an exercise in futility

Can I tell you a story?

It’s all Bruce Springsteen’s fault.

He’s coming to Adelaide in January next year.  My husband has decided we should go (not like him at all to suggest a concert, so I grabbed it and ran!).  Tickets go on sale online today.  At three p.m.  Which is when I will be sitting outside a school waiting for children to be collected.  Not near my laptop at all.

No worries, I’m a technically savvy girl.  I’ll get the tickets on my i-phone.  Except my i-phone for whatever reason won’t let me log in to the ticket sales website.  I don’t know why.

No worries!  I have an I-pad.  That lets me log in to the website.  But I don’t have any data on that, we just use it through the wireless at home.  Easy fixed – I’ll just buy some mobile data from a shop and bob’s your uncle.  Sorted.  I’ll be online, outside school, I can buy the tickets then.

So off I go to the local Internet Shop.  She’s very helpful, suggests a good plan that runs out in two years, lots of time to use up my data.  All I need to do is pay for it and be done.

But her eftpos machine (the money taking thing) doesn’t want to work.  She says I’ll have to go and get cash to pay for it.  I think a better idea would be for her to work out what’s wrong with her machine rather than put the onus on me, but that’s just me.  Sounds like an easy idea, except the ATM in the shopping plaza is a generic one which’ll charge me a heap for the privilege.  But I had a brainwave, I can buy a $2 sim card, take it home and do it all myself while enjoying a nice cup of coffee.  Easy peasy.  I had $2 so I paid and left.

Then the fun started.

Apparently, my house doesn’t exist.  I needed to enter my house address when I tried to activate my simcard, and it’s just not there.  No alternatives – just ‘nope, sorry. Can’t do it.  Computer says no.’ 

I then rang the Company.  I get a very nice lady who wouldn’t listen to me, who kept telling me over and over again that the simcard I have is only for phone calls, not data.  Despite the packaging telling me it has ‘All you’ll need for your tablet’.  Finally, FINALLY she believes me, and then proceeds to tell me that we can’t do it because my street doesn’t exist.

Anyway.  After much haggling, she’s finally found me on google maps (god love Google Maps) so she’s confident that we are actually here.  She has activated my sim card and I shall receive a text message from them with my special code, and I can then get moving.  I shall receive the text message within ten minutes.

It’s now been half an hour.

Stay tuned.  My little job that I expected to take ten minutes is now rounding up to its third hour.  It’s no wonder I get so little quilting done.  I thought technology was supposed to help us!

As I said, I blame Bruce.