View 355 March 28 - April 3, 2005 (original) (raw)
This week:
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Thursday, March31, 2005
It's still pollen season.
Sable, having been induced to swallow Benadryl mostly by sheer intimidation -- she tried to intimidate me, and I did the same with her, and the result was that I stuffed the pills way down her throat and held the muzzle closed until she swallowed them, following with a PetTab treat she likes -- looks normal again but a bit subdued on our walk and run this morning. Ran when I did, but wasn't trying to pull me around the block, which is her usual response when I try to jog. Neighbors couldn't believe it, me running with Sable running alongside like a normal dog.
Thanks to all for the suggestions, but neither peanut butter nor cheese nor Velveeta, all of which worked with Sasha our previous Husky, had any effect on getting Sable to swallow pills. As Dr. Huth remarked about his Lab, "You think I can't smell your stupid pills? Do you really think you are smarter than me?" was the response to various tricks of that sort. So, eventually, it was "I'm the alpha and you will let me stick my hand down your throat, and that's the way it is." Which works, and once it's over we're all friends again. There may be a lesson in there somewhere.
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I have bought, for more than I really wanted to spend, an HP 90W Air/Auto?AC Combo Adaptor which presumably allows me to use LisaBetta, my HP TabletPC, on an airplane, assuming the airplane provides electricity for laptops.
Fine. Dandy. Wonderful. But I have no idea how to do that. HP has sent me several pieces of paper, with diagrams, each covered with warning messages in a dozen languages. I now know, in many languages, how not to kill myself with that, and that the power cord isn't intended to be used to commit suicide. Every message is given in all these languages, and at no place is all the English collected together. English sentences are interspersed with all the other languages. There is page after page of warranty information in tiny print in every conceivable language.
What there is not is one single word showing me which of the various cords I will need to plug into an airplane. I have no idea what kind of socket the airplanes provide, never having done this before. I suppose that somewhere out on the Internet there is some information, but I would have thought, having paid over a hundred dollars to get this, I might have and ONE DARNED DIAGRAM OF INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH on how to use it. All the various cords have little numbers, and 2 -- only 2 -- of them are actually mentioned by number in an unbelievably banal instruction in 11 languages, but none of the other cords are given a name at all. Just that unexplained number.
Oh. And another note, in 12 languages, tells me "WARNING Do Not Charge the notebook battery onboard aircraft. Charging the battery may damage aircraft electronic systems." Now that's fascinating since I bought this overpriced battery charger precisely because the web site said that this was for Air/Auto/AC use and that with this kit I would be able to use my TabletPC anywhere. I am presuming that this warning, which takes up much of the room that ought to be used to give me instructions because it is given in so many languages, applies to an external battery, not to running my TabletPC? But I don't know. And I am guessing that the diagram that comes with this shows that I plug one cord into the socket provided by the airplane (there's an entirely unlabelled socket in the stupid diagram), thence to the linelump, thence to the PC. I am assuming that, but of course HP can't have been bothered to TELL me. Instead it uses up all the instruction room for warnings.
If there is an HP executive out there, first: go fire the entire staff that produced these instructions. They may or may not be saving you from lawsuits, but they are certainly infuriating your customers, or, in my case, ex-customers because I don't want to buy from people as contemptuous of me as the people who sold me this thing have been. Fire them. All of them. With prejudice. Or give them references in hopes that your rivals will hire them.
And if one of you out there knows which of these cords I use to connect my TabletPC to whatever power is furnished in American and Delta Business Class, can you drop me a note?
For most of you: you will see this for a short time and I am taking it off. It goes in the column. This imbecility has to be seen to be believed. Of course by the time it gets in the column it will be considerably softened. But not, I hope, too much so.