A Fascinatingly Annoying Day

Before I begin, I want to point out the sheer number of consonants in "fascinatingly." Nine! Or perhaps eight, if the final "y" counts as a vowel, which I suppose it probably does.

Moving on. In terms of basic irritability, Monday took several pieces of cake. I had the day off, and planned on spending a fair amount watching television and annoying my friends at work. These are the good days, my friends, or at least it so seemed.

My humming happy mood lasted only a few minutes, however, as I dropped my the coffee filter basket, snapping off some weird plastic gizmo... a weird plastic gizmo that allows the whole thing to work. Damnit.

I jumped online, figuring that if eBay sells stuff like this, I could probably find a replacement basket with a few mouse clicks. But, well, no. The Mr. Coffee website lists dozens upon dozens of high-tech machines, including the one sitting, useless, on my kitchen counter. Hell, they'll given send me another one. But a replacement filter basket? Nope.

There are a number of places that sell accessories for Mr. Coffee, but these are spread out throughout the land. The closest was Newman's Vacuum in Santa Monica, where a bored clerk informed me that a replacement would cost $10 and take three to six weeks to get to me. And, oh yeah, if I wanted them to ship it to me, it would be an additional $8.50.

"Uh, so it will take until the end of May to get a filter?" I asked.

"Yeah," said the representative of Newman's. "It's on back order."

"So, where do you get the filters?"

"From Mr. Coffee."

"So I could call them myself?"

"Yeah."

"OK. I'll do so."

And I did. Turns out Mr. Coffee will send me a free replacement, and I'll only have to wait a month. Nice.

Of course, this all sounds like incessant and pointless whining (more so than usual) if that was the end of the tale. But it was not. Directly after getting off the phone, I got a call from the collections department of GE Money, who wanted to know why I hadn't paid them the $500 I owed them.

After making sure they were looking for this particular Daniel Evans (there are quite a few, even in Los Angeles), I asked them what I had bought on the card. Turns out, I had bought a couple of pairs of glasses at Lenscrafts last August, put it on a "No Payments for Six Months" card, and forgot about it.

Damnit. Oh, yeah, I never got a bill because GE Money had the wrong address. Because of this, I was not going to be charged for any late fees or interest, though I had to pay up by April 27.

Weirdly, though, I had returned one of the pairs and had received a refund... Or at least I thought. The collections lady (calling her unpleasant would be an insult to surly people) refused to hear it, telling me to take it up with Lenscrafters. Man.

Anyhow, I did get it cleared up with a second phone call, though with a different due date. Now, I dunno about you, but when I'm dealing with entities that can't get their figures or dates correct, I like independent confirmation. Despite asking for it, it was denied, leaving me to fend for myself against the cold and unfeeling credit bureaus.

Well, whatever. GE Money is a bunch of bastards, and you'd be better off setting your cash on fire than giving it to them.

But, finally, to top off the day, I made an unwise purchase. CompUSA is going out of business, or, at least, closing most of its stories. As part of this, they're having a close out sale, no returns, no refunds. No problem, I think, plunking down $170 for a external hard drive. The box clearly states it's for either a PC or Mac.

This, however, is only true for one kind of Mac, something only clear in the fine print at the bottom of the box. The clerks at CompUSA, well, they don't give a shit, and frankly I don't blame them. Still, I'm now stuck with an expensive paperweight, unless I can off-load it to someone that can use an eSATA Seagate drive. Man.

OK. I feel better.