Thursday, January 15, 2009

RV trip day 11—a travel day


We left San Diego with a promise to ourselves to return. The weather has been delightful (the TV weather person described San Diego’s four seasons as “nice, nice, nice, and a little cool”).

The drive to Desert Hot Springs took only a couple of hours of easy freeway driving through a region filled with low mountains. A few of the taller mountains have dustings of snow. I didn’t take any photos today, but expect to make up for that tomorrow (Thursday). Above is a hippo from our visit to the zoo, where the animals appear to get excellent care. This critter is in a 150,000-gallon tank.

This morning I called iUniverse to inquire about my sales of When Pigs Fly. Until now, their standard excuse for lack of sales stats was a “database upgrade.” Today, a fellow told me that they permanently lost pre-2008 sales data because “a truck hit a light pole.”  Don’t you back up your data, fools? Every business I ever worked for has created backups in case of emergencies. He did say the loss was only of dollar sales and royalties, and that someone in the company has the unit sales information I am looking for. I can reconstruct a good deal of it myself, but it’s a sorry situation when iU can’t do the same.

7 comments:

Joan De La Haye said...

That's a wonderful picture!

L. Diane Wolfe said...

A truck hit a pole?
Write that one down - that's one of the wildest excuses I've ever heard!

Maybe you should do a book on poor excuses...?

L. Diane Wolfe
www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
www.spunkonastick.net
www.thecircleoffriends.net

Anonymous said...

Great photo! But iU - sheesh - shame!!

Katie Hines said...

OMG, was that a hippo underwater? Hope you get things worked out with iUniverse.

Anonymous said...

That has to be one of the best excuses I've ever heard! Seems like they deserve the bad press they're getting. I know I'll never recommend them.

And yay for hippos! I love hippos.

Beth Groundwater said...

I love your animal photos! And major bummer about the lost sales data at iU.

Joy said...

Don't you just love the way such a large animal is so graceful under water?


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