Shakes, rain, and Santa

Monday night, DH and I planned a leisurely evening that included a trip into town for a Shakes frozen custard, a bit of stitching for me, reading for DH, and a bit of TV watching for us both.  We went to Shakes (a fresh homemade frozen custard establishment for those of you not familiar with it) and ordered our usual treats.  When we went to pay for it, the young man serving us said that they were giving it away free as they had to close down in twenty minutes due to the 60 mph winds, rain and hail that were due in about an hour.  (The Shakes building has a lot of windows.)

Uh huh.  DH and I went home and thankfully the rain didn't start until we got there.  Then boy! did it rain!  And then the power went out.  It was raining so hard it was blacker than pitch and it was still daylight out.  So no stitching, no reading, no TV watching.  We sat and watched the storm until bedtime - thankfully, there was no hail.  With no power, I had to drag out my portable battery to power my CPAP machine; I'm glad I invested in the silly thing.  

Tuesday dawned bright, sunny, and sodden but with the power back on.  We finally have all the mowers and the tractor working again and it's too wet to mow anything.  Yes, the tractor was down as DH got it out to mow and ran over something that caused a bolt to break.  It took him a few days to find one locally.  It wasn't expensive or hard to replace, you just have to go to a tractor store to find it.

I'm coming along on the Santa.  It's a fun, easy stitch.  It's a good thing I love DMC 930 as I'd say over 80% of the design is stitched in this color.  Here's what it will look like finished:

Here's where I am with it.  This one of four patterns from an OOP leaflet by Homespun Collectibles called "2000 Collection of Santas."

LoneStar

Skippity jigging - another WIP page finished

I can't really happy dance as the entire piece isn't yet finished, but I did get another page finished.  Running the working copy of that page entirely filled in with highlighter through the shredder was immensely satisfying.

I'm taking a short break from the BAP to stitch a little Santa.  I saw the completed piece on a message board and liked it.  The pattern is OOP, but a kind friend offered to loan me the pattern.  I want to get it stitched quickly so I can get it back to her.    

I'm still working on painting and caulking in the bathroom.  What a bore.  

DH has spent the weekend working on his shop.  He's been insulating all the walls with fiberglass and had planned to put sheets of OSB (oriented-strand board) up on the walls.  Sheetrock isn't a good thing in shops as a careless elbow or an unwieldy piece of wood can knock holes in it too easily.  

We went to Lowe's yesterday to buy OSB.  We'd last bought it in the summer of 2008 and it was about five or six bucks for a 4' x 8' sheet.  It's gone up a bit.  It was nearly fourteen dollars a sheet!  DH ended up getting plywood sheets for about a buck less.  Plywood is stronger anyway.  

Right now, DH is doing one side of the shop.  He has run all the wires for plugs and electricity, has installed all the fiberglass, and is putting up the plywood.  After he gets done, I'll roll a couple of coats of primer and a coat of white paint over the plywood.  White paint will make the shop seem brighter.

He can only do one side of the shop at a time as he has to squoosh all his tools, stuff, etc., etc. into the center of the shop to have enough room to work on a wall.  Doing this doesn't give him a lot of room to work.  Hopefully, once all the walls are done, DH can get more organized.  I, for one, will be very glad to have all my painting and finishing supplies in one place where I don't have to go spelunking to find things.  Vexing.  

LoneStar

An early morning encounter

I took a walk this morning.  As I went down our long dirt driveway, I encountered a coral snake.  I took me a second or two to remember the mnemonic "red and yellow, kill a fellow, red touch black, venom lack" - this refers to the order of the band colors on this snake.  If the red band is next to the yellow band, it is indeed a poisonous coral snake.  If the red band is next to the black band, it is a non-poisonous milk snake.  Anyway, the snake was about two feet long.  I enjoyed watching him wend his way across the driveway into our neighbor's pasture.  

I like snakes.  I generally don't mess with them, but I enjoy watching them.  I think their skins are very beautiful.  And they are beneficial as many of them eat rodents and other such nuisances.  When we lived in our 100+ year-old house in a small town in Kansas, we had a black snake living in our basement.  Now, this basement was unfinished and more of a dugout with dirt and field stone walls interspersed with concrete rather than what most of you think of as a basement.  I never went down there as there were too many spiders for my tastes.  One spider is too many for my tastes.

The black snake was about six-feet long.  Twice a year, he would climb up the downspout outside our kitchen and shed his skin.  He was non-poisonous and didn't bother us.  He lived in the basement; we lived in the house.  We had lots of wheat fields around us as we lived near the edge of town.  We were the only house on our side of town that did not have problems with mice and rats.  

Now, I would have had a problem with him if he had come up into the house, but he never did so we coexisted harmoniously.  It's not that I would have been scared of him, it's just that running across a snake in your house unexpectedly does tend to startle you.   It would have been different if he had been a pet, but he was more of a friendly neighbor.  I wouldn't have killed him for venturing into the house, I'd have just blocked his access after taking him back to the basement.  Yes, I will pick up non-poisonous snakes.

Once, when were were having foundation work done, our contractor came bolting up out of the basement and exclaimed to me, "Did you know you have a huge snake in your basement?!!"  I said, "Jack! You didn't bother or worse, kill my black snake, did you?"  Poor Jack was perplexed as he expected me to respond by screaming hysterically or running for the shotgun.

He asked, "You don't mind that there's a six-foot-long snake in your basement?!!"  I told him that the snake never came into the house and that if he'd noticed, there were no mice or rats in our basement.  He admitted that he'd noticed that - unusual as we lived so close to a wheat field and in such an old house with a very varmint accessible basement.  

We stood around for a minute and discussed our critter/varmint phobias.  Jack didn't like snakes because they had no legs, though he said he'd leave them alone if they left him alone.  I said I didn't like spiders because they had too many legs; anything with more than four legs should be dead.  Jack said spiders eat bugs, so they are beneficial.  I retorted that a spider was welcome to eat all the bugs it wanted as long as its web was located where I wouldn't run across (or through) it.  If a spider broke this law, I would kill it by whatever means was at hand.  And woe be unto any spider that dared to venture into the house.

I've been getting a lot of stitching done and hope to have another page finished on the BAP soon.  I've also been doing touch-up painting and caulking on our new bathroom.  These tasks bore me out of my mind and I dislike doing them, but someone's got to do it so that the bathroom will get finished.

LoneStar 

 

Customer service ISN'T dead yet (but has to be prodded)

Golly.  I never though yesterday's post would do anything other than give me an avenue to vent.  Apparently, Other World Computing (OWC) uses some type of Internet search program that alerts them whenever they are mentioned in cyberspace.  They read my blog post and even left TWO comments on the post (or at least their computer program did).

They contacted us and and are refunding the restocking fee.  They made it as right as they could.  I give them four out of five stars and I will give their store another try.  I'm not a loyal customer yet, but I'm certainly willing to purchase from them again and give them another chance.

Why didn't I give OWC five stars?  Well, in my mind, if a customer returns something to you and says it doesn't work (and they state in writing what process they went through to determine that the product does indeed not work) and asks for an exchange, you give them the exchange no questions asked.  

You do not tell tell them that you found nothing wrong with the product and imply they are too stupid to connect things properly.  You don't tell them you'll send the same unit back to them because it works fine.  And you don't argue with them over it.  Your goal in customer service should be to fix the problem, not rile up the customer, especially if you state that you pride yourself on providing excellent customer service.  So OWC gets four stars. 

I finally got "The Alamo" framed and hung on our bedroom wall yesterday.  I frame all my pieces myself.  I'm too much of a tightwad to pay someone else to do it, so I taught myself to frame needlework and do it to the best of my ability.  I'm told I do a good job of framing.  Usually right after someone tells me I'm a good framer, they tell me I should go into the framing business.  For the record, for me, framing needlework ranks right on up there with cleaning the bathroom.  I do it because I need to and I do a good job, but I don't enjoy it.  

I've been really enjoying my trips into town these last few weeks as the wildflowers in Texas are absolutely beautiful this year.  I wish I were an artist (or that I'd at least remember to bring my camera along), but I'm not.  So I'll just enjoy the riot of color that means springtime in Texas.

LoneStar

Is customer service dead?

I recently converted from a PC to a Mac (and I love my Mac!).  My CPU is a Mac Mini, a tiny little thing with a lot of power.  I found the best price for it and bought it from Amazon.  While there, I saw a cool little Mac Mini mounting bracket with extra USB ports on it (the Mac Mini only has five USB ports).  If you want to look at it yourself, here it is: Mac Mini Hang With Mi.

While I found it on Amazon, I had to order it from Other World Computing (OWC).  It arrived quickly and I happily got out my drill, mounted it on my old ratty computer desk, stuck my Mac Mini in the bracket, and hooked up all my peripherals.  

Due to the touchy nature of my GSM "air" card - the gadget I use to connect to the Internet out here in the boonies - I planned to plug it into one of the USB ports on the front of the bracket.  The GSM card doesn't like being buried under the desk; it slows the connection down a lot.  So, after getting everything ready to go, I plugged the GSM card into one of the bracket USB ports.  Nada.  Nothing.  Nicht. 

I tried several other things, my trackball mouse, my keyboard, my camera cord - nothing worked in any of the USB ports on the bracket.  Grumbling, I sent it back to OWC for exchange for a working bracket. 

OWC contacted me and said their tech department had checked the bracket and that it was getting power, so they were sending it back to me as nothing was wrong with it.  They implied that I was too stupid to connect everything correctly and admonished me to make sure the power supply was plugged in.  When asked, OWC admitted that they had not actually plugged anything into the USB ports themselves to see if they worked.   They would not exchange the unit for a new one.  So I got a refund less a 15% restocking fee because I returned it (even though I really just wanted an exchange).  

Gee.  What do y'all think?  If you were OWC, would it have been better to send me a brand new working unit and thereby secure my loyalty through excellent customer service?  Or would you do what they did and lose me as a customer?  They have a really nice online store with a lot of products, but they won't get any more of my business. 

LoneStar

A WIP update

As I've been getting in a goodly amount of stitching lately, I thought I'd show you my WIP.

Here it is the last time I posted it (2-25-10):

Here it is as of today:

This is "Wild Things, " an OOP limited-edition pattern by Cross Stitch Pattern Gallery.

LoneStar

Another great weekend

We had absolutely gorgeous weather this weekend - highs in the 80's and sunny with a light breeze.  

Georgia and I headed over to Austin for the I35 Stitchtogether.  We had a great time and had a big group.  There was lots of laughing and eating and yakking and eating and I think we did get a bit of stitching done.

While the two of us were in Austin, our DH's went to the gun range and and played with their man toys.  They had a lot of fun, too.  DH spent the evening cleaning the guns he had used and man! does the cleaning oil smell weird.  DH likes the smell, but to me it smells like sour apples mixed with axle grease.  Next time, DH will clean his guns outside on the porch.

Sunday afternoon, we took the day off and puttered.  DH planned out how he is going to install electricity in his shop, and I got a lot of stitching done.  Emma played a lot with the new toy her Auntie Gloria gave her.  It's a yellow rubber ball with a squeaker that she killed after about two hours.  We were kind of glad as this squeaker was a bit shrill and more annoying than usual.  And of course, toys must be taken and placed in the food bowl while you are enjoying a bit of kibble.  Silly dog.

 

LoneStar