Heavy and a little awkward looking, it still performed well. Microsoft’s OneNote was a real champ, accepting input when the screen was flipped and folded using the pen to write notes and then transcribe those notes into text.

Problems were than it has an AMD processor which meant lots of heat and sometimes sluggish performance despite it’s 2+ Gigahertz processor speed.

This laptop worked well enough the first year, serving my wife through her last semester of college (before pregnancy put the kibosh on that) and then serving as her workhorse and work computer.

August last year brought some odd problems. The touch interface began developing peculiarities. Odd, random, and infrequent issues. Odd, random, and infrequent spells the technologists nightmare as problems that cannot be duplicated cannot be predicted, and problems that cannot be predicted cannot be diagnosed, and problems that cannot be diagnosed cannot be resolved. Good thing we’d purchased a 3 year warranty.

Note on warranties: ain’t worth the paper their printed on for most people. If you’re good at not breaking things, laptop warranties are one of the few warranties I’ll recommend. With any desktop computer, the cost of a repair is usually a component less than $100. And most of the time it’s a lot less than $100. With laptops, you can’t get components. And even if you could, the laptop computer generally crams every last component directly on the mainboard as chips, and if you need to replace the “soundcard” on a laptop, you’ll be replacing the mainboard. If you need to repair the 56k modem that ancient historians are starting to recognize, you’ll be replacing the mainboard. If the network adapter fails or the video card, yup, you got it, you’re replacing the mainboard.

So, call HP, convince the 1st level repair person operating out of India or Bangladesh that I’ve already completed his script and that this issue takes more than his ability. Convince his manager of the same fact. And get a ticket escalated to the case managers.

At HP, the case managers control the actual repair. They’re usually US based and quite technically competent themselves. My case manager sent a box that included fast FedEx shipping to their repair center. The computer was back within 4 days working great. They’d replaced the mainboard, the screen, memory and a few other things. About the only things they hadn’t replaced was the external case of the unit.

Excellent. I was happy. The wife was happy. There’s a reason HP gets high rankings in support. This is it.

So, winter rolls around and the hard drive fails. Easy fix. I call HP, convince the first level I’ve already done his work. Convince his manager of the same. Get a replacement hard drive shipped out. Replace it, make sure it works, and ship the faulty unit back.

Fair enough. Laptop hard drives tend to be the part that fails the most frequently. A hard disk (at least the common kind) has glass or ceramic platters spinning at between 5,400 and 10,000 rpm whenever the computer is on. And over those platters, at a distance only a small fraction of the width of a human hair, are magnetic reader heads not too unlike old record players had. Except instead of diamonds running through grooves, this is a magnet reading magnetic polarity of individual bits on the disk.

A jostle or shake can cause those heads to contact the platters themselves, and when that happens, no matter how slight the touch, physical damage occurs on the hard drive.

Computer manufacturers will not fault you for physical damage on the platter, because to get at the platter they’d have to destroy the drive. Relatively few companies can actually open hard drives without damaging them. They will fault you for obvious trauma to the computer itself.

So it’s a fact that hard drives on laptops, which get carried around and generally suffer much more abuse than their desk-dwelling bigger brethren, have a relatively short lifespan.

But when the second drive failed in just a couple months, I was beginning to get concerned.

As part of that communication with HP I asked what the standards were regarding replacement of the system. They informed me that 3 repairs was the general rule and if the laptop failed again I’d be getting a replacement.

Ok, not bad, I thought.

Cue July this year. Grace mentions the laptop screen has been going blank at times and the only way to get it to come back is to turn the unit off with a hard shut off and then power it back on. Grace is no technologist, but she’s been married to me for a couple years and so she’s no slouch either.

It’s not happening when I’m around and it’s not happening frequently enough to warrant much concern. Just a fair warning to steel myself for the inevitable confrontation with HP. Though, I was a little jazzed at the opportunity to get a replacement system out of this.

We took the laptop on vacation with us, as the card reader on my 6 year old laptop hasn’t worked in eons and we’d need to empty our memory cards several times considering we shoot raw images with the camera.

Towards the end of vacation the memory card reader wasn’t working so well. It may have been software, it may have been hardware. I’ll never know. I’d planned on reinstalling Windows 7 to complete the 1st level support script and in the off chance this was all a drivers and service issue.

Meanwhile, I’d seen the black screen now a couple times and the systems also started deciding it didn’t like to power on every other time we asked it to. All the indicator lights would come up, but the screen stayed blank. Sometimes the system would shut itself off after a few seconds, sometimes it would stay in limbo like that until we shut it off.

So, we get home in late August and the next evening I back up the system and begin installing the operating system.

Or at least I tried.

The system shut itself down after ever shortening intervals of running. I’d try booting from the OS disk and installing clean, the system would shut down. I’d load into windows and initiate the install from inside windows, the computer would power itself off. I opened the BIOS and watched it, and the system shut off.

Ok, definite hardware issues here. This is something for HP, not me.

So, commence the fateful call.

1st level is convinced rather quickly that I’ve already completed his script and as he looks back at the support records for this computer, confirms they will definitely be considering replacement this time. 1st level manager does the same and attempts to connect me to the Case Managers. The call reverts back to 1st level. Woops. Another round of convincing, this time that I’d just called. But once again, he’s convinced quickly and takes initiative to find out whats going on. Oh, Case Managers work US hours and close at 10pm. It was around 10:05 when the first person tried transferring me. Frustrating but understandable. It’s bedtime anyways.

Next day I call and find my Case Manager is Oscar. He once again has me describe the issue. This is a problem but necessary when you’re dealing with technologically unsavvy 1st level. The problem descriptions can be confusing at best and one must always confirm issues and, optimally, hear from the customer’s own mouth the problem description before dispatching support.

However, Oscar says that because I’d repaired the unit myself twice (the hard drive episodes), that only counted as one actual HP repair and therefore the system didn’t qualify for replacement. Repair, yes. Replacement, no.

Oh, that got my goat! Because I’d been technically proficient and interested in getting the system done more quickly than they could, because I’d saved them time and money, I was being shunted to second-rate service. I was not going to lie down and accept that.

The next day I called back and learned it wasn’t actually because I’d done the repairs myself, it was because there had only been 2 repairs in the last year. Which is technically true. The first repair occurred around August 17th or so of 2009, and it was August 25th of 2010 when I opened this service call. Though the issues had begun well before then I wasn’t going to call while on vacation or when the issue was just the system going dark once a week or less.

But now I’d been told two different things. This was not going well and I was getting frustrated.

Oscar wasn’t budging though. Regardless of his reasoning, he wasn’t going to submit an order requesting a replacement.

I tried to pin down a policy, but Oscar said over and over there is no policy regarding replacement. There is a group that evaluates all repair orders that he has to submit the request to, and he told me they would not accept a replacement order which did not meet criteria which I could not get them to lay down.

Oscar did say that if the repair failed to resolve the issue the unit would be replaced and he was very firm in that statement. However, when I asked that he put in writing that any failure not attributable to physical damage by myself would qualify this system for replacement, he would not. He’d email me something to that affect, but nothing in writing.

I asked to speak with his managers or someone higher up the chain and he informed me he was the highest link in the chain.

So, from Oscar I learned there is no official policy regarding replacement but for sure a replacement would not be approved. I learned that it might be because I repaired the system myself and it might be because the there weren’t four failures in a single year, either way I wasn’t getting a replacement.

So I sent an email using the HP corporate contact form on their website detailing my concerns and request. Pat called me back and said they would refer me to my Case Manager who already owned the issue. Great help, Pat. If I was getting service from the Case Manager why would I try and contact you?

Friday afternoon Oscar says there’s nobody higher than him for me to talk to, but he can offer a second opinion. So he puts me on hold long enough to give the talking points to another Case Manager who I then describe the issue and my concerns to. After a bit of verbal sparring he concedes that if he told me what I informed him Oscar had told me, he’d give me a replacement. But then we end the call without my going back to Oscar. Oscar is on break. Or his shift is over. I work until 5:30pm and then take a noisy train home. A Case Manager who is only available until 6pm doesn’t work for me.

Which brings us to today. I talked with Oscar again. After informing him what the second opinion told me, he read the notes and did not see any such thing. He reiterated all his talking points a few more times, refusing to budge. Even when I asked that he simply submit the request for replacement to the people who determined those things and let the chips fall where they may. Not an option, he says.  But I can tell he’s becoming frustrated. Poor man, I’ve been hounding him for 4 days.

He puts me on hold and finds someone higher than himself for me to talk to. An Executive Case Manager who has such a bad case of the muffles that I don’t catch his name.

But that shows that Oscar was inaccurate in his statements over the previous days that there wasn’t anybody else higher up for me to talk to.

So, lets recap. Back in April a tech informed me I’d be getting replacement next service. No mention that it had to occur within a year of three other services or that my having performed the actual physical repair for the 2nd and 3rd service would cause any problems. That was apparently a misstatement.

August, it was either my having performed 2 of the actual services, or that it was just outside a year from the very 1st service, but there wasn’t an official policy, just some accounting trolls who’d burp fire in the face of any plucky Case Manager who tried getting a replacement. But it’s not official policy. Get that? It’s not written down anywhere.

Second opinions are pretty much more of the same, but what they tell you verbally and what they write down in the notes are two different things. Note to self, I need to be using this Google Voice call record system at little more.

Now, there’s nobody higher than Case Manager I can talk to. But wait, there is after all. Executive Case Manager points out the warranty I paid for is a repair warranty, not a replacement warranty and that he’s sorry I felt I’d been misinformed and he’s sorry I am not satisfied with replacement, but nothing’s written except repair and there’s nothing else to do.

So, that’s how HP lost me. Which sucks. Their hardware is right, their price is right, even their support is right, so long as you aren’t trying to get something significant out of them.

For 90% of the time, HP works. But for that 10% that really needs above and beyond service? No can do.

Except that scenes like these have never been nor ever will be suitable for a family affair. This link is to the ChicagoNow blog. The first several pictures are innocuous enough, but be warned, it doesn’t stay that way.

Perhaps because I’m not a hypersexual maniac I find it difficult to understand the need to wear little or nothing and parade myself along in front of everybody while making lewd gestures. And I’ll never bring my children to such a non-family affair.

Today, we need another book that uses the words of Rabbi Kushner’s classic work (When Bad Things Happen To Good People), but addresses an entirely different issue: When Good People Do Bad ThingsMost evil is not committed as a result of unbridled lust or greed. And the sadistic monster who revels in inflicting excruciating pain on other people is relatively rare.

Good intentions cause most of the world’s great evils.

Hitler and other infamous villains in human history did not wake up each morning rubbing their hands and cackling while imagining all the evil things they’d get to do. Except for this guy…

But, beyond the really big bad things that end up in history books and change the course of human history, most of the actual harm and pain and hurt and evil come from people you and I would pass on the street and not see any particular reason to think ill of. And the people we see in the mirror each day.

So Dennis, write your book. I’m want to read it.

The Onion points to a paradox that should make evolutionist’s heads disappear in a puff of logic: “Eons Of Darwinian Evolution Somehow Produce Mitch“.

Indeed, scientists said Mitch is perplexing on multiple fronts. For instance, in studying his weird, asymmetrical gait, researchers have been unable to discern any particular locomotive advantage he has over the more effective and less stigmatizing forms of self-propulsion exhibited by other bipeds. Researchers have also failed to determine how the development of the nuanced communication system of language, itself a product of humanity’s unique capacity for abstract thought, ultimately led to Mitch’s strong preference for the term “exsqueeze me” over “excuse me.”

I suppose the best answer to this is that people like Mitch are less prone to mate, according to Darwinian evolutionists. And thus evolution has worked because there won’t be a Mitch Jr.

My response: I’m married and mating. *Snurck*

If you don’t think the media is biased your shrink is calling, he wants his straightjacket back.

One of the many ways that the Associated Press lends its support to Democrats and leftists in its political reporting is often evident in its stories on political scandals. The most common assist the AP gives to Democrats is to somehow forget to mention that a politician in the news because of criminal activity or other scandals is a Democrat. Yet when any pol in the news for scandal is a Republican his party affiliation often leads the story, if it isn’t in the headline, even. Oh, it’s all accidental I’m sure, but it happens so often as to give the suspicion of a concerted effort.

Stop the ACLU has the dirty details on one more writer with an agenda. Completely unlike me.

The liberal mind cares more about intentions than results which makes them singularly ill-suited to leadership. For instance, among the power grabs going on constantly, recent banking regulations which are supposed to protect people who over-draw they accounts from high fees have had the effect of causing banks to do away with free checking accounts.

I’ve over-drawn my accounts. And that fee hurts. But it’s a good hurt because it makes more careful. And this brings us back to my favorite analogy of the butterflies. The liberal mind is opening all the chrysalids because of the painful struggle the butterfly is going through to extricate itself. But the freed butterfly, not having had to go through the exertions necessary to pump the fluid from it’s engorged body into it’s wings, falls to the ground, easy prey for the birds and insects.

Yes, you’ve freed people from one more way the market holds them responsible, and now you’ll create people even less capable of fending for themselves. It’s a vicious cycle, and yes, liberal ideology is completely to blame.

To finish things off tonight, the Pugnacious Irishman has allowed his butterflies to struggle, even if it meant a crisis in their faith.

The higher the stakes, the deeper the lesson, the more important it is to let those who can, fight for themselves.

High kudos to the Pugnacious Irishman for not stepping in when some Christian students at a regular meeting were confronted and challenged by brash atheists. Even when the students asked him to step in as they were being soundly smacked about the shoulders by the verbal volleys of a “Hitchen’s devotee”, Pugnacious refrained.

It is very important that people be impressed with the gravity of the situation, the inequity of the odds, the ability and strategy of the enemy. When you know the airplane is going to disintegrate in mid-air, you’ll keep that unwieldy and uncomfortable parachute strapped tightly to you no matter the jeering of the other passengers. When you see how deep and dark the chasm is on either side of this fine line we tread through life, you hold all the tighter to the truth that has set us free.

Letting the youngling free to fight their own battles is not an exercise in cruelty or dispassion. It is hard to watch when you are capable of stepping in and averting crisis. But steel must be forged in trying fires to gain strength, and gold my be melted over and again to be refined, and a good strong crisis of the faith will teach a growing Christian more than 70 sunday’s sermons.

As Pugnacious put it:

I’m not the type to leave them like that, though.  All I wanted was for them to get a swift kick in the pants so they’d be motivated to take the intellectual life of the Christian disciple more seriously.  Heavens ta mergatroy, its front and center in the *first* commandment! You’d think that would be enough.

And it seems the same goes for many others.

The beautiful thing about this paradoxical realization is that I can right now assume I know very little, and save myself the trouble of having to unlearn things I have learned or will learn which are incorrect in actual fact.

And the even more beautiful thing about this is that I can choose to live, not in fear of what this food or that action or this chemical will do to me, and by applying a modicum of sensibility in place of the deluge of information we tend to rely on for facts, live just as safely and so much more happily than many other out there who are enslaved by the fear-mongering crowds of researchers, scientists, do-gooders, busy-bodies, and assorted other self-superior people.

I know this: fear prevents no more than caution, fear protects no better than sense, fear lives shorter and fear dies still fearful.

Fear is not for me.

…is the freedom to choose whatever idea we please so long as we do not believe it is true.

Since starting at my latest position, I’ve been unable to peruse the internet in the way I was at previous employments that was so conducive to my blogging. I don’t want to give up the blog completely, though I’ve seriously considered that option. It’s just too much a part of my long-term goals. At the same time, posting every other week isn’t the way to encourage readership.

So how do you do it?

Here are a few recent jewels StumbleUpon shared with me:

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

A useful tool for IT professionals to help users understand a basic yet fundamental state of their computer: ComputerPowerTest.com

I began to think alone —”to relax,” I told myself — but I knew it wasn’t true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don’t mix, but I couldn’t stop myself.

See how far we've come

Things weren’t going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother’s.

I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, “Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don’t stop thinking on the job, you’ll have to find another job.” This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early after my conversation with the boss. “Honey,” I confessed … “I’ve been thinking…”

I know I’m a happy guy. I’m a very happy guy. I tend to retain a relatively rosy outlook on life, a tune on my lips (or running incessantly through my head), and spring in my step. Maybe it’s because I spend my lunch times exploring philosophical arguments for the spheres of responsibility between church and state, and discussing the finer points of social and cultural issues with friends, family, and foes alike.

NYTimes; Talk Deeply, Be Happy?

I am tempted to say it’s the deepness of the conversation that is the primary corollary between that and happiness, but it is more likely the fact you have people in your life with which you can have deep conversations. Humans, after all, are social creatures, and without friends and family and close-knit circles in which to spend our lives, we hang loose in the winds of time flailing pointlessly about.

“I know you’ve been thinking,” she said, “and I want a divorce!” “But Honey, surely it’s not that serious.”

“It is serious,” she said, lower lip aquiver. “You think as much as college professors, and college professors don’t make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won’t have any money!”

“That’s a faulty syllogism,” I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I’d had enough. “I’m going to the library,” I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with an AM station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors … they didn’t open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

(Finish this tale here)

Groucho Marx came up at work the other day. He came up here too:

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

The question is, would you go to an emergency room staffed with untrained doctors?

The earth is heaving as if it is in labor.

The quake hit about 100 miles from Santiago, the capital of Chile. But reported death toll right now is only 78 people.

My thoughts and prayers are with those on the ground in Chile.

But back to the initial thoughts.

How long ago was it that seismologists were screaming the world was heading towards “the big one”. A massive quake level 9 or higher on the Richter Scale that would decimate a significant area of even highly developed and well constructed buildings.

A disaster of biblical proportions, it would be called, even by atheists and agnostics and dont’-careists.

I don’t know if this is it. I don’t have a crystal ball or special word from God that the end is here. But I know that God wants us to be vigilant, ready, always choosing our next steps based on His greater glory and with the continual awareness of the impending end of days.

The constant reminders in the New Testament, especially, though they are the words of men expecting a return of the Christ within their lifetimes or very shortly thereafter, are included nonetheless at God’s behest. God wanted us living between Christ’s first and second comings to live always in the hope of His imminent return, both as a justification for the struggles we deal with on earth as His ambassadors, and as a guide to our thoughts and actions.

Christ is returning, of that we are sure.

Whether He comes through the upheaval of earthquakes shattering the sure footing of this earth we each trust too much, or through the twisting terrors of tornadoes scarring the skies, or hurricanes or typhoons or the soft, sweet winds of a summers’ afternoon, He will still come.

And for the people in Chile now dealing with the aftermath of such destruction and ruin, I pray their succor will not just be of their physical homes, but also include a rebirth in their own lives in the salvation of Christ.

So here’s a new policy: If your link is spammy, I delete your link. If you comment is spammy, I delete your comment and flag it as spam. If your link and your comment are spammy… what do you think this is? A democracy?

I’ll leave your comment if it applies to the post, just because I feel lonely sometimes out here in my little corner of cyberspace without people commenting. But I reserve the right to delete your link and change your name to Jane Doe or John Doe, as the situation is appropriate. Or Robby the Robot if it’s difficult to tell.

So you’re desperate, but I’m desperate too. Only difference, I’ve got the power here on I, Pandora, and you don’t.