I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to write about this evening, but it’s time to post again, and there are definitely things rolling around in my head. Some are postable (post-worthy is arguably too pretentious for them), some are not, but no time like the present to find out!

I’m pretty sure I mentioned it before, but my friends Eli and Megan broke up recently. This has been a rollercoaster of emotions for the both of them, I’m sure. They’ve been processing it differently, though, which has caused a bit of… hmm, strife in the overall breakup. Namely, Eli has been externalizing, being very vocal about how he is feeling, and open about his needs. Megan has been far more internalizing as far as I can tell, and has been processing how she’s feeling either by herself, or with a few close friends.

These, of course, are merely observations from an interested third party. I’m concerned for the both of them, and dearly hope they’ll both heed the advice that a great many people have given them, and leave each other the hell alone for a little bit, until they’ve both gotten past the “raw” part of the breakup. They both have my number, so hopefully they’ll call and rant at me next time they want to start feuding on their respective journals.

Both of them have made valid observations and comments that the other side (also pretty legitimately) took offense to or were hurt by. While yes, it’d be great if their differences got resolved and they got back together, all I really want is for them to come out after all this as friends. They were together for over a year and a half, and continue to really care about each other (hence why their emotions have been so raw and reactionary through this).

But enough about that. If you really want to know what’s going on, go read their journals. I think I pissed off Eli this evening, hence his latest post telling everyone to fuck off. If it was something I said, I apologize — you know I got nothin’ but love for ya, man.

I cleaned and (slightly) reorganized my office today. This mostly entailed taking everything off my desk (computers included), windexing them (they are glass), and then putting everything back on in a different arrangement. I’m not yet entirely sure whether I like the new arrangement, but I’m certainly willing to give it a shot for a while. I’d decided that now would be a good time to undertake this little mini-task, because I’d just removed the laser printer from the desk, for repair reasons.

I’m not entirely sure how or why, but apparently the fusor shorted in my 2200. During the last, oh, 3 days of its warranty. Did I mention one of those was a Sunday when no one was in? Then there was the issue of that the invoice for when I’d purchased it had disappeared in the move (and we’d done so well with everything else…), which meant that they were of the opinion that the warranty had expired in February (short of it — it had been manufactured in January of 2002, and they give it a default shelf-life of a month, unless you can prove you bought it at a later date than that). Got a copy of the warranty faxed to me, and took screenshots of the their website product registration, which listed the dates of purchase.

I managed to escalate the call high enough that someone finally said “Okay, we’ll abide by the website registration info.” In order to avoid having to start this whole process over internally to deal with the part that handles warranty billing from certified repair shops, they put me in the “trade in/trade up” program. What this means is that if your product breaks within the warranty date, they’ll send you a new one, and then you send the old one back to them in the same box. Of course, the 2200 has been discontinued, so I got its successor, the 2300. It’s faster and more robust, too!

So after two days of being a very irate and upset customer, I am back to being a happy customer again. Kudos to you, HP, for (finally) doing the right thing.

Okay, I don’t think I’m at 1000 words yet, but I should probably wrap it up anyway… I have a meeting with Robert tomorrow to go over plans for the Seattle UberCon. It’s looking favorable, though I’m more than a little nervous about learning to juggle the conventions (!!!), my final year or so of school, AND work. None of which are really things I can feasibly drop. So, you few folks out there who read this site, here is a question for you: if push is coming to shove, what would YOU drop? a) your business, b) your school, or c) your source of income.

I hate to say it, but it would probably be the school one, since that is something that I could pick back up at a later date once the other things settle down some. It’s a hard choice, though, and hopefully one I won’t have to make.