I am comic, hear me roar!

Well, I finally had some time to putter with my new PC, and discovered to my horror that it wasn't the machine I thought it was. I thought I bought a machine with a CD-RW drive, but when I tried to make recovery disks this afternoon, there were no storage drives to be found. Harrumph.

The PC really had a simple CD disk drive, which is about as useful as a bag of cats to me (sorry, Oatmeal; pardon me, Butler). Harrumph x 2.

I was horrified--had I really, stupidly bought a PC thinking it had a CD-RW drive when it, in fact, hadn't? What gave me the idea that it had a CD-RW drive in the first place?? What a DOPE!

Then I looked at the ad in the PC Connection catalog that drew me in, that said, "This is the PC you need--look at all those features and look how reasonably priced it is!" There, big as life, after the RAM and GHz and so forth, was the "CD-RW" feature I thought I bought. So I wasn't delusional--rather, I was on the receiving end of a wee bit of false advertising. Or something.

Then I called customer service. Well, you can guess what happened. First, the kind gentleman offered to authorize me to return the unit, "explaining" that the CD-RW listed was just among the many features available in the PC series and so on and so forth. In a word: He tried to snow me, dear readers, and not in a little way. But me, fresh off a great standup set in Beantown, found myself saying, "No, that's unacceptable. What's your Plan B?" He had to talk to his supervisor, then offered free shipping on the return of the unacceptable PC and the PC that actually has the features I thought I was getting--but for another $100. "Well, that's not going to work, either. That sounds like a bait and switch. What else can you do?" He had to talk to his supervisor again, and came back with a truly reasonable offer: They'll replace the wrong PC with the right, as-advertised PC at no extra charge. Free shipping, too. We have a winner!

Boy, do I ever feel assertive as all heck. There's more to standup than making people laugh, apparently--I think it helps a gal develop a little more spine, a little more backbone (and if anyone verges on the invertebrate, it's yours truly). It's disorienting, but I think I like it.

Now I have to get up my nerve to see if my new laptop is as advertised. Wish me luck.....