dare I hope?

I've been informed, via e-mail (I started using that, thinking, well, I won't be in my office to field calls but I can check e-mail after class) that the computer is FULLY READY and that I have a 3:30 pm appointment to get it set up. As this was from the owner (the guy I know), I'm more sanguine.

I think part of the issue in this whole thing is differences in information level and information transmission.

I tend to be, and I know this but am not always good at conveying it, a high-information-requiring person. I want to know how much longer I have to wait if I'm on hold on the phone (I like the places that have "dynamic queues" where they TELL you). I want to know if someone can't come out after they made an appointment. I will actually be less angry over a call that goes, "Listen, we have a really big emergency and I know your call is just a routine service call, would you mind rescheduling" than if the company doesn't come for HOURS and doesn't let me know anything. In fact, if I get a polite, "Do you mind rescheduling?" call close to the start of the wait-time window (or even before), I'll be pretty cordial about it and go "Yeah, okay, would Friday work?" Because I've had times when I had emergencies (like dental emergencies) and I know I got squeezed in and I appreciated my emergency being seen....so I can understand other people's emergencies.

But with this computer stuff, I would have appreciated calls that said,  "We're having a problem transferring files; can we reschedule?" or "Things are going wrong with the set up and we won't be ready today."

But maybe most of their customers aren't high-information-requiring people, and they're just used to that.

So again, it's maybe kind of like Ask Culture and Guess Culture: that there are some cases where I have to force myself to be more patient and be more willing to "be in the dark" about things, even though I would vastly prefer more detail. I don't know.

I will say I heavily front-loaded my work day in the hopes that I could get an appointment; I came in a bit early and wrote most of an exam, and then I did my two sample's worth of soil sorting (even though earlier this morning I had about 10 minutes of a really tight painful chest that suggested I was fixing to have asthma problems. I've never had a full-blown attack in the sense of requiring a trip to the hospital, but I've had times where my intercostal muscles sort of cramped up and my lungs seemed to clamp down. I don't know why that would happen this morning; it's not unusually humid and the pollen is no worse than it was)

But at least now I'm free this afternoon. (Maybe, thinking magically, that's the key: the two days I twitched and fretted because I "could have been getting research done" the set up didn't happen, and now today, when I will just be sitting at home crocheting on my Big Mac, they'll be there.)


Also, I finally heard back from OUP that they received my review. I was worried something had gone wrong but apparently *I* didn't receive the e-mail the guy sent out acknowledging the review. (Stupid campus server....it goes wonky about once a week, usually on an afternoon they're "webcasting" something from one of the remote sites.)


So maybe things are looking up. I'm still sad about Mr. G's death and sad I won't make his funeral, but at least it doesn't quite feel so much like huge pieces are dropping off the world.