It Came!


Last night my computer finally came. Fedex took it back to the facility since we weren’t home at 2pm. Luckily Arvada has it’s own center so I did not have to drive back downtown. I got to the center, door ticket in hand, and lo had to wait a bit.

After about ten minutes the Fedex man popped his head into the waiting room to call my name. I followed him out and he took me to the pallet.

“2 boxes, right?” he asked.

“What?”

“Two boxes.” Okay there are two boxes here. One is obviously my new lap top. The other is a full Bose speaker system with a woofer. After getting the boxes in my car and driving home. I brought the Bose box into my house with the proclamation: “This is our Don’t Shoot Me gift from Dell.

I think I managed to convince J. to hook it up to the upstairs stereo, and therefore hook the TV, Wii, and Satellite into the stereo for full surround. What? Did you think I’d be hooking up all that crap to the lap top? Maybe if I have a desk one day.

So after that ooo and ah, I started to dig into the laptop box. This is the part where you must realized, I am neglecting trash duty, laundry and present wrapping to do this. I did get the present wrapping done later and I managed to do the dishes, but my wardrobe today is a bit lacking in the not-so-white trash department.

The large boxed turned out to be a layer of two smaller boxes. The first contained cords and software (I have MS Office 2007 now. Another Dell gift). It also contained a leather day planner.

Okay, it only looked like a leather day planner.

When I opened that up, it had a convenient pocket for the manuals, sleeves for about 10 cds and a pocket for the included shammy and noise cancellation ear phones.

Cool.

So I pull the actual laptop out. The exterior is black warped watery thing with a few inches both vertically and horizontally on my last laptop. Instead of a pci slot, it has a remote control for watching dvds and playing music. The Dell logo lights up with that eerie diamond colored light that most laptop logos light up with now (think the apple logo, M.’s hp laptop does it too.) I have the added bonus that the gray gills on the back of mine also emit that light. I can’t control the color or brightness of it like I could with the M1710 or even the M170 I used to have. The lights on the side of the computer are also gone. However like the M1710, the M1730′s touch pad lights up, and I can change the color, as well as the front lights.

It doesn’t have the bio tech that the other laptops come with…but it has some weird gaming LCD at the top left…supposedly some games use it…but right now it tells me things I need to know…like the time and what my computer is doing with itself. Handy.

The screen is extremely clear. Since Dell has it’s own doc for icons, I’ll be trying that out. I can’t make it as small as Rocket Dock but it has groups. :) .

I only had enough time to put Firefox on the machine and uninstall various stuff I didn’t want to deal with. I now have two computers with webcams…hrm.

Obama and His Invocation, Estrogen in Lotion, Debt and my Computer

Have nothing really in common.

First I’d like to talk about Obama and Rick Warren. Does everyone seem to forget that Obama is against gay marriage? Or that many of the things Rick Warren stands for (even the book), Obama has said he also stands for? This isn’t a shock, folks.

Estrogen is apparently in a lot of lotions and cosmetics. This sucks pretty hard. If you want to figure out if the things you are using have this issue: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/ is the place to go.

Names to look for:

Butylparaben
Isobutylparaben
Ethylparaben
Methylparaben
Propylparaben

Placental Extracts
Uses and Estrogenicity: Placental extracts may be contaminated with estrogens called estradiol or estrone. Placental extracts are used in relatively few personal care products, including hair conditioners, facial moisturizers and astringents.

Names to look for:

Placental Extract
Placental Extracts


So the first of my medicals bills has gone to collections. Crap. The amount stated on the collections isn’t what I owe…I’ve been sending this company money each month. When I look through the past bills I realized that they are all different amounts and none of them repeat. Damn it. I’ve been calling this company for months and they never answer, or return calls. I call the collections agency and they are willing to work with me. Sigh.

Some where in Denver my new computer is sitting on a Fedex truck. I’ll get it today. Since I can’t afford a new computer…I really hope this one works.

Dell Saga Continued…

So supposedly I’ll be getting my new new computer Monday. I say supposedly the same way you’d say, “well the world could end tomorrow, but I’ll buy the Cheetos anyway”.

Unlike when the new laptop (the XPS 1710) showed up out of the blue with no inkling of what I’d be getting, I have an actual order number this time, with a full list of stats. So I know several things, like this new new laptop will be an XPS 1730 (not quite Alien Ware but purported to be better), it’ll have less memory than the new laptop (2gigs instead of the 3-4 the 1710 reported randomly. Can you tell I have no plans to swap it.), duel 512mb video cards (holy crap, who cares about ram, video card drool.)

But then I can tell other, happy, things. Like it’s supposed to ship today, but hasn’t. It’s supposed to show up Monday, but it hasn’t shipped.

Right now I just want a damned working computer. It doesn’t help that I’ve been drowning in other machines, that aren’t mine to drown in. I finally dropped of the DGA machines. Aia’s machine needs to be hooked up again. My little Asus is happily chugging along. And I have brand not so new mac in the back of car, all ready to go to a little rug rat I know.

But all of these are sub-par to the machine I once had. My previous beast, the XPS M170, chugged along just fine for nearly three years. The m1710 made it a month and a half. If you a google search on xps m1710 replacement you’ll see a lot of folks had their M1710 crash around September / October of 2008. Interesting no?

Either way I’m sitting in Limbo. Sigh.

There is TMI in this Post Amoung the Weekend Updates

So no, the weekend did not start out well with my computer dying, again. I’m actually extremely upset now as I know it’s a hardware issue. At the end of the week I should have an update on that. Any bets on what I’ll get from Dell this time?

Writing went well this weekend. Not only did I finish a chapter, but I’ve joined a new critique group. This is looks much more committed than my last group and we have a good range of folks both in ability and background. After they left I managed to pound out another 1000 words. Creativity abounds.

We did Aia’s b-day party this weekend. McDonald’s totally dropped the ball. Nothing was ready, no one seemed to know what to do. They managed to get their act together in the end but dang. We’re not going back there next year. So I need to scout out a new place.

Heroes sucks now…have I told you that? The suckage is so bad that they are now sticking random sex in for the hell of it. Noah actually waited to start shooting until after teh sexes. Stupid. Hiro is still my fav as he’s the ONLY character to learn from his mistakes. And the only guy who deals with the bad guys first. Chances of continuing to watch this show though are near nil.

Our movie night is now on LOST. Day late and a dollar short I know. We’re finding the show fairly predictable, but good anyway. We can deal with that. People say it’s gets weirder. We’ll see.

Now for the TMI. My period started this weekend. The bad thing about that? It’s only been two and a half weeks since my last period. Not good. In fact very bad. The last time this happened, I was in the middle of massive cancer screenings which boiled down to the hypothyroidism. Has it gone further in the wonky? Or is this the PCOS? With the hair loss, the bloating, the mood thing I’m worried. Doc on Friday. Hoping we can deal with this with a medication adjustment. Hoping.

The Saga Continues

LED lights on the Dell XPS M1710 notebook. Spe...
Image via Wikipedia

I try not to blog about drama issues until they are complete. This is true especially when money or valuable objects are on the line. In this case I’m holding all the cards at the moment and I want to get this off my chest before go to Vegas.

This all started when my beast of a laptop got funny lines across the screen. I called Dell, since it was still under warranty. They sent out a tech who replaced the lcd screen. Once he did that it no longer started up at all. He came back a few days later and replaced the motherboard, video card and processor. He then started up the machine and it appeared to work fine. He shut it down and left.

But later that day when I started the system it froze on the Dell screen. The next tech I talked too had me send the laptop in for repair. A box came, and I put the computer in it.

It came back the next week with a note saying they replaced the memory and that I needed to reinstall the operating system. I’m not stupid, I got Dell back on the phone and told the tech to walk me through the process. Had this been an out of warranty machine I would have had this baby open and gutted, checking connections and probably would have replaced the hard drive too. But under warranty I’m going to get my money’s worth.

The tech walks me through the process. We get as far as the Copying files screen where it happily sits at 0%. The tech has me shut the computer off. When we attempt to turn it back on, it does nothing. Not a sound or a flicker. I have a $3000 paperweight.

After I explain to the tech what has happened he tells me that he’s horrified that I had to send it in and that never should have happened. (shoulda, coulda woulda) He tells me that Dell will now replace my system with a new machine.

I get this verified a few days later. Yesterday, what appears on my doorstep is a refurbished machine. With newer parts and more oomph than my last machine I have a XPS m1710. It runs great it’s nifty, I’m sad I didn’t get a new one but at the same time I’m happy with this.

One thing niggles my brain, my warranty. I get on the phone with Dell this morning and explain that I will gladly keep the refurbished machine if my warranty is FULLY transferred.

And Dell complies. Really it was in their best interest too. I did buy that XPS with the snazzy lights and all, and Dell probably doesn’t want to just give me the new snazzy light XPS for free. I’ll settle for slightly newer, with an upgrade path and warrantied service for another few years.

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