Things I Do Not Have III: Revenge of the UPS Guy

(I am sure you are tired of this. I'm sorry. I know I am, especially because I am fairly certain this title series is not getting any funnier. But this blog is about grad school and all things related...and this is certainly related. So here we are. If, somehow, you are missing part 1 and 2, scroll down a bit and start there.)

1. My computer
You guys, I would like to introduce you to someone. I'm writing this on my new computer! It arrived yesterday, which was alarming on the basis that at least UPS can do something right. We got to play the Remember All Your Passwords game for a while, and then we set forth on the arduous task of moving stuff between computers.

It actually wasn't that bad - when we got Beverly back, the nice folks at the computer repair place had taken the liberty of putting my hard drive in an external hard drive casing, so I could access all my files without any difficulty. (Beverly, that dear old gal, was very opinionated. If she decided she did not like what I was doing she would shut down. I bet she would have been jealous of this whole situation.) Obviously I nicknamed that hard drive "Beverly". (For the record I have not named this new computer yet, and it most certainly is not going to be Beverly II. That's just unfairly dooming it.) But I was pleased when I got the following message:
I mean, this was just too good. Even from The Great Hard Drive In The Sky, Beverly managed to make things difficult.

(Yes, I just anthropomorphized my (old) computer and its assorted innards. And you loved it.)

2. My Visa
I mean, we knew this was coming, right? Like, what would be the most unreasonable thing that could happen?

At 9 am yesterday we called UPS for confirmation that transcript had been delivered. Of course if you know anything about situational irony and/or you follow my life very comprehensively, you know what happened: they didn't know where it was. Again.

I am not entirely certain they ever had any idea where it was in the first place - how do you lose a piece of mail TWICE? I called the UK consulate for a flat rate of 3 US dollars per minute and listened to a British robot inform me that "all of our agents are currently assisting other customers" and that "we will answer your call in a few moments" for half an hour. I then e-mailed them (again), and faxed them a letter with everything my emails have said.

So now we are fucked, because in the very eloquent words of the UK Consulate:
If these documents [my UNH transcript] are not received by 13 August 2010 your application will be refused. In addition, if you fail to provide the correct documents as described above, we will assess your application based on what you have provided.
It is now 17 August 2010, which is decidedly not 13 August 2010. Hmm. That's not quite right, is it? I took my extra transcript that I had ordered to keep on file, which was no longer in its sealed envelope because I wanted to make sure it was right before we submitted it - and went down to the post office to express mail it, because it's all we have. Because UPS fucking lost my official sealed transcript, and now I will probably have to reapply, get my transcripts (again, though at least I know for this time), get my biometrics taken again and then we just might be driving ourselves over to the UK consulate in NYC to personally hand all of this to them so it will be filed all before September 18, which is the date that I am moving into my flat in Scotland, come hell or high water. Or bureaucracy parades.


As I am sure you can imagine, I was very proud of myself for not punching the UPS guy in the face when he showed up to deliver my computer later in the day.

3. Plane Tickets
We are not discussing this.


I give up. Here's a picture of the saddest kitten in the world.

I understand, buddy.


EDIT 8/17 1:40 PM!
Guess what came today! That's right, my original UPS shipment from Thursday! Apparently they couldn't read my handwriting, so it was deemed undeliverable. Um. If you insist - this doesn't account for the part where you don't know where it went for three days. Either way I suppose this whole debacle is technically my fault. I know I have terrible handwriting, but this is absurd.

Things I Do Not Have, A List

1. My computer
I've had my computer for four years (or 438475 years in computer-years). I've had a couple problems with it - but I was also one of the macbook pro early adopters. Macbooks came out in 2006, which is when I was looking to buy a computer for college. So, I have an early model which probably doesn't have all the kinks ironed out. In the past six months, my mac would freeze or black out randomly in the middle of whatever I was doing. I nicknamed my computer Beverly, as she was old and crochety, with a mind of her own. (Plus it made me feel better to yell at something semi-animate: "God dammit, Beverly!") If she decided she didn't like what I was doing, she would shut down on me. It was frustrating, but something I could generally work around. I knew I had to get it fixed before I left for Scotland, but it's not the worst thing. I figured I had a video card problem, based on extensive Google searching.

Finally I took it in to get repaired a little over a week ago. Their solution was to give me a larger hard drive, because I had used too much of it. Too much of my hard drive? If you don't want me to use the space provided, don't give it to me! Anyway, they installed a bigger hard drive and left Beverly alone to her own devices over the weekend to copy my files over. Beverly did not like this and seized the opportunity to freeze again. So, now the computer repair people are trying to replicate the problem organically so they can fix it.

My well-documented hatred of handheld computer things - I barely use my cell phone, don't own an iPod touch and would never dream of owning a blackberry or iphone - means that I am really, really disconnected, more so than usual. I'm using my dad's computer in the meantime. It took me three days to figure out how New Word worked so I could write my column; I still haven't figured out how to save anything. I don't have any of my bookmarks, I don't have stumbleupon, and these computers don't have sound cards so I can't watch youtube. I don't even have wikipedia to look up stuff while I do my research! You guys, I don't know what to do! It is kind of like living in 2003, only with Windows 7. Come back to me, Beverly!

2. My Visa
I submitted a small forest of paper to the UK consulate in New York about two weeks ago, and was informed that there's a 15-day turnaround time for student visas. Last Friday I recieved an email telling me that I needed to submit my UNH transcript by 13 August 2010. This is reasonable, as it was how I got into Strathclyde in the first place. I can't actually get UNH to mail it to NY, because I have to mark a couple things on the envelope so it gets sent to the correct person. I requested my transcript that afternoon, and it has not arrived yet - usually mail to/from UNH takes about two days. It is now August 11th, and I need my transcript to be in their hands by Friday. SO! tomorrow I am driving up to UNH to pick up my transcripts directly from the registrar, overnighting them to NYC, driving back home and hoping this all goes through in time.

3. Plane Tickets
Without my visa, there's no point in searching for plane tickets. I'm not supposed to have tickets until I have my visa; part of the paper forest I had to submit was a proposed itinerary (this means my itinerary has to be approved by The Government.)

I LEAVE IN FIVE WEEKS.
Can you tell that I'm stressed about all of this?

In my mind, the URC is like a very large-scale science fair. I hope someone brings a paper-mache volcano.

When I signed up for the Undergraduate Research Conference in March, I hadn't planned on having to restart my thesis. I also assumed that a poster presentation would be a fairly straightforward thing, which is why I decided to do a poster presentation AND a thesis reading. This may have been an error in judgment. But, there wasn't much I could do about it.

Last Thursday I very sleep-deprivingly drove to every nearby place that would print a 32x40 semi-gloss professional poster. Due to my tiny department of 35 students and three professors, I was in charge of my own poster. Conveniently, UNH offers these printing services, but they said they needed a 5-7 day turnaround time. This was the 5-7 day turnaround deadline before the URC, and I had nothing to give them. Worried, I went to Kinko's and Staples to get quotes. For the convenience of approximately a 2 hour turnaround time, I would pay nearly three times as much. I had planned on working on my poster the week I got back from spring break. I didn't even start rewriting until two weeks ago.

This weekend I started working on my poster. I sent it to print an hour ago.

To be honest, the nature of my project is that it is quite simply not accessible to everyone. There aren't a lot of pictures which are applicable to native and adopted locative prefixes. It requires a lot of very wordy explanation. There is no way to make this "user-friendly". I tried, believe me. It was a stretch to come up with two graphs.

Helpfully, the last time I used Powerpoint for ANYTHING was middle school, and we all had to make a metaslide that showed we knew how to use powerpoint. I had no idea how to make a poster using it... but there is no time for a learning curve. Luckily for me, someone compiled a How-To. Beverly, my old and rather crotchety computer, decided that this was a good time to let Powerpoint crash every 20 minutes or so. This was frustrating.

But, Shelly approved of my final poster draft while I was in class this afternoon. I ran to get it printed through UNH's copy center, which apparently is three days ahead of schedule and not costing me $92.25 for 32x40 inches of semi-shiny paper with things printed on it. So this is all going very well; much better than anticipated, really.

Craigslist sketches me out a lot.

It's fine for buying a couch for $35 or getting a job through their help wanted ads, but anything larger than that immediately falls under the category of "Questionable".

So when Nicole asked me yesterday if I wanted to check out a car she found on craigslist, I had my apprehensions. Understandably, I think. But, I have a car, and she needed a ride over to where this car was. That and I had absolutely zero plans that afternoon, so I may as well make my life interesting. Though Lynette the GPS overshot the house a little bit, it wasn't too hard to get there; Nicole recognized the car from the ad anyway.

She was checking out a 1997 Ford Thunderbird. Now- Nicole and I know almost nothing about cars. She knows they have belts and cylinders and I know they have wheels and brakes. We are by no means the best candidates to drive ourselves to some guy's house and attempt to buy a car without a lot more prior knowledge.

It has just been inspected and was inspected until July; the guy who owned the car had just installed new rear brakes, and he had a garage full of other vehicles - it was clear he was a mechanic of some sort. We couldn't think of anything else useful to ask besides winter driving, gas mileage, and we stared blankly under the hood. The car also didn't have plates or a passenger's side door handle. The guy took us on a ride down the street and back.

We went to Franz (my car) to mull it over. There was someone coming at 4:00 who was also thinking about buying it.

Heather: I don't think you should buy this car.
Nicole: I think I'm going to buy this car.
Heather: Okay.
And with that we drove to a bank.

It was nerve-wracking. I was nervous about the whole craigslist factor; Nicole was nervous because this would be her first car ever! Finally we got ahold of someone who knows more than we do about cars (though, to be fair, that doesn't take much) and they agreed this was a good idea - a good deal too - and we felt better about it. So she bought a (hot!) '97 Thunderbird which we named Bruno. It was $900.