I spend a whole lot of time on this blog whining about things that disappoint me…and it seems as one grows older, one is less tolerant of disappointment. But not everything in my life is a bother…some things make me actually smile, or pleasantly surprise me, and I don’t blog about those things nearly often enough. In the spirit of the most wonderful holiday season which I simply cannot let go, I’ve collected a few of them here, after the jump.

A Visit to the Eye Doctor

I have an irrational fear of anything touching my eye. Yeah, I know it’s stupid, but like arachnophobia or acrophobia, it’s something over which I have no control. To show the severity of the fear, I was having a stone removed from my eye in the emergency room many years ago, and with the scalpel against my eye leaped from the chair because I thought I felt something. (”You shouldn’t do that,” said the surgeon. “No kidding,” thought I.)

So it won’t surprise you to learn I avoid eye docs like lepers. But eventually vision gets to the point where it’s impossible to function, and with our insurance changing yet again (and not for the better, an all-too-common occurrence in this country today), I figured I’d better get my (*gulp*) exam and new glasses before I end up paying for it out-of-pocket.

So I did. The doctor I visited was extremely tolerant of someone who tried valiantly but repeatedly failed to keep his eye open for an eyedrop (again, not something I have any control over, so stop calling me sissy!), and finally determined the prescription that would allow me to read again.

And man, it makes one heck of a difference…except, I can’t work with them. Because of the astigmatic correction, looking at my computer monitor is like looking through a fun-house mirror. The same glasses that allow me to read a book in comfort for the first time in years make reading email on the monitor look like the opening to Star Wars. So back to the doc I go…

We talk, I tell him I’m perfectly willing to exchange some clarity for the ability to see right-angles on a computer monitor, and after a few clicks of that phoropter-thingie he determined a new prescription. He wrote it, and while handing it to me said, “Here, fill this at the dollar store.” I looked down, and saw a script for 2.75 reader glasses.

Guy not only saved me hundreds of bucks, he made me laugh out loud in the place of my deepest fear. I’ll go back to him again. (But not too soon…)

The Amazon Music Store

I admit I don’t have a lot of time to listen to music…I mean listen to music as opposed to having it run as a background soundtrack. And I enjoy all kinds of music, even some that would be unexpected in someone of my advanced years; while I mostly listen to story-songs where the lyrics are more important than the melody, I also love folk but not country, some grunge is great, jazz is perfect for an afternoon coding session, pop hits when driving around town, classical to keep me grounded, well, you get the idea. (Of course, my favorite tune is my theme song, but nevermind that now.)

Yet even with all that, sometimes I’m just in the mood to experiment. I used to randomly choose an XM Satellite Radio channel, but with the bandwidth so constricted for the music channels that now sound terrible, I’ve pretty much given up on that. So the Amazon Music Store comes to the rescue.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have bet on it, either. But Amazon has an amazing number of sampler albums and singles available for free, in MP3 format (no iTunes required, just a browser). If you want to see what I mean, visit the MP3 store and sort the albums by price, lowest to highest; you’ll find an amazing collection of samplers that cost nothing to download and enjoy. And if you don’t enjoy…well, there’s always something else right next door. They list almost 1,500 singles of all musical types free for the asking. Just get them while they’re free…a Celtic sampler I downloaded for my wife over the summer for free now lists at $8.95.

An Anonymous Lego Representative

I can’t say as much as I want to about this, I’m afraid, for reasons that will be somewhat obvious, but the Mrs. and I were in a department store toy department talking about Legos, and I mentioned I was looking for tiny Legos as a joke to my daughter (she had some big ones, and wanted “some little ones,” meaning normal-sized ones, so naturally I was hoping to find tiny Lego bricks as a joke). A woman in the isle (I didn’t yet see her smock’s logo) told me there weren’t any packs of tiny ones, but small ones were in each assortment pack. She then did something terribly nice…I can’t get into the kindness she performed for us, since The Big Guy (you know, he of the red suit and black boots) received the credit, but we sincerely thank her nevertheless, and years from now Katie will, too. And yes, The Big Guy also listened to my daughter’s request and dropped off a few sets of Legos under the tree Christmas morning. Now if they’d only provide tokens when you exploded them - if you don’t play video games, you won’t understand that at all…

Overstock.com

Look, I’m used to fighting with companies to get no more than I was owed in the first place…it’s becoming a rare occurrence for everything in a shopping transaction to go smoothly, and it’s almost certain when attempting to rectify the problem you’re going to meet with some resistance on the part of the ironically-named “customer service” department.

I had an issue with Bing cashback on a purchase from Overstock (it’s important to remember that I am a bargain shopper when it comes to pretty much everything…like most people in today’s economy, I don’t have a lot of spare cash, so I want every dollar I spend to do the work of at least two); since Bing is a Microsoft company and this was my first experience attempting to use Bing cashback, I rather expected trouble, and wasn’t disappointed. I also expected the response from Microsoft…”nothing we can do, terms of service fine print, blah, blah, blah.”

What I wasn’t expecting was the way Overstock’s customer service folks handled the issue. From the first contact, the people I dealt with were insistent that I was satisfied, that nothing less would do. I have a rule I follow in business transactions…never ask for more than I am owed, and never accept less than I ask for. In this case, the reps I dealt with went above and beyond what I asked for, and were pleasant and understanding about the situation. While I’m certain that my not screaming and yelling helped some (I try never to be upset with the rep, since it isn’t like they did something intentionally and personally to cause me grief), Overstock must have as a corporate policy making sure the customer has a good experience, even if things go wrong.

I know this sounds a little bit like a commercial for them, but they made a big-enough impression on me that I don’t care. It’s been a long time since any company impressed me with their customer service department, so there it is.