The USDA strikes again.
19 October 2010 | Still stuck in Aurora
Sunny but cooler-yuck!
And so the saga continues.
I called the USDA yesterday to see what the problem was with the 7001 form we need to get our International Health Certificate for both Blue and Snowshoe--our cats. We'd talked repeatedly with them last Thursday and Friday to make sure we filled out the form correctly. Our biggest question was the "Consigner"and "Consignee" boxes on the form since we aren't actually shipping the kids any where. We were advised to put our name in both boxes. Off the form went via the vet's fax machine.
We'd received a call later on Friday afternoon to call in as they had a question. Of course they were closed when we got home so I called them first thing yesterday and were told by "Jonathan" that we had filled out the form wrong. We'd put our same name in both the "Consigner" and "Consignee" boxes. I explained to "Jonathan" that last friday after getting transferred four times, that was what we were advised to do by the Doctor that inspects the forms. Jonathans response was "Well, he told you wrong". It goes to show that do as the government wants and it is still wrong in one way or another. I was advised that to do the form correctly, we were to put our name and the name of our boat in the box along with the names of the different countries we were planning to visit. We made plans to head back to the vet to start all over again.
Meanwhile, I'd noticed that the Apple MacBook we use was beginning to slow down and really come to an impasse when I booted up the "Mail" program. I decided to make an appointment at the local Apple Store. When we arrived, they ran a diagnostic on the poor thing and it came back that the hard drive was beginning to fail!! Not a good thing but good that we found out now rather then next week when we are back in Mexico. Luckily, I'd purchased their "Apple Care" when I bought it so out it came and in went the new drive. I was really lucky that I had made a backup copy of what was on the hard drive on Sunday.
Once done, off for lunch and over to the vet to start all over again. This time we took our own copier with us rather than driving to the local Albertsons(local grocery store) to get a copy made for faxing. We filled out another form and off it went. Once we got home(about 1530) there was a message on our answering machine to call Jonathan again. I got on the phone again and of course, I went to his voice mail(gee what a surprise). Of course, he didn't return my call before he went home last night.
I started up my "new" MacBook and hooked up the Western Digital hard drive I had used for my backup. Western Digital has installed a password protection program on the external hard drive which on the surface is a good thing but when you are trying to get it unlocked so you can download it's contents to a computer that is basically a blank slate with no programs on it, it becomes a problem. I made another appointment at the Apple store for 1730 hours(it was 1620 by this time) and then placed a call to the tech support for Western Digital to try and find a way to stop the drive from requiring a password to open. My conversation with "Bob" from Mumbai, India was lots of fun. First we had the language barrier to overcome and then he had to understand what I needed. I'd hooked the drive up to a "Windows" computer and it opened up just fine once I entered the required password. That wasn't good enough for "Bob". Oh no, I had to download the required software from Western Digital. He could not grasp the fact that I already had unlocked the drive. So Download I did and what did I accomplish--it locked up the drive all over again and I had a tough time getting it unlocked. All this during numerous times of being put on hold. After 50 minutes of accomplishing absolutely nothing(other than getting me very frustrated)I finally hung up as it was now after 1710 and my appointment was for 1730 and I had a way to go to get to the store.
I got to Apple just a few minutes late and explained my problem. "No problem", we'll just create a new account and had it install there and then delete the new account once the installation is finished". With just shy of 200 gigs to transfer back to the MacBook, I took off for a nice dinner at Tokyo Joe's. The tech figured it would take about a hour to do the transfer. I got back just about 1900 and found the computer saying it had "less than a minute" to go. I was quick to find that this did not represent an "Earth" minute as 20 minutes later it still said "less than a minute"to go. I came to the conclusion that it must be either a minute on Jupiter or Pluto but surely not an Earth minute. Just before 2000, it finally finished. I rebooted the computer and all appeared to be fine!!! Sure am glad I bought Apple Care. All this was done for FREE! After checking all the different accounts I have on the computer--some running with Windows, I took off for home. I had lots of updates to do to bring the computer up to current day standards. There went the rest of the evening but hey, at least I didn't have to buy a new computer or even a new hard drive and I had been lucky enough to do a full back up the day before the problem got out of control.
So this morning at 730 hours,I made a call to the USDA to speak to Jonathan to see what was happening. I went to his voice mail. I called back at 0830 and went to his voice mail again. It's now just after 0900 and I just heard from Jonathan. Our form was fine, he just wanted to make sure we were up to date with what each county needed(shot wise) when we got there. Yes, we had read the reports and were fine. The kids probably need one more shot and we will be done. We scheduled an appointment for tomorrow at 1100 to get the forms and pay our $36.00. Now, back to Uhaul to get our reservation set to pick up the trailer so we can get on the road. Our last order should be here by Thursday and we can be out of here by Saturday(maybe, the day is still early).
Stay tuned--the adventure continues. Oh, and as to the photo on yesterdays post--no that is not a hula hoop, it's the support ring for our mosquito net that will go over our cockpit so we will be a Taj Ma Boat once we drop out anchor in the different places where we intend to stop to keep the bugs out.