![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I had a couple of technical frustrations today.
Well, one of them was actually yesterday. For some reason, the NY Times crossword puzzle wouldn’t work correctly on my phone. (I prefer solving on paper, but I end up solving on my phone a lot because it feeds my obsession with keeping track of my solving time statistics.) This seemed to be only the Thursday puzzle. I finally went and did it on my laptop because I wanted to see if there was a more general problem with that puzzle. It worked fine, though solving on the laptop is annoying because the scrolling is not really well-designed with respect to screen size. Anyway, that problem is resolved.
The other problem, which is resolved only as of about 2 minutes ago, involves trying to “buy” mystery hunt swag. I have a code for the item I want, so I just have to pay the shipping. But their shopify site says that credit and debit card payments are not available right now. But it doesn’t offer me any other way to pay. I finally decided to try it from my phone and that worked fine.
I also had some difficulty attempting to book a trip on-line. In that case, I called up the company involved and it turned out that the cruise I was interested in was sold out for this year. (It’s a once a year thing - a steamboat cruise that includes the Kentucky Derby. You may or may not recall that I had been scheduled to do a Road Scholar trip that included the Kentucky Derby in 2020, which was a casualty of the pandemic.) I went ahead and booked their 2023 cruise, because, well, why not? Both a steamboat cruise and the derby are things I’ve wanted to do for a while and by booking this far in advance I got a break on the price. I am normally not a big fan of telephones, but the booking agent I talked to was very helpful and enthusiastic.
Finally, my nextdoor feed continues to be a source of astonishment. This evening there was a post with the title “Breaking News - Serial Killer in Fairfax County.” It had a link to a news story and admonished people to lock their doors. Apparently the poster had not actually READ the news story, which was about a serial killer being captured. And he had killed women he met on-line who agreed to meet him at a motel. If you are dumb enough to meet a stranger at a motel, admonishments to lock your doors aren’t going to help you. (I don’t mean to write off the seriousness of this case. But they’ve got him locked up and the concern is that he many be linked to more than the 4 murders they know about.)
Well, one of them was actually yesterday. For some reason, the NY Times crossword puzzle wouldn’t work correctly on my phone. (I prefer solving on paper, but I end up solving on my phone a lot because it feeds my obsession with keeping track of my solving time statistics.) This seemed to be only the Thursday puzzle. I finally went and did it on my laptop because I wanted to see if there was a more general problem with that puzzle. It worked fine, though solving on the laptop is annoying because the scrolling is not really well-designed with respect to screen size. Anyway, that problem is resolved.
The other problem, which is resolved only as of about 2 minutes ago, involves trying to “buy” mystery hunt swag. I have a code for the item I want, so I just have to pay the shipping. But their shopify site says that credit and debit card payments are not available right now. But it doesn’t offer me any other way to pay. I finally decided to try it from my phone and that worked fine.
I also had some difficulty attempting to book a trip on-line. In that case, I called up the company involved and it turned out that the cruise I was interested in was sold out for this year. (It’s a once a year thing - a steamboat cruise that includes the Kentucky Derby. You may or may not recall that I had been scheduled to do a Road Scholar trip that included the Kentucky Derby in 2020, which was a casualty of the pandemic.) I went ahead and booked their 2023 cruise, because, well, why not? Both a steamboat cruise and the derby are things I’ve wanted to do for a while and by booking this far in advance I got a break on the price. I am normally not a big fan of telephones, but the booking agent I talked to was very helpful and enthusiastic.
Finally, my nextdoor feed continues to be a source of astonishment. This evening there was a post with the title “Breaking News - Serial Killer in Fairfax County.” It had a link to a news story and admonished people to lock their doors. Apparently the poster had not actually READ the news story, which was about a serial killer being captured. And he had killed women he met on-line who agreed to meet him at a motel. If you are dumb enough to meet a stranger at a motel, admonishments to lock your doors aren’t going to help you. (I don’t mean to write off the seriousness of this case. But they’ve got him locked up and the concern is that he many be linked to more than the 4 murders they know about.)
