Gun violence

March 7, 2013

I have a theory about what is causing the increase in gun violence.  My theory is overly simplistic and certainly only a part of the explanation, but I am betting you will agree with me:  Life has become increasingly complicated and frustrating, and that undoubtedly means shorter fuses.

I’ve been thinking about writing this entry for some time, and finally wrote down the annoyances of just the last 26 hours:  (As you will soon conclude, I am taking some “personal time” to get some personal business done.)

  1. I had to contact AVG support because PC Tune-up had stopped opening.  I was “connected” to the PC Tune-up department.  After waiting on-hold for more than 20 minutes, I went to the user interface which invited me to enter my info, call in, and gave me a code to enter.  I called. No option to enter the code. Got another rep who was going to connect me to the PC Tune-up department.  I asked, “are you sure I will be able to get through without holding for another 25 minutes?”–The customer service rep checked with his supervisor.  The answer?  No one would be in PC Tune up tech support for 30 minutes.  I do not mean that the lines were busy.  There was no one in the department, period.
  2. I need to buy a new mattress, so decided to get a one-month membership with Consumer Reports.  After I filled out all the info and paid my $$, I tried searching for “mattress.”  (There were 3 places to click–I tried all 3)  Received the following error message:  “Not found: the requested URL…was not found on this server.”  (I have the screen shots!)
  3. I then went to the Sealy site–Do you have any idea how many mattresses there are?  (I didn’t count–but too many)  I gave up–perhaps that is the idea…I called the company to see what mattresses they had that had the key features I was seeking.  The person didn’t know anything more than what was on the site–she told me I would have to look through all the items on the website.
  4. I recently got an iPad mini, in part, so that I could read e-books and check them out from the library.  As it turns out, to do this, I have to log into my library then log into Library2Go, which requires me to enter my library card number and pin every time.  The good news?  I have now memorized my 14-digit library card number.
  5. I had purchased a high-end oven which turned out to be a lemon.  When the company came to exchange it today, they were unable to check the bios to be sure they were correct.  The good news:  At least the tech was smart enough to know that needed to be done and to request the information in advance from the company.  The bad news?  The info hadn’t made it to dropbox.  That means the tech, the reps at the vendor, and I will all have to follow up to be sure I have the right version.

Clearly, none of the above is a life-threatening or significantly life-altering experience, but I am betting that virtually everyone is experiencing these kinds of occurrences increasingly often.  My theory is that some of those who turn to gun violence have simply “had it.”  They have other issues in their lives AND these kinds of issues as well.

Life would be less stressful if these aggravations didn’t occur so frequently.  I have lots of solutions but lack the power to implement them.