February 9, 2024 — Returns Not Accepted

Jeff Powell
4 min readFeb 9, 2024

--

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2024 08:58:54 -0800
Subject: Return
From: Jeff Powell
To: returns@universe.org

To Whom It May Concern,

A few internet searches lead me to think this might be the email address to contact in order to get an exchange on my body. Mine is wearing out far too quickly, and a new one is definitely required.

Alas my warranty paperwork is missing, and my mother is no help as she didn’t save a copy of it.

Without going into too much detail, advancing age has so far resulted in my noting the following:

  • Lower backs are a very bad idea in general.
  • Noses (and associated sinuses) need to be located somewhere else.
  • Bald spot.
  • Arthritis.
  • Spherocytosis.
  • Occasional and non-specific pain for no obvious reason.
  • Reduced healing rate (when compared with that of 20 years ago).
  • Reduced ability to concentrate (when compared with yesterday).
  • Forgetfulness.
  • Other things I can’t recall at the moment.

These recurring issues necessitate a full return and replacement of my body with a newer (and much younger) model.

Please advise on where you are located so I can bring my body in and exchange it for a new one at my earliest convenience.

Also, please let me know where the clue store is, as some individuals I know definitely need to shop there. I assume it is run by your organization as well.

Sincerely,

Jeff Powell

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2024 22:37:04 -0000
Subject: RE: Return
From: No One <repliesnotaccepted@universe.org>
To: Jeff Powell

Dear Mr. Powell,

We regret to inform you that a warranty replacement is not possible in your case. We’ve looked up your records and confirm the following:

  • You failed to file your warranty replacement request within 90 days of birth.
  • You failed to include authorizing signatures and blood samples from your parents, grand parents, and great grand parents.
  • You didn’t include any of the required 47 forms.
  • In reviewing our records, we see that even if you had done all of the above you’re not worth the trouble.

Deal with it yourself. We owe you nothing.

The Universe

PS: We’ve never heard of the clue store. Sounds like you need to shop there yourself.

So that’s pretty much what my week has been like. How’s by you?

Well, no. Not really. My week was fine. At least, I think it was fine. I’ve kept busy, but I honestly can’t recall much of what I was doing. The days come and go and it’s Friday again.

Oh, wait. There was a fair bit of time spent on the community association website. What I need to figure out and accomplish there is more than a bit complicated, and well beyond what the WordPress people blindly say is a simple matter of “installing a new theme”. Nothing about this is simple and I am grinding my gears on various issues.

I suspect I will have to make all the changes I need as a “big bang”. That is, I’ll have to start the changes first thing on a Saturday morning and slog through them as rapidly as possible in the hopes that by Sunday evening the site is usable again.

At the moment I am doing that on a staging version of the website and taking notes about what I have to do to make it all work properly when I do it for real on the production server. Whee.

And yes, I know there are ways to migrate the contents from one WordPress site to another, so that — in theory — I could migrate the contents from our staging site to our production site after I have everything figured out. But I already do that the other way — production to staging — as part of our backup process, and I see… well… let’s call them “oddities” that come up as a result. I would rather avoid such things if possible on our production site, so it seems I get to do it live.

There’s also been some work on the March edition of the community email already. I’ve attended three meetings of the city council (well, actually it’s the district or municipal council) and I’ve been taking notes on what they are doing for inclusion each month. It seems I have fallen into hyper-local reporting of a sort, which is kind of wild. I’ve also added a new section of important dates in the month, because there are plenty of things that people need to be reminded of, and now I have a place to do that.

And finally, I also read and enjoyed The Disambiguation of Captain Shroud, the first story in Titanium White. That’s the latest book by Gary Shockley, a friend and former stone carving student. Some of you know him.

Next week’s post will be a bit different, but I am not saying how just yet. You’ll just have to wait. (Ooooh! Mystery!)

Anyway, the dog squeaks (as always) and the pile of things I need to get done is not small.

I wish you peace.

--

--

Jeff Powell

Sculptor/Artist. Former programmer. Former volunteer firefighter. Former fencer. Weirdest resume on the planet, I suspect.