Sephy’s Platzish

Apparently DHL does know where I live because they’ve finally managed to find a truck to deliveer the new monitor out to here (though I shouldn’t get too excited as it just says that it’s with the “delivery courier”). This is after taking 49½ hours to get the thing allll the way from South Bend to Milwaukee (a distance of about 186 miles (or 300km), for a net speed of 3.83… miles per hour, 6.06… km/h). Maybe I should revise my estimation of DHL’s equipment to having lawn mowers, but I think those would even be faster

So, anyway hopefully my shipment will finally get here!

Oh, I should add that the estimated delivery date is still set for the 16th of March… maybe that’ll change when they actually deliver it? I doubt it

Well, it’s now been two weeks since my LCD died on me. Last week, I was wondering where it had gotten to, and it turns out that LG didn’t have any monitors in stock down in Alabama (which is where they’re based apparently). Robert, the cool fella who I spoke with last week in their Customer Service said that it would arrive here no later than 5 PM Thursday. You can guess where this goes. Yep. 5 PM and no delivery trucks arriving.

So I call them this morning, and I am told that it’s been shipped and should be here today. They even gave me a tracking number, which Google didn’t recognise. As it turns out (and she told me) it is a DHL tracking number.

I go to the DHL website and find out that the package had been shipped 2nd day; today was supposed to be the second day and it was supposed to be delivered to here by 5 PM. Well, it’s now 9:00 and no sign of it on my doorstep. In fact, according to the tracking, it was at South Bend Indiana (200 miles from here via the roads) at 6:44 EDT. That was 9 hours after it was spotted in Ohio, some 36 hours after it was shipped out from Alabama. Hopefully with any luck, it’ll actually show up here sometime tomorrow.

And, if you think I’m the only one that this has happened to, I’m not alone. Check out these posts -

DHL: Disasterously Haphazard Liars? (Chris Pirillo)

and

The Myth of DHL Customer Service - this person has been waiting since October to receive their shipment of laptop computers in Bolivia from here in the States

For those expecting jokes about toilet functions, look elsewhere.

Everyone else, I must recommend that you listen to today’s installment of the Mr. Brown Show. I’ve been listening for a few months now and just about every one of their podcasts leave me laughing.

However, I’m not sure if the Super Nice Toilet II would go over too well here.

…I hope that you brought something with you to entertain yourself. You might have heard that our in-flight entertainment system has been experiencing some minor issues. Unfortunately, these problems are more than intermittent and we don’t know if this flight will be affected. The time now in Sydney is just coming up to 5.30 PM Friday, and we expect a flight time of 14 hours, landing at around 8 o’clock Saturday morning. Once again, we hope that our entertainment system stays active for the duration of the flight. If a situation were to arise, we can attempt to sort it out. On behalf of the crew, many thanks for choosing to fly with Qantas, member of the OneWorld Alliance.

I doubt that this is the actual announcement you’d hear on your next flight on a Qantas 747-400B aircraft, but it is the situation faced by many passengers on their flights in recent months. Admittedly, I would get bored if I didn’t have something else to entertain me (beyond the skymall catalogues). However, if I were on such a flight, I don’t think it would bug me all that much since I would have something to keep myself occupied. Of course, among the stuff I’d have would be little primers on things that I’d already know such as not tipping and the correct pronunciation of words such as pergola (pa-gol-a, not per-go-la as we would say it over here).

In other aircraft related news, Google and Microsoft spent this Australia Day over various parts of the country taking photographs. However, I am concerned that Google’s plane looks a bit, well, fake…those logos certainly don’t look like they belong there, and where’s the rego? Another question - why are there American cars in the background?

First off, I did manage to find the power cord for the scanner; it was in a box that I had overlooked despite it being in plain sight.

Secondly, a reminder for all of y’all who live in the colder climes - make sure any outside discharge pipes you may have (if you have them) are thawed out before using them. Otherwise you might find a wet mess in your laundry room, then having to stand outside and pour hot water into a pipe to try to clear the blockage. Luckily, that did wind up working and the clothes got washed without any further hitches.