Much goes Not-So-Well

This has mostly been a frustrating day.

Work was frustrating in a sort of "that's the way it goes sometimes" way. A bunch of us had to shoulder a burden today to take a load off some other folks. It was drudge work - not really distasteful, but not a lot of fun, and exhausting. Took most of the afternoon. Glad to get it over with, and management has been very appreciative of our efforts. Probably if the rest of the day hadn't had its difficulties I wouldn't have really been bothered by it.

The other frustration at work was beating my head against a programming problem and making no headway whatsoever. I gave up when it was time to go and shot an e-mail to a cow-orker who's more versed in the frameworks than I am and hopefully he can help me figure out the problem tomorrow.

After work, on a lark, I decided to drive down to Heroes, a comic book store right near my old apartment in Campbell. I was driving down Hamilton Ave - a major road near the freeway - on the way to the store, trying to merge into the left lane to make a left turn, when I suddenly noticed something small moving into the street in front of me. Before I could react, I had hit it, and it started scraping along the ground with my car as I came to a stop. (I'm kind of lucky no one hit me from behind.)

It was not as bad as it could have been: It wasn't a person or an animal, but it was a kid's skateboard, whose board top was entirely black, which explains why it was so hard to see. When I stopped, a kid - maybe 10 years old - came over and pulled it out from under my car, and said, "You ran over my board," and walked away. I was a little too dumbfounded - and relieved - to say anything, though I afterwards hoped the board was solidly damaged to teach the kid a lesson. I pulled over into a gas station and checked out the tire which had hit the board. It seemed to be fine, and when I got home later it still seemed to be fine. So hopefully there was no damage. But if my tire is flat tomorrow morning, then I'll know why.

Anyway, I found a few things I was looking for at Heroes which made it worthwhile.

I came home to some good news and some bad news. The good news is they sent me a replacement for my credit card which is about to expire. I'd phoned them today to ask about it, and they said it was in the mail.

The bad news is that I received a letter from my credit union stating that a check I'd deposited for some comics I'm selling was returning due to non-sufficient funds. Which would be okay except that I shipped the books to him this morning! And why did I do that? Because the check, which I deposited over a week ago, was showing up on my Web statement as being deposited in my account as late as this weekend! And I checked tonight and it's still showing as deposited!

Better yet, my credit union is charging me $18.00 because someone else's check was returned.

Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuckety-fuck-fuck.

Which is pretty much what I plan to say to the AEA Credit Union when I call to bitch at them about it tomorrow. What a load of bullshit.

On the plus side (sort of), I ordered a new Handspring PDA today. My old one has gotten a bit beaten up, and has stopped synching with my Mac - or with any other Mac, using any cradle. So I figure it's time to get a new one. I'll transfer the data using infrared, which isn't the best thing, but at least it'll work.

But other than that it hasn't been a great day.

Well, maybe tomorrow'll be better.