critters but . . . I was tempted to leave them in and add an apology at the end of the book. Many cultures intentionally insert a flaw or mistake into works of art because "only God is perfect." However, I usually have enough flaws without adding one intentionally. Editing out the bats involved adding in new material, and editing about 20 pages. What are the odds that I'll do that much editing without making any mistakes. ?????

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I don't even consider writing anything except memoirs.

Okay, so if the story is fiction, why can't the bats also be fiction?

Perhaps the bats could be an unknown species, or you can have the bats attracted to the cave because of some geothermal (or other) attraction.

I can understand not wanting to violate the laws of physics. Then again, if it were me, I'd insist on making sure something like the phase of the moon is correct for where & when it appears in the sky and other similar details.

Good luck with the re-write!

"practice for retirement" is something I'm working on in therapy, one of many things, really.

Life beyond the World of Work seems unimaginable to me. Imagining my future is like trying to look through an impenetrable fog.

I did put in the underground wire, and the lampposts were lit on the night before DST ended. It feels good to accomplish something like that.

SPG, I like your riffing on ways to solve D's bat problem. One of the pieces to be aware of when writing literature is popping someone out of the story because a detail doesn't fit. It's Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief. There may be just a half dozen readers who would know she's gotten it wrong. So, to keep them with her, its time to edit them out.

I keep spinning answers for what I will do: I have 1438 podcasts I haven't had time to listen to, 501 short stories & novels yet to read; and 235 long form stories to catch up on.

Speaking of novels, reading Maugham's The Razor's Edge. It's reminding me so much of the Jane Austen adaptation movies I watched for my film seminar. The tedious rituals of fretting out among the succeeding class what profession to pursue, what education to get, what connections to nurture. I love the main character's answer to what he intended to do: "Loaf."

Maybe that's been the single answer I've been seeking. When I retire I plan to loaf.

The plan to loaf seems ideal to me. I'd like to remember what it's like to be bored.

I'm getting more into the spirit of loafing by the day. For example, on my way to complete an errand I'll add 45 minutes so I can drop into a library, find a chair, and read. 35-45 minutes is a decent chunk.

The book of the moment is Body and Soul by Frank Conroy. This is the about the 3rd book I've read of his this year. Great writer and he was on the faculty of the Iowa Writers Workshop for years. I think he edited a thick volume of stories by Workshop grads which i've long since let slip away for others to enjoy.

So I thought I'd see which quotes the crowd at goodreads have pulled from B&S. Only 11. But this is a gem and gives me my motto for dealing with customer services and other frustrations.

“I’m angry. I just don’t give in to it.” He sipped his tea and then put it down. “Stuff happens all the time. What’d you call it? Outrageous. Outrageous stuff make you so mad you can just burn yourself up with it. You got to decide if the mad runs you, or you run the mad.”

What's the name for that rhetorical turn? It's the same as Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Ah, that's a clue …

“Ask not …” is a famous line from John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address. It's a prime example of chiasmus, a rhetorical device associated with the Greek letter X. Chiasmus is a figure of speech that involves reversal and repetition.

Or: Antithesis Clauses set in opposition to each other, ordinarily to distinguish between choices or concepts. "Ask not …" Like repetition, a certain rhythm is set up that builds a strong emotional effect.

Strong start to my day of running the mad.