My Head Hurts / Drug Store

The two topics really don't have anything to do with each other, but I'll explain. First: My head hurts because I have spent the better part of the past two days dealing with computer issues. I had it in my mind that when we eventually move to our new house, I would like to somehow simplify how music is accessed in the various rooms where one might want to listen to it. We have this thing called a Netgear Stora, which is essentially an external hard drive which automatically backs up the contents of the computer hard drive. You can also use it as a server to store, share and play photos, videos and music. I have part of my music library on the Stora and part on my hard drive in iTunes. So, why not put it all on Stora and then access it somehow. There are devices that can do that and here is where part of the headache comes in. The DMA (Digital Media Adapter) must be compliant with UPnP-AV, DLNA or Windows Media Connect. Okay, all of this is geared for home use and in the home there is generally one of me, a u-hC (nts). That's a user-home consumer (non-tech savvy). So why do they write all of this lingo that can't be understood by one of me? I read somewhere in the on line documentation that if I signed up for the "premium" service for $20.00 a year, I could use an iPhone, which I guess also means an iPod Touch. I can sign up for a 30 trial of this service at no cost. I signed up. It thanked me for signing up, but then said I wasn't signed up and wouldn't I like to try it for 30 days.

The second part of the headache: I got a Word document by email that I was supposed to sign and send back. Well, since I don't have Word on my computer, I couldn't do anything but look at it. I thought I had avoided this problem by switching from a Mac to a PC. Apparently not. I have Open Office which does most of the things that Micrsoft Office does and I thought it would open the document so that I could print it. Apparently not. I then read how if I downloaded Internet Explorer 9, I could edit Word docs right in my email, even if I don't have Word on my computer. I downloaded Internet Explorer 9. You would think that since it is a Microsoft product it would have preserved my home page (MSN) and my Hotmail sign in. But no. I now had a Google home page and was signed in with my Gmail account. My favorites, which used to be on the left of my screen are now hidden on the right side. A yellow star in the upper right corner of the screen doesn't get me to them and seems to do nothing. there were also a series of buttons at the top of my screen which have now vanished. Do people in companies actually get paid to sit around and try to figure out how to screw up your life by changing everything all around for no apparent reason? At least I was able to get the document to wake up and to allow itself to be printed, but what a pain it all was. So that's why my head hurts.

Now, on to drug stores, Rite-Aid in particular. Last week I called, using their automated phone systen, to order a refill on a prescription. A few days later I got a call that it was ready. I got in my car and drove there, about 10 minutes away, to find that they didn't have the drug I had wanted, but two other drugs (I order the other drugs through Shop Rite where they are cheaper). They said that my doctor had sent the two drugs, but that it was not a problem that they could put them back. Where's my other drug, the one that I ordered? They didn't have approval for that yet. I would have thought (silly me) that if I order drug "A" and approval comes in for drugs "B" and "C" someone would say, "This isn't what he ordered. Why don't we check and see what's wrong." What they said instead was, "He ordered a refill on drug "A" but he got "B" and "C" instead. Let's call him up and make him come over here for the wrong drugs. His blood pressure might soar and then we can sell him more drugs."

That's the news from here, where it is cold and rainy and computers, their drives, accessories and software are out of favor.