Well, perhaps there's fewer differences between the States and the UK than we thought. We picked up our new car yesterday, a leased Honda Accord. The arrangement we'd made with the salesman was that we'd pick the car up on Wednesday (when the rental was due to be renewed), or he'd provide a loaner until our car was ready.
Cat dropped the rental at Budget (where it had cost us an arm and a leg for rental), and caught a taxi to the Honda agency, where she'd been told the car would be ready at 3 o'clock. She was apparently sat down, and essentially ignored for a couple of hours, without being told what was going on or why the delay (or how long the delay would be), and no sign of any loaner. At that point she phoned me, fairly upset, & I arranged to catch a taxi out there and pick up her and the car, and deal with the car yard myself, as she was out of all patience with them.
She then called back shortly thereafter, having left the lot because one of the sales managers had approached her in an unpleasantly aggressive manner and, in the guise of apologising, tried to make her feel angry or bad (I guess as a way of feeling justified in the way they'd treated her). Fortunately rather than losing it with him, she just left the lot, and waited for me on the next sidestreet.
After I picked her up and went back to the yard (I had an internal debate about just telling them to stuff it & walking away from the deal - but the practical problems that that would have created were too great), I dealt with the salesman we'd originally dealt with, who was very apologetic, then got handed to a different sales manager to finish the financial details (and who seemed pretty adept at not listening to what the customers were saying, himself).
We then sat outside waiting for the final details, and the sales manager that had already ticked off Cat came over, and delivered what I'd have to say was one of the slimiest and most unpleasant performances I've seen in many years: under the guise of allegedly apologising, he strenuously and repeatedly made every effort to put all the blame for this on Cat, and tried to portray himself as put-upon and - of course - always in the right: the old politico's trick of the apology that is no apology ("I'm sorry you feel like I kicked you in the nuts").
I'm very proud to say that Cat kept her head, and was quite civil, without accepting an inch of this nonsense, and kept pushing back at him quite directly, without ever being unduly abusive or excessive. It's fortunate that the original salesman came over and finished the details off tho, as I was at the point of becoming confrontational with him - the way the 'apology' had deteriorated, he was essentially calling her a liar, which isn't something I'm going to sit still for.
As it is, I think we both somewhat regret that we hadn't just torn the whole deal up and walked away ... but at least the car is very pleasant, and should be large enough for the comfort of our future guests.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Happy Waterloo Day
and a mere 193 years since Drouet screwed the pooch, and let the Bad Guys win.
To celebrate, or not, I'm off to Albuquerque again today - just for a meeting tomorrow, then home tomorrow night in time for our weekend guest arriving Friday.
Last weekend was a nice change - the first weekend we haven't had to spend, frenziedly comparison-shopping and dashing around trying to fit out the house and make it livable. Instead we could spend it at a more leisurely, even lazy, pace, just adjusting ourselves slowly to life here. Haven't really tried to explore the city for adventures and places of interest yet, but that will happen soon enough. We also had to spend a certain amount of time dealing with the car rental company and exchanging our rental -
We had picked up a GPS system so Cat could steer around without constant resort to the map book - possibly we should have done this much earlier! Or possibly not, as Cat had an accident on Thursday last week, where she seems* to have been distracted by the GPS unit and failed to notice that she was at a red light (she apparently missed the existence of the lights, not just whether it was red or green). As a result, she had a - fortunately minor - prang with a car crossing in front of her: just her front corner and the other party's rear bumper, but a nasty shock (to both drivers, I'm sure).
The actual damage seems to have been trivial on both parts, but it left her very shaken and unsure for the next three days, unsurprisingly: so we spent quite a bit of the weekend with her driving, and taking things slow & careful, to rebuild her confidence.
I'm feeling quite ready to try driving myself now, but we still can't afford it - the rental company insurance is already preposterously exorbitant, and jumps another huge step if more than one person is listed as driving, so this'll have to wait until we have our own car.
Which looks like it's going to be the project for this weekend - not least because the cost of renting is killing our budget severely: due to the difficulties of getting financing arranged, it's already dragged on twice as long as I had projected originally. Of course, if my employer would just pull finger and pay me the promised relocation expenses, then this would be a lot simpler (not that they are refusing to, just that it takes place at the speed of continental drift). Oh well, more on that later, I guess.
* I wasn't present, so can't say for myself
To celebrate, or not, I'm off to Albuquerque again today - just for a meeting tomorrow, then home tomorrow night in time for our weekend guest arriving Friday.
Last weekend was a nice change - the first weekend we haven't had to spend, frenziedly comparison-shopping and dashing around trying to fit out the house and make it livable. Instead we could spend it at a more leisurely, even lazy, pace, just adjusting ourselves slowly to life here. Haven't really tried to explore the city for adventures and places of interest yet, but that will happen soon enough. We also had to spend a certain amount of time dealing with the car rental company and exchanging our rental -
We had picked up a GPS system so Cat could steer around without constant resort to the map book - possibly we should have done this much earlier! Or possibly not, as Cat had an accident on Thursday last week, where she seems* to have been distracted by the GPS unit and failed to notice that she was at a red light (she apparently missed the existence of the lights, not just whether it was red or green). As a result, she had a - fortunately minor - prang with a car crossing in front of her: just her front corner and the other party's rear bumper, but a nasty shock (to both drivers, I'm sure).
The actual damage seems to have been trivial on both parts, but it left her very shaken and unsure for the next three days, unsurprisingly: so we spent quite a bit of the weekend with her driving, and taking things slow & careful, to rebuild her confidence.
I'm feeling quite ready to try driving myself now, but we still can't afford it - the rental company insurance is already preposterously exorbitant, and jumps another huge step if more than one person is listed as driving, so this'll have to wait until we have our own car.
Which looks like it's going to be the project for this weekend - not least because the cost of renting is killing our budget severely: due to the difficulties of getting financing arranged, it's already dragged on twice as long as I had projected originally. Of course, if my employer would just pull finger and pay me the promised relocation expenses, then this would be a lot simpler (not that they are refusing to, just that it takes place at the speed of continental drift). Oh well, more on that later, I guess.
* I wasn't present, so can't say for myself
Monday, June 16, 2008
Birthday
Well, my birthday went well, if not quite as initially planned - we had aimed to go to Acadia, a cajun restaurant much recommended, but it turned out they were closed for a private party on the 12th. I tried looking for other cajun restaurants, but all the other listings looked, well, dubious - more on the line of cajun restaurant and budweiser refueling station - except for one, which, despite being listed as cajun, was (on inspection of the menu) just a seafood restaurant, and not a particularly inspiring one at that.
I also tried ransacking looking for a good proprietorial (i.e. not a chain) Italian or French place, without any joy - the few possibilities turned out to be either pretty lowrent, or too far out of town. So, we wound up going to a 'French' style chain restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised.
Not that any Parisian would have recognised it as French, except for the decor - the waiters were neither surly nor superior, the service was in fact excellent, and the food was hot and timely: and the menu almost completely lacked typical french fare & heavy cream sauces, something that didnt disappoint.
We started with the recommended specialty appetiser, pork pot-stickers. I'm not sure what we expected, but it certainly wasn't what we got - parcels of minced pork wrapped in a thin pastry and (I think) steamed then lightly fried. For all the unexpectedness, quite tasty. For a main, I had planned to stick to a steak, figuring that would be the one option on the menu that any chain restaurant would do well.
In fact, to my astonishment, they had orange roughy on the menu - a delicacy I haven't had since we left NZ - so I ordered that, and was utterly delighted: panfried with a simple citrus sauce on the side, it was perfectly cooked and completely delicious. Cat had chicken cordon bleu, which she was very satisfied with, altho the quantity was such that she couldn't finish it (not a problem I experienced with the fish, I hasten to say!
We were so well fed at this point, that desert seemed superfluous, so we decamped home to coffee and some of the excellent fruit cake Cat had baked as my birthday cake.
I also tried ransacking looking for a good proprietorial (i.e. not a chain) Italian or French place, without any joy - the few possibilities turned out to be either pretty lowrent, or too far out of town. So, we wound up going to a 'French' style chain restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised.
Not that any Parisian would have recognised it as French, except for the decor - the waiters were neither surly nor superior, the service was in fact excellent, and the food was hot and timely: and the menu almost completely lacked typical french fare & heavy cream sauces, something that didnt disappoint.
We started with the recommended specialty appetiser, pork pot-stickers. I'm not sure what we expected, but it certainly wasn't what we got - parcels of minced pork wrapped in a thin pastry and (I think) steamed then lightly fried. For all the unexpectedness, quite tasty. For a main, I had planned to stick to a steak, figuring that would be the one option on the menu that any chain restaurant would do well.
In fact, to my astonishment, they had orange roughy on the menu - a delicacy I haven't had since we left NZ - so I ordered that, and was utterly delighted: panfried with a simple citrus sauce on the side, it was perfectly cooked and completely delicious. Cat had chicken cordon bleu, which she was very satisfied with, altho the quantity was such that she couldn't finish it (not a problem I experienced with the fish, I hasten to say!
We were so well fed at this point, that desert seemed superfluous, so we decamped home to coffee and some of the excellent fruit cake Cat had baked as my birthday cake.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
You can't get there from here, or AT&T blues
Just so we can be reassured that some UK traditions have passed on to the USA:
When I went to phone NZ on Saturday, I got a message saying the phone was tollbarred. I phone the number given and was informed that I'd exceeded my credit limit for toll calls (not that I knew I had one), and would have to pay the bill of $475 before they'd unbar it. I phoned the accounts department to do this, and they demanded my Customer Code, which is printed on the bill they send out - but, we've only had the phone a couple of weeks, so I don't have any bill & don't know what the Customer Code is: and they couldn't possibly take payment until I gave them the Customer Code.
After a full hour of whining, blustering & begging, I finally got them to look up on the computer, and tell me what the Customer Code will be .... so then I went back to accounts to pay the bill, but the first bill will only be for $175: I told them I needed to pay $475 according to the other department, but they refused to accept more than the bill amount of $175, so I paid that, then rang the other department again with the payment code, to get the tollbar lifted.
They checked the code, and then said it was insufficient to lift the tollbar, and I'd have to phone accounts again and pay the rest. I did that again, and ... of course they repeated that they couldn't accept any more payment as there was nothing owing, according to them.
Deadlock.
... and, BTW, wtf is with the $475 in tolls??? I know Cat has spent 2 or 3 hours on toll calls to the UK and NZ, but I haven't made a single call on the landline to date - what rate are they charging, $90/hour or more??? (that is, assuming Cat's spent twice as long as she thought, on the phone).
Oh well, should have this problem sorted next week, we're switching providers (&keeping the same phone number, thank ghu).
When I went to phone NZ on Saturday, I got a message saying the phone was tollbarred. I phone the number given and was informed that I'd exceeded my credit limit for toll calls (not that I knew I had one), and would have to pay the bill of $475 before they'd unbar it. I phoned the accounts department to do this, and they demanded my Customer Code, which is printed on the bill they send out - but, we've only had the phone a couple of weeks, so I don't have any bill & don't know what the Customer Code is: and they couldn't possibly take payment until I gave them the Customer Code.
After a full hour of whining, blustering & begging, I finally got them to look up on the computer, and tell me what the Customer Code will be .... so then I went back to accounts to pay the bill, but the first bill will only be for $175: I told them I needed to pay $475 according to the other department, but they refused to accept more than the bill amount of $175, so I paid that, then rang the other department again with the payment code, to get the tollbar lifted.
They checked the code, and then said it was insufficient to lift the tollbar, and I'd have to phone accounts again and pay the rest. I did that again, and ... of course they repeated that they couldn't accept any more payment as there was nothing owing, according to them.
Deadlock.
... and, BTW, wtf is with the $475 in tolls??? I know Cat has spent 2 or 3 hours on toll calls to the UK and NZ, but I haven't made a single call on the landline to date - what rate are they charging, $90/hour or more??? (that is, assuming Cat's spent twice as long as she thought, on the phone).
Oh well, should have this problem sorted next week, we're switching providers (&keeping the same phone number, thank ghu).
Monday, June 9, 2008
Julie, Don't Go, I said
with apologies to Wayne & Schuster...
Saturday being Cat's birthday, we decided to go for a slightly more upmarket meal than the diners we've been frequented, & booked in to a midprice sort of place called Julie's (part of a chain, I surmise). We had been there once on a quiet Friday evening and found it quite pleasant, wtih good food and service. Not so much, this time.
Despite booking a table, they tried to fit us into a booth (not a great idea at my size), and when that didn't work, tried to seat us at a table in the bar, where we could be entertained by the blaring TV screen. After putting my foot down, we got a table for two, without too much delay.
For the rest, well ... as Cat said, the ice water was very nice: and the service was excellent, I must admit, but the food was, well, the worst we've had since we got here, and as bad as a bad English pub. My prime rib was both tasteless and tough, to the point that I sent it back, & ordered spaghetti and meatballs instead - which turned out to be two (2) meatballs, with a lot of thin spaghetti and a thick tomato/vegetable sauce, basically dull and uninteresting. I managed about a third of it and gave up.
Cat had beef nacho salad, which she had maybe a quarter of - I didn't ask for a critique of it, didn't seem necessary. We left hurriedly for points eastward, and I can't see going back there as an option. (I did leave the waitress a tip, after getting her promise that none of it would go to the kitchen staff - she really did do a great job, with miserable materials).
Saturday being Cat's birthday, we decided to go for a slightly more upmarket meal than the diners we've been frequented, & booked in to a midprice sort of place called Julie's (part of a chain, I surmise). We had been there once on a quiet Friday evening and found it quite pleasant, wtih good food and service. Not so much, this time.
Despite booking a table, they tried to fit us into a booth (not a great idea at my size), and when that didn't work, tried to seat us at a table in the bar, where we could be entertained by the blaring TV screen. After putting my foot down, we got a table for two, without too much delay.
For the rest, well ... as Cat said, the ice water was very nice: and the service was excellent, I must admit, but the food was, well, the worst we've had since we got here, and as bad as a bad English pub. My prime rib was both tasteless and tough, to the point that I sent it back, & ordered spaghetti and meatballs instead - which turned out to be two (2) meatballs, with a lot of thin spaghetti and a thick tomato/vegetable sauce, basically dull and uninteresting. I managed about a third of it and gave up.
Cat had beef nacho salad, which she had maybe a quarter of - I didn't ask for a critique of it, didn't seem necessary. We left hurriedly for points eastward, and I can't see going back there as an option. (I did leave the waitress a tip, after getting her promise that none of it would go to the kitchen staff - she really did do a great job, with miserable materials).
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Shopping
Well, our first actual weekend in our new house: finally able to start doing things in slightly less than a headlong rush of emergency setup mode. Whew.
My SS card arrived on Friday, so we tried to obtain credit from a couple of stores, but, as I expected, we were declined as we have no credit history so far :/ I must find out exactly what *does* generate credit history with the firms - I think paying utility bills (and maybe rent) helps with this, but I should identify all the ways we can boost this.
However, we did go and buy a new bed - a huge Kingsize, wahoo! room for the cats at last - and a new TV: I was planning to get a 32 inch flatscreen as they seemed on first inspection to be the best price/size bargain, but the sales woman checked through her supplies & found a 42inch screen for an extra 10% of the one I had planned to buy: seemed too good a bargain to decline, so we now have this massive screen plonked at one end of the admittedly very-large lounge. Well, at least when we get our PC's set up at the other end of the room, there won't be any problem watching the screen :)
We've also hooked up with satellite TV, so now we've got a couple of hundred channels to watch, notionally: mind you, as 50 of them are pay-per-view, 20 or 30 are home-shopping, another 10 or more are religious/christian-nutcase, and another 30 or more are Spanish language versions, it's not exactly as expansive as it might sound. Still, it gives a reasonable chance of finding something watchable, or CNN :/
Our neighbours to one side, Tom & Polly, brought cake over to welcome us, last week, so we arranged to have coffee with them on Sunday afternoon, but that kinda fell through for some reason, so we left a plate of Cat's shortbread for them, & will try again next weekend.
We also found the LR Whole Foods store at last, and Cat found it much more comfortable shopping there: if most of the goods are still unfamiliar brands & types, at least there's a reasonable expectation that the food won't be horribly artificial, plastic, or loaded with corn syrups & transfats (tho, at quite a price, in some cases). I should perhaps add that I found it more comfortable too, even aside of the scurf of elderly hippies underfoot: at least they are harmless, I guess.
We're still working on the furniture acquisitions (and trying to establish a line of credit with the Credit Union, so we can buy a car), but I think it's probably time to start making social contacts - I'm trying to arrange contacts with the local bridge club, and the Democratic party branch (figuring they're more likely to be on our wavelength than many), and I've found a games shop which subs as a meeting place for potential D&D players, so we may be able to put together a RPG group, with any luck.
My SS card arrived on Friday, so we tried to obtain credit from a couple of stores, but, as I expected, we were declined as we have no credit history so far :/ I must find out exactly what *does* generate credit history with the firms - I think paying utility bills (and maybe rent) helps with this, but I should identify all the ways we can boost this.
However, we did go and buy a new bed - a huge Kingsize, wahoo! room for the cats at last - and a new TV: I was planning to get a 32 inch flatscreen as they seemed on first inspection to be the best price/size bargain, but the sales woman checked through her supplies & found a 42inch screen for an extra 10% of the one I had planned to buy: seemed too good a bargain to decline, so we now have this massive screen plonked at one end of the admittedly very-large lounge. Well, at least when we get our PC's set up at the other end of the room, there won't be any problem watching the screen :)
We've also hooked up with satellite TV, so now we've got a couple of hundred channels to watch, notionally: mind you, as 50 of them are pay-per-view, 20 or 30 are home-shopping, another 10 or more are religious/christian-nutcase, and another 30 or more are Spanish language versions, it's not exactly as expansive as it might sound. Still, it gives a reasonable chance of finding something watchable, or CNN :/
Our neighbours to one side, Tom & Polly, brought cake over to welcome us, last week, so we arranged to have coffee with them on Sunday afternoon, but that kinda fell through for some reason, so we left a plate of Cat's shortbread for them, & will try again next weekend.
We also found the LR Whole Foods store at last, and Cat found it much more comfortable shopping there: if most of the goods are still unfamiliar brands & types, at least there's a reasonable expectation that the food won't be horribly artificial, plastic, or loaded with corn syrups & transfats (tho, at quite a price, in some cases). I should perhaps add that I found it more comfortable too, even aside of the scurf of elderly hippies underfoot: at least they are harmless, I guess.
We're still working on the furniture acquisitions (and trying to establish a line of credit with the Credit Union, so we can buy a car), but I think it's probably time to start making social contacts - I'm trying to arrange contacts with the local bridge club, and the Democratic party branch (figuring they're more likely to be on our wavelength than many), and I've found a games shop which subs as a meeting place for potential D&D players, so we may be able to put together a RPG group, with any luck.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
A brief excursion
Well, Albuquerque was pretty - not sure of the population, but I'd hazard a guess at less than 250K, but incredibly sprawling city, with a positive tangle of interstates weaved through it. Fortunately I could rely on taxis to negotiate it, while I stared at the countryside.
The place is about 5000' up, in the fringe of the (I guess) southern Rockies, and a very arid desert. The air is very dry, to the point of making you thirsty after a couple of minutes walking in it, but the light is beautiful, quite hard and crystalline, especially at dusk, when it looks so clear you could reach out and tumble the mountain peaks.
The reason I was there was to meet the DBA's I'd be supporting/taking over from, and that went extremely well - the SQLServer DBA was a woman called Debbie Rosen, who I found very friendly, and a lot of fun to talk with: she looks to be an excellent DBA, and we spent the first day going over the layouts, the sorts of problems encountered, and so on: she is staying on with PNMR, supporting the dev/test environments, while I'm just taking over her production support work, so it's good we seem to be on the same wavelength.
The Oracle DBA will be staying on, so I'm just backing him up. He seems able, but we didn't spend that much time talking (altho he's a bike fiend, & a little older than me, so I suspect this will change with time).
Otherwise the trip was pretty dreadful - delayed flights both ways, so lots of sitting around; poor quality room with an awfully noisy aircon; and the food nearby (Applebees & Pizza Hut) was actively bad - definitely a first for my US experiences. No worse than many UK places, but bad by US standards.
The place is about 5000' up, in the fringe of the (I guess) southern Rockies, and a very arid desert. The air is very dry, to the point of making you thirsty after a couple of minutes walking in it, but the light is beautiful, quite hard and crystalline, especially at dusk, when it looks so clear you could reach out and tumble the mountain peaks.
The reason I was there was to meet the DBA's I'd be supporting/taking over from, and that went extremely well - the SQLServer DBA was a woman called Debbie Rosen, who I found very friendly, and a lot of fun to talk with: she looks to be an excellent DBA, and we spent the first day going over the layouts, the sorts of problems encountered, and so on: she is staying on with PNMR, supporting the dev/test environments, while I'm just taking over her production support work, so it's good we seem to be on the same wavelength.
The Oracle DBA will be staying on, so I'm just backing him up. He seems able, but we didn't spend that much time talking (altho he's a bike fiend, & a little older than me, so I suspect this will change with time).
Otherwise the trip was pretty dreadful - delayed flights both ways, so lots of sitting around; poor quality room with an awfully noisy aircon; and the food nearby (Applebees & Pizza Hut) was actively bad - definitely a first for my US experiences. No worse than many UK places, but bad by US standards.
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