Myblowes, techno wonder, side tracked

Last night after work I figured I would stop at Lowe’s and get the paint for the bedroom.  What I expected to be a quick stop turned into a long, drawn out, annoying as shit affair.

When I painted the bathroom in July, the clerk at the paint counter convinced me to sign up for mylowes.com.  He told me how this wonderful site would keep track of your Lowe purchases.  He said in my particular case it would be beneficial because it would also keep my paint color code so I don’t have to worry about keeping old cans of paint around.  Ok, sounds great, I signed up.

So when I walked in there last night I expected to utilize my mylowes account to pull back my paint code.  I expected too much.

The first hassle was I didn’t remember my account password but I did have the little mylowes card with a bar code on it.  I asked if they could access my account using that.  He said he thought they could if they used their little hand held custom Apple Touch devices.

He walked me back to another counter and a woman that had one of these scanners.  At first he asked her if she could do it but it became obvious quickly that she had no idea how to do it.  She was fumbling around for awhile before the guy that was with me grabbed it and tried.  He was unable to get my account to come up either.

Ok, I told him I would initiate a password reset so I could just get into the info via the website.  After stepping outside and waiting for the email to show up, I completed the reset process and headed back to the paint counter.

The guy I was just dealing with had disappeared, I later found out he went to lunch.  Also other customers had showed up so I had to wait until they were helped.  In the meantime I went over to the public pc and logged into my account and brought up my past paint purchase, figuring that was all I would need.

So the woman that didn’t know how to work the handheld device was the one that was covering the paint counter.  I told her I finally had my account up so she could get the paint code.  She came over and looked.  It was like she had never seen mylowes before.  She said she didn’t see a paint code but I could tell that she didn’t even know where a paint code would be on the site.

She called over someone else and they said that the one number MIGHT be a paint code but he wasn’t sure.  My patience expired.  After more head scratching and confused looks I told the woman that I would just have to go dig out a paint can if I still have one.  I told her I didn’t understand why Lowes would push customers into using their site if the employees aren’t trained on how to use it.  Luckily I did have an old can of the paint in the utility room.

In the middle of the paint drama, I walked out and met Ali in the parking lot.  She brought her Volt to show me.

It’s amazing how far the tech has advanced in the past 5 years.  When we bought the Camry Hybrid it seemed like we were right on the cutting edge of cool tech.  The Volt makes the Camry look like old school.

Ali was showing me some of what she learned about the car during the brief orientation at the dealership.  The dual video screens, one for the dash and one for the AV system puts a huge amount of info at your fingertips.  The OnStar connection teamed up with Iphone integration puts a ton of entertainment in front of you.  Ali flipped through screens where you could check the local weather forecast, closest gas stations and what is playing in movie theaters (complete with plots and directions to closest theaters)

Of course all of this stuff is like crack to a techno-addict such as myself.  It is like driving around in your own little gas free space ship.  Ali was very excited about what will likely be her set of wheels for at least the next half decade.

With the back seat folded down Nicki actually has substantially more room to relax then she did in the Camry.  The hatchback configuration will give Ali a lot more flexibility to haul stuff in general.

So since I spent so much time at Lowes I got home much later than I hoped.  The game plan was to put another big dent in the paint prep for the bedroom.  I was annoyed I was getting a late start.  Well the start got delayed a lot longer.

My dad had called me a few days ago about some message he was getting on his laptop that he couldn’t get rid of.  I told him at the time to call me when he was ready to get the laptop on the internet so I could remote control to it.  Well last night he was ready.

I went through a very tedious process of walking dad through getting remote control software loaded on his laptop.  This was further retarded by his slow internet connection which is via a 3G wireless adapter.  Eventually after close to an hour on the phone I was able to rectify his problem.

 By the time I was done with dad it was after 8PM.  I was frustrated but wanted to at least get something productive done in the bedroom.

I patched a couple damaged areas around the window, swept the walls to remove any stray cobwebs and wiped down the baseboard area with a wet rag to ensure a good surface to tape onto.  It’s far less than I hoped to get done but at least it was something.

I expect the next 4 days to be both physically and mentally grueling.  In addition to the painting project I hope to get my Pioneer stereo installed in the Tacoma over the long weekend.  I am quite sure that will have it’s own unique set of “challenges” as well.

Just to make things interesting I have another race to time on Sunday morning.

At least I should have no shortage of things to write about come Tuesday.