5C's Que Pasa

On the 4th of February I was to take my computer in for repairs but the fellow had to postpone to Friday the 12th. He was supposed to call us when the parts were in.  We never heard from him all of last week despite leaving texts, voicemails and emails. We also did not have his address as he was working from home during Covid. The appointment was at 10AM. So I simply put his name in Google to try and find an address and was quite surprised at what I found. He has had several reports to the Better Business Bureau as well as many news articles. Turns out that he is shyster and is well know for not returning calls for months and months. Even worse if he has your computer, folks have waited over a year to get it back. He was in trouble for using the funds of a Go Fund Me that he did for friends. 10K simply gone. Allegedly the CRA ( Canada taxes ) took half of it due to an outstanding account. Remember the 2018 Humboldt Broncos crash. He started to sell T shirts on line to collect funds for the team. People sent in their money but never got the shirts.

As I was learning of this Colin received a text saying that he would have to cancel for yet another week. Phew!  Saved from a serious problem. We had already decided to not use him. Colin had taken on the chore of finding a repair place and had found this guy and it all appeared to check out on the surface. There are only a few choices here in Kelowna for computer repairs and my best solution was to go with Simply Computing who are still closed due to smoke damage from a fire. I can’t wait until sometime in March. So I Googled “repairs for Apple products in Kelowna” and came up with the perfect company. They have been in business since 2011, have a proper office, an outstanding website and are so very organized. We spoke on the phone for thirty minutes and this tech totally understood my needs and will simply clone my old hard drive onto the new one. He only charged a $70.00 diagnostic fee as a deposit which will go towards the entire repair. The final price is within a few dollars of the first quote. He is an authorized Apple technician. Gosh, I wish we had found him years ago. While I was still on the phone with him I got a receipt for the fee and a second email with a proper ticket number. He will do the repair on the same day. They are on the second floor and he offered to come down and carry the computer upstairs for us. Really nice guy. He has the SSD in stock but needs to order the RAM and Monday is a holiday here in our province and hopefully the Ram will come in on Tuesday. So it sounds like it will all work out.

I had a chiropractic appointment in Vernon at 11:30AM which we both forgot about as we chatted about the new tech. So suddenly it was rush rush rush to get out of the house. Something was wrong with the car.  The air ride suspension would not work and we were riding on the suspension. Rather bumpy. As we drove I called the Jeep dealership in Vernon and was told that likely the line was frozen due to the cold temperatures we have been having and we should put the car in a warm garage.  Sorry but we don’t have a garage.  He said not to drive it much as it might damage the suspension. We kept driving but carefully. The car did thaw out and started to work by the time we were ready to drive back to Kelowna. However we had the same problem when we went out on Saturday so the car will be going in Thursday morning.  There is a possibility of condensation being in the lines. The following photos are not directly related to my writing.

The edges of both Wood and Kalamalka lakes were frozen. I was on the phone with the Jeep dealership when I saw strange white wispy clouds hovering over Kalamalka. Wish I was better able to see it and get more shots. Must be something to do with the cold air hitting the lake. The chiropractor asked if we had seen it driving in.  She describes it as so beautiful that it brought tears to her eyes.

We had errands that needed to be done before we drove home. Colin made a point of putting the front of the car in the sun each time we stopped. At our first stop I discovered that I had left Fridays list at home and taken Saturdays list in error. So I sat and did my best to try and recreate the list. We forget a few minor items that we picked up Saturday. We had to pick something up at Canadian Tire and it turns out the item had gone up $10.00 as the sale ended Thursday. I even had the price on my iPhone but no go. So we left. While sitting in the car Colin decided to go back in to customer service and buy it anyway. The lovely lady said that she would honour the sale price 😀  Our last stop was to pick up dinner, I had forgotten but not Colin. We really enjoy Papa Murphy’s Take ‘N’ Bake pizza. They had a 20% off promotion for the Valentine weekend. Another savings. I like to add more cheese and it is a tasty meal. Sadly the franchise here is no longer operating so we only can get it when we are in Vernon.

Skaters going down the lake in the midst of snow flurries this morning. We could barely see them.

Finally we were on the highway headed for home, the sun was shining and the car was working properly. There was a large semi in the right lane slowly going up a hill.  We were already in the left lane when I screamed but Colin was already correcting. Thank goodness he is a two foot driver. Those extra seconds to move his foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal might have been too late. There was a young lady driving a tiny blue car directly  behind the semi. I guess she was impatient with her slowed speed and she made a quick turn of the wheel towards our lane.  She never even shoulder checked  but just headed right towards us. Colin did what he had to do.  She must have been shaken as she pulled back in behind the semi. As we passed she was smiling and her male passenger was laughing.

Later this Valentine morning the snow changed to lovely fat flakes.

It took a few moments for me to settle. Colin is such a good driver. He is always watching and is prepared. We had to drop my books off at the library and finally got home. I was too worn out to post about the day.  Even posting about it now I am emotionally worn out. Yes Friday was certainly one of those days. To be honest I really did not want to go out again on Saturday but we have a few deadlines that we have to meet by next week end.

I hope that you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day. We were pleasantly surprised by some falling snow. So pretty to watch it fall. The temps rose a bit today and so it did eventually melt. Funny how after the arctic air, we now consider -8C/18F warm. The geese are just coming in now for the evening. We never saw them when it was so cold.

-47C is -52.6F.

Some fun thoughts for my American readers.