computer dilemmas and painting fiascos

What do they have in common you ask? Nothing really. Except that both happened to me today.

 

It is lease renewal time. Or would be in about 6 weeks. But if I renewed it now, I got a free $25 gas card. Not much of a perk, no, but with gas prices like they are I'll take free gas! We were also given the option to have our carpets cleaned professionally with our renewals. Last year, we had a choice of a ceiling fan in a bedroom, carpet cleaning or an accent wall painted in the room of our choice from their assortment of available colors. This year it was just carpet cleaning offered.

 

But I've been here four years and they all know I'm a very good tenant, always pay my rent on time (Actually I usually pay a few weeks early) and never cause any problems. So I asked them if I could have an accent wall instead of the carpet cleaning (my carpet DOES need cleaned and badly but I wouldn't torture anyone by making them move my heavy book cases and furniture and I'm not about to move it myself until I move out. LOL)

 

They agreed and we scheduled the date for tomorrow (Tuesday) and to paint the wall I designated in my living room and really nice medium blue color. (My curtains are blue, my furniture covers have blue in them and most of my wall art is predominantly blue.) I was told I had to take everything down off the walls (duh) but they'd spackle the holes and I had to move all of my furniture away from the wall to be painted. I picked Tuesday because I was going to Seagoville for the day and wouldn't be back till probably dinner time so they'd have all day long. I was going to close the fur balls up in my bedroom so they'd be out of the way too.

 

I did take all the pictures down off the walls and everything off the fireplace mantel this weekend. And I had taken the curtain rods down but hadn't gotten the brackets out yet. I planned to take down the brackets and move the furniture out of the way tonight (I did move a couple smaller things out of the way over the weekend as well.)

 

I came home today to quite a surprise. My wall was a lovely shade of... deep red? I had my hands full and dropped everything on the couch in a heap and stood there a moment in complete shock. After I recovered enough to move I went and called the office to explain the problem. The person I had scheduled with was not there just then (had a doctor's appt) and the person I talked to on the phone didn't even know we had arranged to have the painting done. Last he heard I still had to talk to the manager to see if she'd allow me to have the painting done instead of the carpet cleaning.

 

The only thing they had gotten right was the wall to be done. And they were probably cussing me out for making them move the furniture and not taking down the curtain rod brackets (which they painted around quite nicely actually so I guess I won't bother to take them down when it's fixed.) So now I'm waiting for K to call me back so we can straighten it all out and reschedule the painting for the correct color. Which will be quite difficult since this red is really deep! It'll take several coats of paint to cover it. I was in the office and sat there as she wrote everything down about when, which wall and which color. So she had it all correct but somehow everything got mixed up. Now I don't know if they're going to try to fix tomorrow and I still have to move furniture tonight or if they'll reschedule for next week.

 

Where do computers come into play? Well that's the reason I'm home at 3:30 instead of 6:00 today. I was in the office, working away on the PC, which was running slow but I thought nothing of it since it ALWAYS runs slow and it was making a weird chirping/beeping sound periodically (which is not normal but I didn't think much of it. Then all of a sudden the thing goes kaflooey and I got, yep, you guessed... "THE DREADED BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!" So I tried to reboot, and reboot gain, and still another time, but kept getting an error message. So I let it sit an hour or so and tried again. Still got an error. Tried again an hour later and got another error screen, but a different one. Still no booting up. This comes just oh, two weeks I guess, after I had no computer for three weeks since it wouldn't accept my new ID card to log in. Fortunately I was out of town two of those three weeks but still...

 

So I called my boss about 1:30 or so. When he answered I said "guess who has no computer again." To which he had a few choice words to say. I told him R (another person in my office) was having problems with his computer on Friday (though different problems then mine) but today when he expected to spend the whole day on the phone with the computer help desk, his computer was working perfectly. So I told my boss I was going to be out of the office tomorrow already but I'd try again Wednesday. I said that way (hopefully) it's just a fluke like with R's computer. If not I'd put a help ticket in then. My boss had a few more choice words to say then we hung p the phone. I hung around the office another hour or so but then decided I couldn't do anything so I was going home. I figured that would give me that much more time to get everything out of the way for the painting tomorrow....

 

And you already saw my story about that. So that my friends is how computer dilemmas and painting fiascos go hand in hand in the crazy little world called Kelleyopolis.