Cinereous Vulture

Yesterday, I wrote about a problem that I was having with a flat screen TV that the boys bought us for Christmas. When it showed up it didn’t work or it was broken. I can now see that from the perspective of Newegg, the vendor that it was purchased from, these two descriptions have different connotations. If it didn’t work then it was the manufacture’s fault, but if it was broken then it’s the shipper’s problem. I didn’t follow the Newegg return policy to the letter of their law, so it all became my problem. I spent the last three days, either on the phone or online trying to get some redress for my problem.

The dam finally broke after I posted about it. Someone else once derisively criticized me for as in WordPress parlance, publicizing my blog posts to Facebook and Twitter. She referred to it as “pimping my blog to Facebook”. In this case, it was the pimping of my blog to Twitter that made all of the difference. Within five minutes of posting, I got a message from Newegg on Twitter. It still took some additional wrangling, but today I secured a promise from Newegg for a new TV. I hope that the new TV shows up before the Super bowl and I hope that this one both works and isn’t broken. Throughout this endeavor, I have felt the spirit of my Mom hovering about me. I think that she would have been proud of me. Stay tuned!

My other first world problem involved my Fitbit, which I dearly love. I have the kind that can clip onto my belt, or as I use it, fit into my pants pocket. The only problem with putting the device into the pocket is that from time to time it doesn’t get taken out again, even when the pants go into the wash. This has happened several times and every time the Fitbit has come out cleaner and more importantly still working. Yesterday, after I started a wash, I hopped into the shower. After dressing I started looking for my pocket stuff. Have you ever noticed that the things that you own is your stuff, while the things that your spouse owns is their crap? Like in, could you please clear your crap off of the table? Apologies to George Carlin’s ghost. Anyway, I couldn’t find my Fitbit.

The wash cycle had finished by then, so I trooped down to the basement to paw through the wet clothes. I ended up doing this twice. No joy though. In between these two searches I launched a much broader search of the whole house, because I thought that I remembered taking the Fitbit out of my pocket. Eventually, I remembered the Fitbit app on my iPhone and I wondered if it had some sort of find me feature. Well it does, sort of. First, I noticed that only in one part of the house could I sync the Fitbit. That kind of localized the problem. Next, I started setting alarms. This Fitbit has a pretty silent vibrate alarm that was designed to wake you and get you to go out and run or something. After several alarms I narrowed it down to the now empty washer. It turns out that it had worked its way beneath the rubber door gasket. The Fitbit is still working and now my only complaint is that I didn’t get any credit for all of those steps I logged during my frantic hour of searching for it. First world problems.