State of the Laptop
This is coming to you from Morden, again, and I can't begin to tell you how much that doesn't thrill me.
When last heard from, I was going to get ahold of the name of my grandparents' tech guy, give him a call, and see if he could help with Anna's keyboard. Well, we got ahold of the grandparents, and their tech guy has a day job now. They had someone else come out to their house- someone random from the phone book, I gather. It cost them $100 just for the guy to walk in the door, and Grandpa wasn't too impressed by him.
So much for that. So I said, okay, let's call my aunt and uncle who live near San Francisco. They're easily the most tech-savvy members of the family; Grandma only calls me for her tech support needs because I'm not long-distance. Anyway, they're both incredibly bright programmers who have laptops. I didn't figure they'd know exactly how to fix it, since they're more on the software end than the hardware one, but I figured they'd have some clues.
They do, and said clues aren't good. First, my uncle said that the problem I'm having could be caused by any number of things. Second, he said that while replacing the keyboard might do the trick, it's not something he'd do himself. That he's tried replacing hard drives and such in laptops, and has ended up with a mess. Apparently, under that sporadically working keyboard, it's a mess down there. Cables and ribbons and stuff. Now, I was already put off by Gateway's instructions for do-it-yourself laptop keyboard swapping, involving as it did a.) opening the case, b.) prying large chunks of the computer apart, and c.) the necessity of using something called a "grounding glove", which must be anchored to a non-metallic surface at all times...Think it was non-metallic. That'd make more sense.
Anyway, I was like, ...yeah, if he doesn't recommend it, I'm sure as hell not gonna try it. So. Bust on that. Aunt and uncle are doing good, though, which was good to hear.
Next we took a look at the computer repair places in the phone book. I was sort of hoping one would jump out at me, in the sense of "I remember that place, they're good" or "I think that's the place x friend took their laptop, and they fixed it." No such luck. Ended up calling the Fresno State bookstore, because their computer department used to do repairs. The computer people weren't working on the weekend, but the person we talked to said she thought they could at least tell me what was wrong with the computer, if not actually fix it. So Mom called them on Monday. They don't do repairs, but "you could try CompUSA or Best Buy."
Yeah. I took Anna to CompUSA a while ago, when I broke the SysRq key. I'm pretty sure that they super-glued it, and their manner when I dropped the compute off and picked it up, didn't fill me with confidence. So I'm not sure how I feel about them maybe taking apart the case- okay, yes I do. I don't feel good about it at all.
Which kind of leaves Best Buy.
Except that so far, I haven't found anyone who's taken a computer there for repairs. And we had kind of a bad experience with them a couple years ago, when we ordered a DVD-R player they'd had on sale, but run out of in stock. I'm sure the stock room people aren't required to have as much training as the techs, but we went back and forth with those people for a week- oh, it's in, you can pick it up anytime; what DVD player? it's not here yet; wait, it is here... Turns out, it had been sitting on some shelf gathering dust for a few days. Like, since they'd called and said "it's here" and we'd gone in to pick it up, and the morons couldn't find it...
That's about the time Mom started calling them "Worst Buy" and "Best Ripoff", and I can't say they impressed me too much there, either. That being said, I'm almost to the point of walking in to the place anyway, and chatting with one of their Geek Squad people (their cars always crack me up when I see them zooming down the freeway) and seeing if I'd feel comfortable handing Anna over to them for diagnostics at least, maybe a fix if they can do it... Weirdly, I feel better about the idea of Best Buy than CompUSA at this point. Maybe because I know CompUSA gave me hives.
The last time I had a computer in the shop for a while, I went through, backed up my private files (read: old journals, websites, email, fanfic that's not ready for public viewing, novel attempts) and then deleted them from the drive. I know this is probably really paranoid, and that anyone working to fix the computer isn't likely to give a damn if I'm writing Harry Potter smut, but this isn't like the broken SysRq key- they'll have to boot the system up, I'd imagine, to check if they've fixed the keyboard or not. And that just goes into a whole 'nother realm of things, because pretty much my entire life is on that hard drive.
Maybe that's why the idea of handing it over, even when they don't have to boot it up, has always bothered me so much. Because I'm handing over not just my favorite writing tool, which would be bad enough, but this thing that contains so much of my life- my writing, my journals, bad poetry I wrote in high school, music... not to mention software that has saved passwords for things like urbandruid.net (which I really ought to update someday... the domain, not the passwords.)
Mom was going to ask around at work to see if anyone knew a decent repair shop, and I'll see if I can scare up anything at school, from the honor society gang, or my pals in Abnormal Psych. (Who got there just as class was starting today, so I'll have to try them Thursday, if we haven't got anything better by then.)
Oh, and I think an area on the other side of the keyboard is starting to go the way of the first. I swear the other started with just one key, the 'a', occasionally spazzing out. Well, this one's starting with the apostrophe/quotation mark key. I need that! Not that I don't need all of my keys, but there are some I could stand to lose, or at least not have working reliably, like the bracket keys. (I should shut up about that, since they're in the same vacinity as the quote mark key...) I was typing up some stuff I'd written in one of my notebooks last night, and I had to c/p the quote mark from another line in order to finish. At least the other keys were working then- now it's the other way around- I can get the quote marks, but I can't type too many decent quotes, since the 'a' quadrant is on the fritz again.
Hence me being on Morden. I really hate this shit.
When last heard from, I was going to get ahold of the name of my grandparents' tech guy, give him a call, and see if he could help with Anna's keyboard. Well, we got ahold of the grandparents, and their tech guy has a day job now. They had someone else come out to their house- someone random from the phone book, I gather. It cost them $100 just for the guy to walk in the door, and Grandpa wasn't too impressed by him.
So much for that. So I said, okay, let's call my aunt and uncle who live near San Francisco. They're easily the most tech-savvy members of the family; Grandma only calls me for her tech support needs because I'm not long-distance. Anyway, they're both incredibly bright programmers who have laptops. I didn't figure they'd know exactly how to fix it, since they're more on the software end than the hardware one, but I figured they'd have some clues.
They do, and said clues aren't good. First, my uncle said that the problem I'm having could be caused by any number of things. Second, he said that while replacing the keyboard might do the trick, it's not something he'd do himself. That he's tried replacing hard drives and such in laptops, and has ended up with a mess. Apparently, under that sporadically working keyboard, it's a mess down there. Cables and ribbons and stuff. Now, I was already put off by Gateway's instructions for do-it-yourself laptop keyboard swapping, involving as it did a.) opening the case, b.) prying large chunks of the computer apart, and c.) the necessity of using something called a "grounding glove", which must be anchored to a non-metallic surface at all times...Think it was non-metallic. That'd make more sense.
Anyway, I was like, ...yeah, if he doesn't recommend it, I'm sure as hell not gonna try it. So. Bust on that. Aunt and uncle are doing good, though, which was good to hear.
Next we took a look at the computer repair places in the phone book. I was sort of hoping one would jump out at me, in the sense of "I remember that place, they're good" or "I think that's the place x friend took their laptop, and they fixed it." No such luck. Ended up calling the Fresno State bookstore, because their computer department used to do repairs. The computer people weren't working on the weekend, but the person we talked to said she thought they could at least tell me what was wrong with the computer, if not actually fix it. So Mom called them on Monday. They don't do repairs, but "you could try CompUSA or Best Buy."
Yeah. I took Anna to CompUSA a while ago, when I broke the SysRq key. I'm pretty sure that they super-glued it, and their manner when I dropped the compute off and picked it up, didn't fill me with confidence. So I'm not sure how I feel about them maybe taking apart the case- okay, yes I do. I don't feel good about it at all.
Which kind of leaves Best Buy.
Except that so far, I haven't found anyone who's taken a computer there for repairs. And we had kind of a bad experience with them a couple years ago, when we ordered a DVD-R player they'd had on sale, but run out of in stock. I'm sure the stock room people aren't required to have as much training as the techs, but we went back and forth with those people for a week- oh, it's in, you can pick it up anytime; what DVD player? it's not here yet; wait, it is here... Turns out, it had been sitting on some shelf gathering dust for a few days. Like, since they'd called and said "it's here" and we'd gone in to pick it up, and the morons couldn't find it...
That's about the time Mom started calling them "Worst Buy" and "Best Ripoff", and I can't say they impressed me too much there, either. That being said, I'm almost to the point of walking in to the place anyway, and chatting with one of their Geek Squad people (their cars always crack me up when I see them zooming down the freeway) and seeing if I'd feel comfortable handing Anna over to them for diagnostics at least, maybe a fix if they can do it... Weirdly, I feel better about the idea of Best Buy than CompUSA at this point. Maybe because I know CompUSA gave me hives.
The last time I had a computer in the shop for a while, I went through, backed up my private files (read: old journals, websites, email, fanfic that's not ready for public viewing, novel attempts) and then deleted them from the drive. I know this is probably really paranoid, and that anyone working to fix the computer isn't likely to give a damn if I'm writing Harry Potter smut, but this isn't like the broken SysRq key- they'll have to boot the system up, I'd imagine, to check if they've fixed the keyboard or not. And that just goes into a whole 'nother realm of things, because pretty much my entire life is on that hard drive.
Maybe that's why the idea of handing it over, even when they don't have to boot it up, has always bothered me so much. Because I'm handing over not just my favorite writing tool, which would be bad enough, but this thing that contains so much of my life- my writing, my journals, bad poetry I wrote in high school, music... not to mention software that has saved passwords for things like urbandruid.net (which I really ought to update someday... the domain, not the passwords.)
Mom was going to ask around at work to see if anyone knew a decent repair shop, and I'll see if I can scare up anything at school, from the honor society gang, or my pals in Abnormal Psych. (Who got there just as class was starting today, so I'll have to try them Thursday, if we haven't got anything better by then.)
Oh, and I think an area on the other side of the keyboard is starting to go the way of the first. I swear the other started with just one key, the 'a', occasionally spazzing out. Well, this one's starting with the apostrophe/quotation mark key. I need that! Not that I don't need all of my keys, but there are some I could stand to lose, or at least not have working reliably, like the bracket keys. (I should shut up about that, since they're in the same vacinity as the quote mark key...) I was typing up some stuff I'd written in one of my notebooks last night, and I had to c/p the quote mark from another line in order to finish. At least the other keys were working then- now it's the other way around- I can get the quote marks, but I can't type too many decent quotes, since the 'a' quadrant is on the fritz again.
Hence me being on Morden. I really hate this shit.