Exciting, huh?

I think that was Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. That was when I discovered that my new watch was broken.

You can probably guess when that happened. I had to set the timezone and check the clock during that stage of the reformat, and suddenly...what the hell? There's a line across the face of my watch.

Must be a hair, right? Nope. It doesn't go away when I brush at it.

Must be a scratch. How annoying. But...I don't remember doing anything to scratch it.

...except...it's slowly getting worse.

Today, it's very obviously a large crack. A large, spontaneously forming crack. In the face of my nice, new sports watch.

So I email Nike.

Nike understands that I am disappointed. Nike is sorry that my watch did this. Nike says I should try to exchange the watch at the store I purchased it from, because they understand that this store has a very fair return policy.

If that doesn't work, Nike would like me to send the watch off to some place I've never heard of, and that, if they find that this random, spontaneous crack is actually my fault [what are the odds?], I'll have to pay for the repair. And if it's not my fault, I'll still have to pay for certain things.

Which sucks. A lot. I really liked the watch. It had two timezone settings, and it was comfy, and I haven't lost it yet.

I think I'm going to save the rest of the 'long couple of days' for another post, though.

And today, I get a call from someone -- I never got her name, or, rather I never understood it because she must've been talking to me through a slab of styrofoam wrapped cheese, or something -- telling me to call her back at her direct line.

Why? Because they have a monitor that doesn't match any of their records.

Lucky me.

So I go looking for the email I got from the guy that set everything up for the repair...and for my phone charger. And I give her a call.

Unfortunately, she has not replaced her phone in the twenty or so minutes since she called me. Joy.

"We have a monitor here that doesn't match anything in our system. It is not registered."

"Except it is registered, and it is in your system for a repair."

"Well, what's the name on the account."

I tell her, and she proceeds to do that annoying thing where she decides my name has all these vowels in it that it doesn't.

...and then she discovers that it's 'my fault' that it's not in the system, because there was supposed to be a B instead of an 8. Except it was very clearly an 8. But they couldn't clear that up because they didn't know my name....

Except, how in the fuck did she get my phone number if she didn't know my name?

So, as you might recall, we were having a little trouble with an Acer monitor. I would've shared pictures of this trouble by now, but I, for some reason, did not think to get a picture of it.

Yeah, I know. I take pictures of every insignificant and annoying little thing, but not this. Weird, huh?

Anyway....

I was in bed, mostly asleep [in that way where I can't fully fall asleep because I'm expecting something to happen], minding my own damn business when suddenly I'm struck with that whole panicked/awake thing, and I leap out of bed because someone is at the door.

Gremlin got to it first, and didn't bother noticing anything about the guy except that he didn't have to sign for the package. So it got hauled to the top of the steps, and into my hands.

So I grab my knife [and my camera] and start hacking away in that oh-so-careful way I have when I'm the newly-reanimated dead.

Yeah, what the hell is that, right? I didn't know. Hell, I didn't know when I took the next picture, either.

I stood there, staring stupidly for about five minutes, trying to wrap my very, very tired brain around what the everloving fuck was staring at me from the inside of that box, because it was certainly nothing I'd been expecting today.

It was the Acer monitor that I'd shipped off to be fixed last Thursday, which is now shiny and functioning again. Yay.

I'm currently using it instead of my old Mitsubishi flat panel -- which is still in perfect working order, but it deserves a break. I've retired it like I retired my old favourite keyboard.

...and I think someone else is about to be at the door, which means what I expected to show up today is actually here. More on that later.

Except...no.

See, as it turns out, there's no website for that. And I should've guessed, really, since all of Acer's websites seem to go from URL to URL in this shoddy, horrible sort of way.

And I really, really shouldn't have called today, when my head hurts, because obviously the stars have aligned in such a way as to force me to actually talk to a person named Shaniqua. Or whatever the hell the name was...it sounded like Shaniqua, it really did.

Maybe it was Shanaquina, or something equally stupid. Whatever it was, the instant I heard it, I knew I was in for some badness....

This isn't a racist thing, either. If some white mother named her kid that, I'd know that the kid was likely to be stupid, too. Because it's genetic, and no ammount of good genes from the father is going to make up for the supermassive black hole that is the 'Shaniqua' gene.

I start by saying, "I sent in a monitor to have it repaired, because it broke after maybe nine months of use, and I've got this reference number here...I'd like to know if there's a website where I can use it to track the status of the repair."

"Repair? Can you confirm your serial number?"

"I just want to know if there's a website...."

...but, apparently, she needs me to confirm my sereal number, so I dig out the photos of the monitor....

"Okay, ETL95...."

"No, your serial number is going to start with [two letters I didn't catch] or P[something]."

"...it didn't last time I called in...."

"What?"

"I said: This is what the serial number was when I called in on Thursday about the monitor being broken. The person who gave me the Reference Number was okay with the serial number I gave him at the time...."

"Well, do you have a Service [something something something]."

"I have a REFERENCE NUMBER."

"What is it?"

"13EDX...."

"13EIX?"

I correct her, read the rest of the number off to her, and she disappears for a while. I'm subjected to a strange, tinny combination of hip hop and country.

She returns, "When did you send this out? Friday?"

"I would have to check to be precise, but I'm fairly certain it was Thursday."

"Okay, well, it says here that...."

"It was delivered today. I know. I have the signature of the person who signed for it. All I want to know is if there's a website where I can use the REFERENCE NUMBER I got on THURSDAY to check on the STATUS of the REPAIR and/or REPLACEMENT of the MONITOR."

"Oh, a website? No, you have to call us and give us the number. And you need to give us some time."

"So, I should call back on Friday...."

"Yes. [Something about Friday, time, and possibly Spam.]"

"Okay, then. Bye."

"Have a nice day."

I hung up. And now I'm very concerned about what's going to happen next, because shit like this is never, ever a good sign.