I've become the stupid help desk call..

For a couple weeks the touchpad on my laptop hasn't worked. It mostly has no impact on me since I use a mouse 99.44% of the time. However, it's a new laptop and I felt that everything should work so I wanted to get it serviced before the warranty ran out.

Today I called Toshiba, explained my issue, was given a help ticket number and put into the queue. It didn't take long before I was greeted with the first level tech support person. Spent 5 minutes verifying the information I had given the operator. I do this calmly hoping that we can get through the diagnostic quickly and he can point me to a place to get my laptop serviced. I am after all a tech guy and I know that this thing needs to be fixed.

He then told me to push the "FN" key (as opposed to the f-in key) and then hit "F9". I do so and in big bright letters it says "Touch Pad Enabled"

Apparently I'm now the guy who calls in saying that their cupholder is broken..

When did naming conventions get all screwed up?

It used to be so simple. There was small, medium, large. Then they brought in extra large. That concept seemed simple enough.

It's different now though. Now, if you're lucky you have medium and large. If you're not, you have tall, grande, and venti. Tall is small? If we go with things that rhyme should large be barge? (I'll have a big mac, fries and a barge size coke please..actually that's pretty accurate..)

I'm looking at postage rates today. First class is the cheapest. Then there is express, priority, express priority and double super secret express priority. Since first class takes the longest, shouldn't it be called last class; or class right above post cards but right below junk mail?

Ok, I'll stop whining now.

An interesting evening

Tonight was Shayna and I's date night. We try to go on a date every week..tonight was dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, zoo lights, and a visit to the national Christmas Tree. The restaurant we were going to go to was a place called Red Sea in Adam's Morgan. Shayna had eaten there before and was really looking forward to having some fine Ethiopian cuisine. Doing a Google search yielded the address as well as some reviews (seemed to get 4 out of 5 stars/thumbs/whatever)

So after a couple wrong turns (thanks Google) and about an hour later we make it up to 18th St NW only to find that the restaurant no longer exits.. Shayna was really looking forward to this Ethiopian restaurant. I offer to eat anywhere else on this strip, and point to the McDonald's. :-) We end up finding another Ethiopian restaurant on that street.

While I'm glad I tried Ethiopian, I must say that I don't think I will eat it very much in the future. I'm sure the restaurant is a great restaurant, just the style didn't seem to suit me. Shayna also felt a little let down. So dinner was a bit of a bust, but it didn't matter we had more to do!

Zoo lights (if you have gone to the link above) seems like it would be a really cool idea. We love Christmas light displays, and they have hot cocoa, hot cider, and smores there.

The lights were pretty rudimentary, the cocoa/cider/smores weren't free (which I kind of thought they would be) and the smores were actually made in a microwave (to make sure no fires broke out) So we were a little disappointed by the trip to Zoo lights as well.

No matter, we have the National Tree! The tree actually went well. We saw the tree, trains, and Yule Log. It was nice.

So even though 2 out of 3 parts of the date was a disappointment, I wouldn't have traded it for anything..I got to be with Shayna the whole time.