Tag: Anger

Why I Bought the Apple Vision Pro—And Why I Am Returning It (UPDATE: NOT Returning It)

This is not the review that I was expecting to write for the Apple Vision Pro.

Last Friday, I took the day off work, and went down to the Apple Store in Polo Park, giddy as a kid on Christmas morning, to pick up my pre-ordered Apple Vision Pro. The demo and walk-through went very well, and I have nothing but praise for the store associate who led me through a basic tour of the AVP’s features. I picked up the eyes-and-hand navigation in no time. I marveled at the technology, declared it worth every penny I had spent, and walked out of the store, bags in hand, feeling on top of the world.

I was told that I was the first person in Manitoba to walk out of that store with an Apple Vision Pro. I wanted to be on the cutting edge of VR and AR. I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I was all set to go.

However.

I am currently at the point where, unless something changes quickly, I will soon be walking back into that same Apple Store, the same bags in hand, with a repackaged Apple Vision Pro and accessories (e.g. a carrying case), to return them all and get my money back.

Why? Well, I’m glad you asked.

I am returning the Apple Vision Pro for one reason and one reason only. During the order process, I scanned a copy of my eyeglasses prescription, since I will be unable to wear my glasses under the face-hugging, ski-mask-like design of the AVP.

When I showed up last Friday to pick up my unit, they cleaned and put my eyeglasses into a machine called a lensometer, which automatically measured my lenses and spit out a code, which then could then use to pull magnetic prescription lenses from the large collection of lenses they have kept in the back of the store, just for the purpose of demos. So, in other words, even though I didn’t have my prescription lenses ready yet, I could still go through the demonstration and walk-through process in store which, as I have said, went swimmingly.

The problem is, that I only have 15 days to return the Apple Vision Pro for a no-questions-asked, full refund. The clock started ticking the moment I left the store. And, as it turns out, my prescription lenses I ordered are currently still sitting in limbo in the United States, and I cannot get a hold of any real, live person at UPS to explain to me why they were unable to deliver them to me today, when they were promised:

All day, I kept refreshing the tracking page, waiting for it to move from “On the Way” to “Out for Delivery.” It never happened. The last status of my order was dated July 13th, showing that my prescription lenses were sitting in a UPS facility in Louisville, Kentucky, where apparently they have been sitting ever since. No word. No updates. No text or email messages with status updates (even though I had set them up).

This is when my nightmare started.

I spent the next few hours this evening trying, in vain, to connect to a real, live human being at UPS who could tell me why my prescription lenses were stuck in limbo. Every time, I landed up in an AI chatbot hell, which sent me in circles.

So I have decided to return my Apple Vision Pro and get my money back, because there is every possibility that my 15-day return window is going to close before I can even use the damn thing! I have assembled it, charged it, and put it on, once—and I can’t see a thing without the corrective lenses I need. I can’t even begin to set it up! The clock is ticking while I essentially have a useless, CA$7,700* paperweight on my hands. And I am getting angry.

Why Apple chose to partner up with UPS to deliver their prescription lenses, and why Apple forces you to order the device and the prescription lenses at the same time, instead of ordering the lenses ahead of time, is something that I do not understand. Maybe once I actually get my hands on my prescription lenses, then I will go back and buy one. But not before.

But I am not going to sit around and wait for UPS to get their shit together, and spring me from AI chatbot jail. I even tried to file a claim, only for it to be rejected, with a reference to the same telephone number with the same AI chatbot I had fought with all evening:

I was quite willing (eager, even) to pay through the nose to be a glorified beta tester for Apple, but not if I can’t even USE the device I bought! This whole sales process is screwed up for people who require prescription lenses, and until it is fixed, they can have their Apple Vision Pro back, and my money can sit in my bank account until they do get their act together. Enough. This is not the level of service I expect from a company like Apple, and the fact they decided to partner with UPS, and their shitty customer service, just blows my mind.

UPDATE Thursday, July 18th, 2024, 9:00 a.m.: My tracking page now looks like this:

Therefore, since I now have absolutely no idea when I can expect my prescription lenses, without which my Apple Vision Pro is useless, tomorrow I will be packing up my device, and returning it to the Apple Store to get a refund within the 15-day, no-questions-asked return period.

UPDATE Thursday, July 18th, 2024, 10:44 a.m.: I have just spent a very frustrating half hour on the phone with the Apple Store in Polo Park, which started by once again being interrogated by an AI chatbot who is pretending to type on a keyboard while telling me to please wait. When I finally got through to a real person, I could not find the original purchase receipt in my email at all, and I had to jump through several hoops in order for them to send me another receipt, which I will be printing off and bringing with me on Friday when I return everything.

I am getting angrier and angrier at this whole experience, and that anger has nothing to do with the specifications of the product itself; it has everything to do with how I am being treated as a customer. UPS gets most of the blame here, although my situation illustrates that Apple might need to rethink how the purchase process might need to be adjusted for people who require prescription lenses.

UPDATE Saturday, July 20th: So, I packed up my Apple Vision Pro and took it back to the Apple Store, where I spoke with both the business manager and the store manager. They told me that they wanted me to take advantage of the full 15-day return window, and therefore would not start the clock until my prescription lenses are released from limbo in Louisville and are in my possession!

Therefore, I took my boxes back home, and now we are working from both sides (mine and the store’s) to figure out why there has been a delay in delivery, and how to fix it. (Please note that all this happened before the Crowdstrike outage, which apparently is also affecting UPS. As of this morning, the status on my tracking page is still “The delivery date will be provided as soon as possible,” and they are still stuck in Louisville, Kentucky, where they have been sitting since July 13th.)

UPDATE Tuesday, July 23rd: Well, today UPS updated the tracking page for my prescription lenses to a status of Delay, with the message: “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. If you are the sender, please check with the receiver to confirm delivery. Otherwise, you may start a claim to provide a resolution.” In other words, UPS seems to have lost my lenses.

I once again tried to file a claim, filling out several pages of information on the UPS website, before I once again got the same error message as I did last week, which referred me back to their 1-800 telephone number and AI chatbot hell. After yelling at the chatbot for half an hour (which, apparently, has not been trained on the phrase I WANT TO MAKE A CLAIM), I finally got connected to a real, live human being in the Tracking Department, who referred me on to a woman in the Investigation Department, where I learned that it is now up to the sender (i.e., Apple, or perhaps Zeiss) to start an investigation into what went wrong. So, I have dutifully relayed all the information this women gave me to my contact at the Apple Retail Business office at their Polo Park store.

At this point I am ready to tear my hair out in frustration. It doesn’t help that I have also been fighting with both my bank and Canada Revenue Agency this week, over a mistake which my former financial planner made in 2022, leading to fines I have to pay for all three of the 2022, 2023, and 2024 tax years. This thing with Apple was the cherry on top of a shit sundae, a very bad week overall. But I digress.

So far, this has been a horrible customer service experience, easily the worst one since I tried to get my Valve Index VR headset repaired when it broke. As a result of that experience, I swore that I would never, EVER purchase a Valve Index VR headset for the virtual reality lab project I am currently working on for the University of Manitoba Libraries, because even though I like the Valve Index hardware, God help you if anything should go wrong, and you have to try and get support for a problem, or (God forbid) you want to talk to an actual person about the problem you are having.

Valve’s entire support system is set up to hinder, not help you, and keep you from talking a real person, much like the UPS setup (and, for that matter, the Canada Revenue Service). I might be able to forgive, but I will not forget, and my current experience with Apple, Zeiss, and UPS, is shaping up to be similar to my Valve Index debacle. (I note with a feeling of harsh satisfaction that my blogpost outlining my nightmare support experience with Valve shows up in the first page of Google search results when you search on “valve index support.” At least, it does for me. Your mileage may vary.)

You give Auntie Ryan a poor customer service experience, trust and believe that everybody will hear about it, sweetheart! (Or, as I often like to say, “I am that bitch.”)

At this point, Apple is going to work with the investigation team at UPS to find out what the hell happened to my first order, and we have already placed a second, replacement order, which is due to arrive July 27th to 29th. And Apple will issue me a refund for the first set of lenses, which we now assume are lost in Louisville. And I have received an apology both from the Apple Store, and from UPS, for the incovenience and hassle. So, now we wait.

*cost of a 1-terabyte Apple Vision Pro, two years of AppleCare warranty coverage, a carrying case, plus provincial and federal sales taxes (equivalent to US$5,628 at today’s exchange rate)

Pandemic Diary, January 26th, 2022: Why I Am So Goddamned Angry

My father (God rest his soul; he died when I was just 21) had a temper. There were times when I was on the receiving end of that anger, and they were terrifying. I swore that I would never become him, but then I fell into a different, but perhaps predictable, trap: both suppressing my anger (which led to my lifelong, chronic, clinical depression, a dragon I still battle today), and projecting my anger onto other people (becoming a compulsive people pleaser, particularly to bosses and other authority figures). Neither tactic helped me.

It wasn’t until I had a textbook-classic case of hit-the-wall burnout, circa 1997-1999, when I had to come face to face with the fact that how I was dealing (or more accurately, not dealing) with what was making me angry was undermining my life and, essentially, killing me. That painful realization was the start of a long journey of healing, which is still unfinished.

I would get into my subcompact car and drive around Winnipeg’s Perimeter Highway, screaming myself hoarse in rage, with all the windows rolled up. I had inherited a brown corduroy recliner of my father’s after his death, and I would kneel in front of it and beat the seat cushion with my fists in rage, until they bled. And I did a LOT of therapy, talking things through with the psychiatrists who prescribed different kinds of antidepressants to help me heal from my debilitating waves of depression, my suppressed anger. I also talked with other counsellors and wise people through the years. It all helped.

And, for the most part, it worked. Today, when something happens that make me angry, I can usually respond by actually feeling and being aware of my anger, within a reasonable time frame (minutes and hours, not left to fester for weeks, months, or even years). I can feel appropriately angry, identify what (or whom) made me angry, try to parse the situation intelligently, and get some sort of handle on it. This is all progress, good progress.

But the fact remains that today, I am angry. Let me tell you why I am so goddamned angry. I’m going to create a list.

  • I am angry that, despite having had the foresight to see that a pandemic was coming (to the point that I began blogging about it, exactly two years ago!), and despite preparing logistically for such an eventuality for years (even stocking up on canned beans and rice and N95 masks!), that I was as mentally and emotionally unprepared as anybody else when the pandemic did strike. No amount of prepping can prepare you for the actual moment when the shit hits the fan.
  • I am angry that so many people refused to listen to me between January and March of 2020, when I was telling anybody and everybody who would listen that we needed to prepare, collectively and individually, for a pandemic. I confused and upset people when I took a blog which heretofore had been about social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, and starting posting item after item after item about the pandemic. I wore myself out, and I honestly don’t know how many people were actually helped or convinced by that frenzy of posting.
  • I am angry—no, make that incandescent with rage—at all the people who chose to listen to the misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories regarding the pandemic and vaccination, attacking the very scientists and healthcare workers to which they should have been paying attention. I am furious that, at a time when we could have all pulled together for the public good, during a public health crisis, we as a society instead chose to descend into divisive, argumentative factions, and that diviseness only seems to be getting worse instead of better. Who the fuck thinks it is okay to assault hospital workers, or send people like Dr. Fauci death threats?!??
  • I am furious at the collective failure of all levels of government—national, provincial and state, municipal—to provide humane, science-based responses which could have prevented so much needless suffering, sickness, and death. I am angry at all the politicians during this current Omicron wave of the coronavirus pandemic who threw up their hands, and walked away from the people who looked to them for leadership, and instead gave empty sound bites. (Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, I am looking at you. The next provincial election cannot come fast enough to toss your entire sorry government out on its asses.)
  • I am angry at how negatively my depression and anxiety have impacted my life, my career, and my beloved work on this blog and the Metaverse Newscast. I could have done so much better; I could have done so much more. The pandemic has just been beating the absolute motherfucking shit out of me lately, and I hate, hate, HATE that. Hate what two years of unrelenting stress and anxiety has done to me, hate what I have become as I barricade myself yet again in my apartment, practising elaborate social distancing when I do venture out, picking up my fucking groceries between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday from the pick-up at my local Walmart, standing well clear of the car while it was loaded up. I fucking hate it and I want to scream in frustration and rage, just as I had to scream out my anger at my father, only this time I don’t have a convenient target for that anger.

I am lying here, typing all this into my iPad, on the verge of angry tears which won’t come, which won’t break through. I am so angry of being scared and so angry of being tired, and frankly so angry and fed up with being angry. And yet, the situation calls for still more patience, more forbearance, and more forgiveness, than I can seem to find within myself. I’m not sure how much more I can stretch, today.

I am angry at every twist and turn and disappointment and heartbreak of this pandemic, and angry at all the collective suffering, pain, and chaos it has caused.

I am just plain angry.

I’m angry

And maybe that’s all I can do today, is just be angry. And perhaps use that anger as a fuel, to somehow, someway, propel me into tomorrow. To a day when I’m not so angry.

Pandemic Diary, March 5th, 2021: Broken Together

One of my favourite songs is a duet by Amy Grant and James Taylor called Don’t Try So Hard (even though I consider myself an agnostic, I still love Amy Grant’s voice and I am still a big fan of her music, which I listened to endlessly as a teenager in my church youth group days).

So, I tossed it into YouTube Music to spin up a radio station of related songs, and up pops a song from Casting Crowns, Called Broken Together. It’s actually a good song:

How I wish we could go back to simpler times
Before all our scars and all our secrets were in the light…

Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together?
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us?
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together

And “broken together” seems like an apt two-word description of what all of us, collectively as a society, are going through with this soul-crushing, dream-deferring coronavirus pandemic. I find myself wandering through my rarely-left-behind apartment like a zombie. I pause on my way to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup, and suddenly feel the weight of painful reality come crashing down upon me again, and I lean against the wall and close my eyes for a minute, and steel myself to continue. Keep going, keep moving, keep breathing. Keep living.

The next three to six months of the pandemic are going to be hardest stretch of the marathon yet, I fear. It doesn’t help that I have little to no faith in Brian Pallister’s incompetent, pompous, and adversarial Conservative provincial government here in Manitoba, which has largely mismanaged this crisis almost from day one.

For example, take a look at this map showing the locations of vaccination clinics in two neighbouring provinces, Saskatechewan to the west, and my Manitoba to the east:

God, when you wish you were living in Saskatchewan, you really know your life is going sideways. 😉

(OK, I was joking, people. It was a joke. Check the emoji! Please put your pitchforks and your tar and feathers away. I already got almost-cancelled last week, and I have zero wish to repeat that experience.)

Sometimes my anger, verging on pure volcanic outrage, is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, the only thing that propels me through my day. But anger is exhausting, and I am already bone tired. So sometimes—often—it slips into depression. I took three sick days from my paying job last week, something I am not proud of. But it was necessary. I need to take care of myself. I am broken.

So many of us are now feeling broken, yearning for the simpler, pre-pandemic times, and that brokenness, and that need to connect, is expressing itself in society in unexpected and weird ways. We now gather and commiserate on Clubhouse and in Twitter Spaces instead of our local community bars and coffee houses.

Last night, as I was listlessly scrolling for some much-needed socialization on Clubhouse, I came across one room with Lindsay Lohan and her acolytes, and a second room where Paris Hilton was presiding over her minions (what, is this 2006 again?!??). All we need is for Britney Spears to pop up on Clubhouse (Free Britney!) and then we’d have the Unholy Trinity riding together again…I mean, if that isn’t a sign of the impending apocalypse, what is?? (Thank God, Margaret Cho was discussing female comedians and comedy with her usual acerbic wit in another room. Some sanity still prevails.)

Everything old is new again: two-thirds of these people were in Clubhouse rooms last night (surely this must be a sign of the impending apocalypse)

Use whatever technology you can muster—Clubhouse, Twitter, FaceTime and Zoom, and yes, even social VR and virtual worlds—to maintain our connections, our togetherness, in this time of brokenness. Reach out to each other. Comfort each other.

We can be broken, together.

Stay safe and stay healthy!

Pandemic Diary: April 18th, 2020

So I snapped a selfie on my way to the nearest garbage bin at my apartment complex this morning:

I am wearing one of the cloth masks that my Mom made for me (she also knitted the scarf I am wearing in this picture). I really miss going to my Mom’s for Sunday dinner.

It has now been a full month since I started self-isolation in my apartment, having received permission from my employer, the University of Manitoba Libraries, to work from home since Monday, March 16th.

How am I doing? Well, not well. But not badly, either. I’m still slipping back and forth between a few uncomfortable emotional states: anxiety, depression, anger. I am taking Lorzepam for the anxiety, but I know that I can’t keep relying on it when my nerves are bad, because I could become dependent upon it, and my psychiatrist tells me that I could suffer rebound anxiety as a result of using it too often. So I reserve the Lorazepam for when I feel especially anxious, which has happened a few times this week.

As for my depression, I can usually judge how bad things are by how many unwashed dishes I leave on my kitchen counter. At the moment, I have a week’s worth of dirty dishes piled up on the counter. It’s a sign that I am not doing so well, when I start to put off chores like that. So I need to pull my socks up.

I know that I am not the only person who is struggling. This week I read an article from SELF magazine, titled 17 Totally Normal Things to Feel Right Now, According to Therapists, and I could relate to a whole lot of them. Here’s the list, along with some quotes from that article:

  • I feel burned out. “Think about it: Every aspect of adjusting to a “new normal” demands energy from you, whether that’s the bandwidth you’re expending keeping up on the news or the weird learning curve of doing your job remotely. Meanwhile, so many of the ways we typically recharge are off the table right now: seeing friends, hitting up happy hour, going to the gym, or whatever self-care activity of yours that the pandemic has derailed. ‘There are so many more things draining us than things fortifying us right now…That’s a recipe for burnout right there.’”
  • I feel angry. “You probably don’t need me to tell you that there are a lot of things to be angry about right now, whether you’re frustrated at people who aren’t taking this seriously enough or have a lot of feelings about how the pandemic is being handled on a structural level.”
  • I am spiraling about what might happen: “The uncertainty of the pandemic—and the long-term impact it will have on both a personal level and a larger scale—is one of the most common themes the therapists I talked to have come across in their work. That should come as no surprise to anyone going through a ton of anxiety right now; there is just so much we can’t predict…’Anxiety rises due to the fear of the unknown, and right now, many things are not known…I have been hearing people worrying about running out of food or supplies. People are afraid that they will lose their homes or cars due to being out of work.’ The list goes on. The important part to remember is that most people are grappling with uncertainty right now, and it’s normal to feel terrified.”
  • I am struggling with working from home. “Transitioning from a typical work setup to working from home has caused a lot of stress, angst, and frustration for a ton of people.”
  • I am mourning canceled events. I miss my monthly arts and entertainment group meeting (although we are scheduling a Zoom meetup on Sunday). I miss the older gay men’s dining out group. I miss being at work and being around my coworkers and the students and faculty at my university.
  • I want a hug. As someone who is self-isolating alone in my apartment, I can’t even remember the last time someone touched me.
  • I feel guilty about my relative safety, security, and privilege. I was much more physically and logistically prepared for this pandemic than most people I know. I have a couple of months of food on hand, and 3 months’ worth of all my prescription medications. I don’t need to leave my home for anything except absolutely essential trips or emergencies. But I do feel guilty that other people, who wouldn’t, couldn’t, or didn’t prepare, are struggling, perhaps even suffering. Hell, there are people on this planet who are facing this pandemic without access to clean, running water.
  • I am grieving. “While it’s true some people undoubtedly are dealing with the loss of loved ones to COVID-19, therapists are noticing grief in other ways too. Most people are grappling with some kind of loss…whether that’s the loss of a job, your freedom, your feeling of safety, or your vision of how your life should be going. All of that can trigger a deep sense of grief, though many people don’t recognize it for what it is.”
  • I am feeling inadequate about my productivity. “‘One issue that I’m seeing is people feeling guilt about not being productive enough while at home in isolation..From day one after lockdown orders, many clients felt that they were wasting time and failing miserably at the transition to working from home. There is also pressure to learn languages, take courses, master finances, and do all the things. Productivity porn is very loud right now.’ That noise can be difficult to drown out, so don’t feel bad if this is something you’re struggling with. ‘We live in a nation in which many of us are accustomed to engaging in activities centered around thriving…Unfortunately, much of that focus must be shifted to surviving right now. Be kind to yourself as we shift and refuse to be guilty for not being productive.’
  • And sometimes, I just feel numb. “With everything going on, it might alarm you to wake up one day and realize you feel…nothing at all. That’s to be expected too. Even in the most chaotic of times, it’s impossible to be on emotional high alert 24/7. ‘I think of it in terms of adrenaline…You can only have adrenaline coursing through your veins for so long until the body has to reset and simmer down.’ Same goes for emotions, especially the longer this goes on.”

On top of everything else, I feel exhausted, and I have been struggling with insomnia. Once again, a night of restless sleep detached and inactivated one of my expensive LibreLink blood sugar sensors, so I have had to replace it before it was due to expire in 14 days. This is the second time this has happened since I started using this system, and it is frustrating.

Even just writing this blogpost seems to have brought me down, by making me realize just how much I am trying to cope with. Small wonder I am struggling. It would be overwhelming to anybody.

So I am just going to keep on keeping on, using this blog as my pandemic diary. I know that I have supports in place (anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication, talk therapy, my social network) to keep me safe, grounded, and sane. We don’t know how long this public health emergency will take to pass. We don’t know when the restrictions that have been placed on all our lives will start to be lifted.

But we do know that this will not be forever. I have to hold on tight to that belief, putting my faith in all the doctors and scientists who are working to create a vaccine to end this nightmare.

Stay safe, and stay healthy!