Frame of mind

I may be surrounded by insanity, but I am not insane!

(I hope.)

I have this business customer who is driving me crazy. He has always been high-maintenance, but lately his behavior is off the scale. Every day (EVERY!!! DAY!!!) he comes up with some feeble excuse to interrupt me so that he can inspect my "progress." One day this week, he went so far as to badger me when I was sick in bed. He wanted me to give him the passcode so that he could open up the control panel on one of the vaporators and check the meter. Another time, he demanded to know why I had not set my vaporators to the same settings as some previous farmer he had done business with.

First of all, I don't tell him how to do his job - although someone probably should, since his family ends up re-doing a lot of it.

Second, if he liked the previous farmer so much, he should have been nicer to her. At her going-away party, she told me that she hadn't been able to decide about accepting an offer to relocate to a different planet, until a perfectly-timed paranoid tirade from him about a misplaced piece of office equipment. At that point, she said, she realized how much she wanted to move on.

Third, when he looks at those switches, he only thinks he knows what he's looking at. He thinks that his passing familiarity with residential vaporators makes him an expert on moisture farming. He could not be more wrong.

Fourth, even an expert couldn't tell what all of my vaporator settings are, because I've customized, modified, and retrofitted the controls so many times that they barely resemble the original equipment. (An expert would know that.)

I've never lied to him, nor been late with a shipment before, so I don't know why he keeps looking for trouble at my farm. In fact, I've sometimes been ahead of schedule, and there have been times (quite a few) when I've had to wait for him, for reasons he never saw fit to explain. (Not that I require an explanation. What I'd actually prefer is an apology.) As for the lying - I've had nothing to lie about. At least when I need something from him, I don't wake him up when he's sick and try to fool him with lame subterfuges like "oh, I was just curious."

I would love to tell him to take a hike, or at least take his business elsewhere, but unfortunately he's my biggest customer at the moment. Someday I will land a bigger account (Fixer's would be ideal) and be able to tell this guy to make other arrangements for his moisture needs. Until then, all I can do is grind my teeth and think about some of the more pleasant people I've known in my life, like that teacher who used to beat us on our birthdays.

In other news... hmm... things aren't going well with the fish farm. We don't know what's going wrong, but so far, none of the fish have made it much beyond the baby fishie stage. I have convinced Kane and Dofi to let me call in one of those "know-it-all" expert types. Now I just need to find one.

Also: the droid situation. What a nightmare! On a friend's advice, I checked the law and indeed, I am eligible to accept Onegee's manufacturer's offer of a 10,000 credit as well as the lawsuit settlement, which is still several months away. (You guessed it: that law firm letter I got on Life Day was from SORAS's lawyers, not from the plaintiffs' lawyers as I had originally assumed.)

But I took one look at the SORAS catalog and realized that a 10,000 credit will not get me much, even with free shipping. They do have some "factory reconditioned" models that I could afford with a small loan, but with my biggest customer about to lose his mind I'm afraid to make any big financial commitments at the moment. Especially since the reconditioned droids have a shorter warranty.

Meanwhile, I considered a DIY kit, but my hands just aren't up to the challenge of doing fine mechanical work, especially after a long day of working on the vaporators.

A medium-quality, refurbished droid would mean a shorter workday.

A slightly better droid would mean a shorter workday and a holochess partner.

A reconditioned Onegee with all original modules would mean a shorter workday, a holochess partner, and a nurse, which does come in handy from time to time. But that's out of my price range for now.

I really need a new droid, but until the lawsuit is settled, I'm not sure how much cash (if any) will be coming my way. If I knew that, I could make a smarter decision about which droid to buy. I could get another Onegee now, and the settlement would maybe cover the balance of my loan.

My instincts are telling me to buy a low-end reconditioned droid from SORAS now, and when I get my settlement, I can use the money to upgrade that droid or trade up to a better one.

Now I'm rambling. Sorry about that. It's not every day that I get to make a big purchase like this.

Last item: Owen got a sudden, severe case of desert pneumonia about a week ago. Luckily, he is fine now; and I take back what I said about Luke being useless in a crisis. He said he was just acting on instinct, and that must be true because I am sure he has never had special medical training. He overrode his uncle's grumpy protests that he didn't need to see a doctor, and got him to a clinic in Anchorhead, where they quickly diagnosed the problem and did emergency surgery to repair the damage done to his lungs. Apparently, Owen has the same susceptibility to local germs that Cliegg did; unlike Cliegg, it's been caught and repaired before it's too late.

Knock on sand, that grouch will be around for many years to come.