Monday, February 04, 2008

Appendix to previous post - tech woes

Addition to 11 January - now: My friggin hard disk died 2 seconds after I turned on my beloved baby on the day I arrived home. An ominous clicking sound was the telltale symptom that the hard disk's only limb was wonky. F***.

Spent the next week feeling utter incapacitated with my baby in a coma, checking email only sporadically with my dad's less-than-lovely laptop, and trying to begborrowsteal a WinXP CD but later realised I needed to get the recovery CD from IBM.

1st attempt with IBM: "Sure, ma'am, we'll email you the quotation."

2nd attempt: "Where's the quotation?" "Oh, we'll check."

3rd: (Email:) "Thank you for your enquiry. Please allow 5 to 6 weeks for processing" (My response, paraphrased:) "Why the f*** does it take you 5 to 6 weeks to check if you have a CD in storage?? My work can't wait 6 f***ing weeks!!"

4th: (Email, same day as above:) "Your order has been confirmed and will be put through in 3 working days."

5th: (Phonecall, same day as above:) "Your CD is ready for collection. Now."

6th: (IBM service centre receptionist:) "Service centre that way." --> shoots me a look like I'm an idiot for not spotting the service centre door in the next hallway.

AND...in the meantime, my wireless router chooses this time to enter its death throes. After testing left, right and centre, I conclude that it's the router and only the router that's acting up. Hence, new cheap router...that has to be reset every few days. Sigh. Thank goodness I was kiasu and bought two extra hard disks on sale last year.

So now, I'm obviously back online, sans a bunch of my data that couldn't be saved from the old hard disk. At least, I didn't want to fork out hundreds or thousands of $$ to save the data.

Am amazed, though, that after 4 years, the system itself is still running like a dream, even with minimal maintenance and no upgrades to date. My baby loves me.

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