Today will be home office work and (hopefully) Starlink delivery day.
The music ashore played loudly until 01:00AM, and it was particularly bad. With the earplugs I was fortunate not to hear the finer points, but it consisted mainly of an aggressive bass and drum beat punctuated by shouts, sirens, and DJ exhortations to the crowd. I think it was just very aggressive soca. Imagine reggae and Calypso get mugged by bad rap and you can imagine what it sounds like.
I still get seemingly random BSOD on my PC and it is quite frustrating and annoying. And a simple Google of the error message displayed 2 pages of so-called expert sites with solutions, but all of them were just basically peddling their own software repair tools that would do nothing to solve this problem. It tends to happen most when I’m using graphics for video and/or when using audio, but all those drivers have now been updated.
Morning DHL Fun
I made the mistake of contacting DHL support to expedite delivery. That was an absolute disaster and exacerbated my frustrations. I got a human on the line, gave the tracking number and information about the incorrect state of the DHL status. The idiot cut-and-pasted a boilerplate paragraph (which I’d gotten once before, so I recognized it). It stated that the records show that the package was flagged for checking by U.S. Customs and it would take 60-90 days before it could be released and closed the call! This seems to be the standard response to deflect blame. Last time the package was in their warehouse, and I had to pick it up myself. I responded by showing that it had cleared U.S. customs the week before and was sitting in St. Lucia waiting for a DHL employee to send paperwork.
Then came the next excuse saying that DHL in St. Lucia was nothing to do with DHL customer service and I needed to contact them directly. The fact that I’d contacted DHL support because I couldn’t get a local response didn’t change his reply. I asked for a transcript of the online chat. Support stated that this wasn’t available for me to store or for DHL to send. Luckily, I’d made screenshot copies, since now I now know I’m being jerked about. And of course, the final comment “is there anything else I can help you with?” didn’t go down well, as he hadn’t helped but blown me off. So far neither local DHL nor my agent are answering calls.
Morning Work
Home office and Starlink delivery – at least the home-office portion went well. I believe my SIM-Card runs out tomorrow, so I will have to get a new one if the Starlink RV doesn’t arrive today!
Lunch
Promptly at 12:07 I got an e-mail from the agent saying that DHL had attached the wrong invoice to the package (despite it being GLUED to the package!) and that I needed to send him the commercial invoice again. I did so at 12:08. Let’s see how this plays out. I’m cleaning up the glue residue from the remaining 2 solar panels today. Due to the gusty strong winds, I won’t be installing them quite yet.
Afternoon
I’m not surprised at the silence in the ether regarding the package. A bit disappointed, perhaps, but not shocked. I wonder what the next excuse explanation is going to be. Although I’ve got 4 panels up, today is somewhat overcast and I’m not getting much charging done. I wonder if there’s corrosion in the connectors causing undue resistance in the circuits.
Having heard nothing, I zipped into the marina to get to the office at exactly 17:00 when they were shutting down and found out that my package had not arrived. The broker confirmed that DHL had inserted an incorrect invoice into the package that didn’t match mine and therefore customs wouldn’t clear it.
Evening
I stayed ashore, had some conversation and drinks at the Boardwalk and a pepperoni pizza for dinner before returning home.