Monday 5th April 2004
Just to make sure I'm in the perfect mood for this, I'm sitting at VillageIdiot, typing into the remains of my laptop, while a kid lacking the average intelligence of a zygote goes baa baa baa wheek over and over again while its Squeek&Spell plays back a staccato .mp3 of a train wooting in between this creature's blatting. Which is to say that, now that I've got a laptop again, I can't actually think well enough to do much with it.
WinAmp, oddly, doesn't do much for me. There's no sound coming out of the speakers. I hit the Mute button, which does nothing. I try to rightclick the little speaker icon in the tray, but it's not there. I try to open Programmes, Accessories, Entertainment, Volume Controls, and learn that There are no active mixer devices available. To instal mixer devices, go to Control Panel, click Printers and Other Hardware, and then click Add Hardware. Of course, there is no Printers and Other Hardware option, so I just click Add New Hardware.
Hopefully, I'll be able to write what, on this computer, works out to be the replacement to the What's New from Sunday 11th January 2004--the last entry I got downloaded to this machine, having typed it on Hunter's laptop three months ago, after my laptop had first broken.
Let's look at the history here for a moment.
The good news is that, while my laptop thinks the 'net stopped happening three months ago, my trenchcoat is slightly more up to date: I've got a ream of printouts from JestBuy in my pocket, with dates and issues and so on. So I can document this all here without rushing home to my tower to look everything up. Here's the last three months, according to my trenchcoat....
My laptop breaks on me. For no evident reason. It just tells me that the Operating System [is] Not Found. Great. Lucky for me, I bought the thing at JestBuy, which, prior to 2004, were pretty good about fixing or replacing broken computers in a matter of seconds. However....
I take my laptop into JestBuy at 13801 East Mississippi Avenue in Aurora to have something done about it. Eventually, I get Anna the Fraud at Large to accept the thing under PSP Number 1907144466, where PSP stands for something resembling Phixing Sans Payment; it's covered by the extended warranty I wasted three hundred bucks on when I bought the machine. The Scheduled Completion Date is 22nd January 2004.
Having heard nothing at all from JestBuy, Hunter calls the store at 303-338-5797 to find out where in hell my laptop is. It's not actually there, but it could be, within about two weeks, if they bother to fix it for me. Not that they're in any hurry to do that, since they've decided that the harddrive is destroyed because someone spilled coffee into it [without spilling coffee into anything else in the machine] which means they get to charge me $350 for a hundred-dollar drive. Anna commits to oral contract, with consent to record the conversation, that, in addition to a working drive, the $350 will also purchase evidence of customer abuse.
I get my laptop back. But the situation has changed. Now, the ransom is four hundred bucks to get this thing back, and Anna the Fraud at Large no longer wants to give me the promised evidence, or even the drive they allegedly replaced. We put the four hundred bucks on MasterCard and abscond with my laptop into the night.
Having reinstalled the OS and several gigabytes of software, I try to use my computer. But I can't. Because, now, the UpArrow key is jammed deep inside the machine. Also, my M key has been replaced by a second J key; no one has ever been able to explain why that might have happened, except that JestBuy are a company of morons.
Having spent several days trying to get through to anyone--intelligent or otherwise--at 888-BESTBUY, I finally find someone alive, who, it turns out, agrees that Anna the Large Fraud is an idiot, and that I'll have no problem getting my four hundred bucks refunded at all. Also, I should just take my broken laptop into a different JestBuy, where people won't be fraudulent imbeciles.
I get the laptop to the JestBuy at 4100 East Mexico Boulevard in Denver and explain the basic history of the issue. The 'droid at this new store agrees that Anna is a moron, and that I should have no problem getting my four hundred dollars back, and that they'll have my computer fixed in no time. And they'll call me once it's ready to pick up. Just to be safe, they give themselves until 2nd March 2004 to fix the thing.
Having heard nothing from JestBuy, I call them to find out why they keep trying to steal my laptop. Of course, it's not stolen; in fact, it just came in about five minutes ago [since UPS are known for delivering things at seven at night] and I can come in and pick it up anytime. I do. And I get it halfway across town to VillageIdiot here just in time to discover that the UpArrow key is still jammed. On the bright side, I've got an M key again. Yay.
I get the laptop back to JestBuy on East Mexico. They can't believe the UpArrow key wasn't fixed. No problem, though; they'll have it fixed instantly. Insofar as eleven days is instantly. But, they promise, they'll give me a call on or before 30th March 2004 to tell me that my computer has finally been fully repaired.
Since 30th March has come and gone, I call JestBuy at 303-758-5805 to find out why in the living hell I haven't got a damned laptop in my car with me. Some idiot assures me that it's not his fault, and that the laptop is en route from wherever they sent it to be fixed. He gives me a UPS tracking number [1z9088583511440633] so I can watch the laptop's progress on ups.com from a laptop I haven't got, so I won't have any reason to call him back and be scary at him again. Since I'm driving, I give the number to Hunter, who writes it down on the back of my ream of JestBuy lies, and sets it down in the car somewhere.
We find the paperwork, along with the scrawled tracking number, which I give to ups.com so I can locate my laptop in the universe. According to ups.com, my laptop weighs nine and a half pounds [I knew that already] and had been sent Second Day Air from Newbury Park, California at 6.35pm on 25th March 2004; it arrived at JestBuy on East Mexico at 10.25am on 29th March 2004--damned near precisely ninety-six hours before I called this idiot who claimed that it wasn't there yet, but I could find out where it was [there, of course], by tracking it through ups.com. I took exactly long enough to thump the PrintScreen key on my tower before reaching for my phone, spending several minutes on hold, getting hung up on, calling back, writing a quick message on the board detailing this idiocy as it occurred, finally getting through to what I assume was the same moron who gave me the tracking number, being told, for a change, that the computer had come in five minutes ago, telling the SpEd that I was looking at the UPS tracking invoice which assured me they'd had my laptop for a damned week, getting the 'tard to more or less concede that he'd lied to me again, and, unfortunately enough, warning him that I was on my way right that instant to get my laptop for the final time, which probably gave him time to go find a damned cave to hide from me.
I get my laptop to VillageIdiot to work on the book which has been delayed, at this point, by three months. And some mutant kid is wheeking as its Squeek&Spell is wooting, and it occurs to me that I've got some pretty evil .mp3s on this machine, which I could probably counterattack with just by loading up WinAmp....Then I click it again.
Then, since it's highlit, I hold down the Enter key for thirty seconds, watching it flicker.
Some idiot replaced my keyboard, and dismantled my bloody soundcard. And, apparently, the scrolling function of my touchpad. And who knows what else.
So. Here's the good news, Lemmings and Germs: this was Strike Three. And not even by my rules. When I picked up the remains of my laptop a few hours ago, the guy behind the counter [and out of physical reach] assured me that, since this was the third time they'd made an attempt to fix this thing, if anything was wrong with it now or in the future, they'd just give up and give me a new one.
So I'm getting a new laptop tomorrow. A 'comparable replacement'. Meaning an HP Pavilion running at 2.4GHz or more, with a 60GB drive or larger, with a resolution of 2560*1024 or greater, with at least three USB ports, a firewire port, a network port, an RCA port, and, since I bought the HP Pavilion ze5185 a month before it was officially released largely as an item of conspicuous consumption, a 'comparable replacement' is a model featuring these characteristics while being the cutting edge top of the line monster, which is to say that, a 'comparable replacement' is not, in fact, a machine with all this neat stuff which, in 2004, sells to mendicants for a thousand bucks; I also want my four hundred bucks back, since I have no need for a disembodied hundred-dollar laptop drive which fits a machine which doesn't work. Then, I'm writing a damned novel, which has already generated a spooky amount of interest based only on a twelve-page sketch of a sample chapter, complete with an expanded version of this little tale hidden in the Author's Notes--possibly including the courtroom transcripts in the event I'm actually pushed into suing these imbeciles. In fact, I might even put in a full page advert for JestBuy.com, just to make sure people get it. I'm viewing this criminal inanity as an Act of War.
More later....
--Gremlin