3.353 amazon, tech, docent, tech, swbb

Wednesday 11/30/2022

Amazon is just stupid. OK, I received a package that I did not order. Unsolicited Amazon packages are a known issue, just do a search on “unsolicited amazon package”. One of the top results will be this page from Amazon’s own Customer Service pages. It is clear what to do: “report it to Customer Service”.

Right. How? If you go to Amazon’s customer service page proper you end up at the “Hub Gateway” to service, which gives you a big menu of issues. None of which is “report an unsolicited package”. Click on any of those options and go as deep as you like; there is no way whatever to report an unsolicited package. All the choices are very specific and none of them are relevant to the problem.

Just as well, actually, because back on the help page, it says “List of order ID(s) (at least one order is required)” — and there is no order id on the label of the unsolicited package, and no invoice inside it.

(Later: I think I will go to the Amazon page for this item and leave a negative review, maybe.)

Anyway, did the laundry. At 10:15 I had a haircut. At 11:30 I got a call from Craig. He had a tech squad call from Susan and Harry: trying to upgrade Zoom on a Mac and it wants a password. Could I take it off his hands? I knew exactly what the problem would be: the same as Florrie’s (day 3.336), a hell of lost passwords. Usually when Zoom wants to install an upgraded version, it’s no problem. But on this most recent update, it wants to change something that MacOS thinks is protected. So MacOS asks for your administrator password. For most people this is not an issue; it’s your login password that you type every time you reboot the computer. Except Harry’s computer was set to not ask for a login on reboot, so he never did, and had no bleepin’ idea what his password was. The one that his wife Susan had written down didn’t work. So now we are in to resetting a Mac login password. No big problem, but it will require you to know your Apple iCloud password … and down the rabbit hole we go. Half an hour of resetting passwords everywhere and we got it all straightened out. Susan gave me a hug for my good work.

Grab a bite and join 7 of my neighbors to lead them on a tour of CHM. That went well, and they enjoyed the 1401 demo at 3pm also.

Back home I was just thinking about putting on a Stanford sweatshirt ready to meet the carpool for the SWBB game at 6:15 when there was a call from… David M. In the auditorium, trying to set up for an event tonight. This is 5:35, and good on him for starting early. In the next 30 minutes he and I work out his problems and get everything set up for the show. The setup was different this time, something we hadn’t actually done before, but it worked. I think. Everything looked good when I left him at 6:06 to go downstairs and join the carpool group.

The game was with Santa Clara, and I thought it would be another easy win, but in fact the Broncos played very tough and stayed within 10 points right to the end. When I got back just before 9pm the auditorium was dark, so David’s event was over for better or worse.