Wednesday, October 24, 2007
DHL Delivery
Apparently, these are the morons that are supposedly attempting to deliver my laptop. I can't speak about the entire company, but the local yokels are apparent idiots.
I got an email from Dell Saturday stating that my laptop had been shipped. Great! Monday evening, I got a call on my cellphone. I answered and found myself on the receiving end of an automated call. It was from DHL and they were calling to let me know that they were going to make a delivery on Tuesday. Great! Then came some menu, and I needed to select 2 and write down some info. So, apparently I took too long to find something to write with and by the time I got everything together, I was disconnected. Not a big deal, I thought.
Tuesday, I come home from work, hoping that they would make a late delivery. I get off at 4 PM and I'm usually home by 4:30 if I don't run errands or get bad traffic. Well, I got home, and naturally, there was a tag on the door. They had made the delivery around 11:30 AM. Just my luck. But again, no big deal. There was a number to call on the tag.
I call the number. Of course, I don't get a human. At some point, I get to enter my zip code. This transfers me to another number, I guess. Anyway, the phone rings. And rings. And rings... Eventually, it times out, and I get disconnected.
I call again. All the above happens a second time. I call a third time. Finally a human answers. And the first thing she wants to know is: What is my zip code? This is the info I have to enter to get to talk to a human, and the first thing this human wants is my zip code. What the fuck?
I give her my zip, and she transfers me to the local idiots. I talk to some guy, and he wants an invoice number, which is on the attempted delivery notice stuck on my door. I give him the number, and he asks if I live at some address nowhere near where I live. I say no, and repeat the number. He reels off the same address. I say "No" and give him the actual address. He starts talking, and whatever he's saying makes no sense to me. I finally ask him "Are you talking to me or someone else?" He says he's taking to the driver. I'm wondering why the fuck he's talking directly into the phone then. Who knows?
I tell him to schedule delivery the next day (today, Wednesday) between 4:30 and 5:00. He says fine, and I think all is well.
Today, I get home, and there's an attempted delivery notice on the door again. It's got the same invoice number, and apparently they tried at 4:10. That is nowhere close to being between 4:30 and 5:00. So I call the 800 number again. And again. And again. By now, I'm sort of pissed. I finally get someone, who wants my zip code (which of course I already entered on the phone so that I could get to a human). I get transferred to my local moron again and tell him what's going on. He seems a little surprised that they tried delivering early. I told him I don't get home till 4:30, so a 4:10 delivery is no good if I have to sign for it. He says not to worry, he'll get the driver and have him make the delivery before 6:00. Fine.
Well, this is around 4:45. I wait, and 6 comes and goes. 7 comes and goes. Hell, so does 8. At 8:30 I say fuck it and take a shower. Now, I get to go through all this shit again tomorrow. I know that after several unsuccessful delivery attempts, they'll return the package to the sender. That means my laptop ends up going back to Dell if these morons can't get their shit together well enough to make a simple delivery somewhere between 4:30 and whenever. If this happens, I guess I'll end up calling Dell and requesting that they ship it via anyone other than DHL. Stay tuned. And wish me luck.
I got an email from Dell Saturday stating that my laptop had been shipped. Great! Monday evening, I got a call on my cellphone. I answered and found myself on the receiving end of an automated call. It was from DHL and they were calling to let me know that they were going to make a delivery on Tuesday. Great! Then came some menu, and I needed to select 2 and write down some info. So, apparently I took too long to find something to write with and by the time I got everything together, I was disconnected. Not a big deal, I thought.
Tuesday, I come home from work, hoping that they would make a late delivery. I get off at 4 PM and I'm usually home by 4:30 if I don't run errands or get bad traffic. Well, I got home, and naturally, there was a tag on the door. They had made the delivery around 11:30 AM. Just my luck. But again, no big deal. There was a number to call on the tag.
I call the number. Of course, I don't get a human. At some point, I get to enter my zip code. This transfers me to another number, I guess. Anyway, the phone rings. And rings. And rings... Eventually, it times out, and I get disconnected.
I call again. All the above happens a second time. I call a third time. Finally a human answers. And the first thing she wants to know is: What is my zip code? This is the info I have to enter to get to talk to a human, and the first thing this human wants is my zip code. What the fuck?
I give her my zip, and she transfers me to the local idiots. I talk to some guy, and he wants an invoice number, which is on the attempted delivery notice stuck on my door. I give him the number, and he asks if I live at some address nowhere near where I live. I say no, and repeat the number. He reels off the same address. I say "No" and give him the actual address. He starts talking, and whatever he's saying makes no sense to me. I finally ask him "Are you talking to me or someone else?" He says he's taking to the driver. I'm wondering why the fuck he's talking directly into the phone then. Who knows?
I tell him to schedule delivery the next day (today, Wednesday) between 4:30 and 5:00. He says fine, and I think all is well.
Today, I get home, and there's an attempted delivery notice on the door again. It's got the same invoice number, and apparently they tried at 4:10. That is nowhere close to being between 4:30 and 5:00. So I call the 800 number again. And again. And again. By now, I'm sort of pissed. I finally get someone, who wants my zip code (which of course I already entered on the phone so that I could get to a human). I get transferred to my local moron again and tell him what's going on. He seems a little surprised that they tried delivering early. I told him I don't get home till 4:30, so a 4:10 delivery is no good if I have to sign for it. He says not to worry, he'll get the driver and have him make the delivery before 6:00. Fine.
Well, this is around 4:45. I wait, and 6 comes and goes. 7 comes and goes. Hell, so does 8. At 8:30 I say fuck it and take a shower. Now, I get to go through all this shit again tomorrow. I know that after several unsuccessful delivery attempts, they'll return the package to the sender. That means my laptop ends up going back to Dell if these morons can't get their shit together well enough to make a simple delivery somewhere between 4:30 and whenever. If this happens, I guess I'll end up calling Dell and requesting that they ship it via anyone other than DHL. Stay tuned. And wish me luck.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
A New Laptop
Well, I spent most of Wednesday on the phone with various people, trying to take care of all the little after-breakin details. The officer who responded to my call said it would be nice if I could provide them with the serial number of the laptop. Naturally, I couldn't. Not many people keep up with that sort of stuff, it seems (as a side note, I think that it would be a good idea to take the time to copy serial numbers down and put them in a safe place for future reference, just in case). So I spent the morning on the phone with Dell, trying to get in touch with someone who could possibly help me. Amazingly, it only took two phone calls, although I had to navigate all these voice menus. No more pushing buttons, now you get to speak your choices.
The first phone call ended up taking me to a guy named Ethan. He was apparently here in the US, but couldn't help me with my problem. He tried to transfer me to someone, but after a moment or two, the line went dead, and I was disconnected. But at least he had told me where he was routing my call (Customer Care, which is buried down in one of the submenu you get when dialing in). I was eventually able to find the Customer Care option and selected it. I was connected with a women whose name I couldn't quite make out, but she spoke with a definite accent. However, it wasn't too difficult to understand her, so it wasn't so bad.
She wasn't able to provide me with much help though. No matter what I told her (name, address, phone number, whatever) she said she couldn't find any record of my purchase (which did occur in Feburary of 2003, in all fairness). While talking to her, I stood up and wandered over to a drawer with lots of papers in it. I started just randomly looking through the papers, and lo and behold, I found the invoice slip for my computer! I was definitely amazed. I gave her the info from the slip and she was able to find the necessary information for me. Great!
I called to police department and gave them the numbers provided by Dell (they have two: the Service Tag number, which is essentially the serial number, and an Express Service Code number). This number will go out to all the pawn shops in the area, so they can be on the lookout for my laptop. I can't imagine anyone stupid enough to take a hot laptop to a pawnshop, but who knows, if you're stupid enough to break into a house in broad daylight, maybe you're stupid enough to try to pawn the items you stole.
I then called my insurance agent and started that process going. I don't know exactly what's going on at this point, because I haven't heard anything from anyone, but eventually someone from the insurance company should get in touch. Hopefully with a check.
Because I couldn't wait for the check (which I know is coming, I just don't know when or for how much) I decided to go ahead and order a new laptop. I decided to go with Dell, not because they're such a great company or anything like that, but because I get a 10% corporate discount with them, and they offer a laptop with LInux installed. That means that I don't have to buy a machine with XP or Vista installed, which means I don't have to pay the so-called "Microsoft tax."
They only offer one machine (Inspiron 1420) with Ubuntu installed (I'd prefer Kubuntu if I had a choice). So that's the machine I'm getting. I don't know anything about it, or why they only offer the 1420 and not any other models, but so be it. I made a few changes in the base system (more memory, upgrade to the CD/DVD writer, and I forget what else), but in the end it sounds like a decent machine. I'm hoping that everything will work ok with this install of linux. I'm assuming that it's been pretty well tweaked to work on this particular hardware, but I think I had read of some problems. Hopefully there weill be a foroum somewhere for Dell usere with Ubuntu.
I had been using Mepis, which, like Ubuntu, is Debian based, but has some differences. One major difference for me will be that I have been using KDE desktop manager for most of the time I've used Linux (which is why I'd prefer Kubuntu, since it's KDE based). I have used Gnome (which is what Ubuntu uses). I guess if I don't like it or can't tweak it to my satisfaction, I can install KDE. But, just for the hell of it, I'll give Gnome a try and see what it can do (in fairness, it's been four years or so since I last used Gnome).
So now, I'm just waiting for my new laptop to come in. I don't have a delivery date yet from Dell, but from everybody I talk to, they're usually pretty fast. Hopefully in the next week I'll have it. They have a factory only about 20 miles away, so shipping should be a breeze (assuming I get it from that factory). When it comes in, I'll start writing about that experience.
The first phone call ended up taking me to a guy named Ethan. He was apparently here in the US, but couldn't help me with my problem. He tried to transfer me to someone, but after a moment or two, the line went dead, and I was disconnected. But at least he had told me where he was routing my call (Customer Care, which is buried down in one of the submenu you get when dialing in). I was eventually able to find the Customer Care option and selected it. I was connected with a women whose name I couldn't quite make out, but she spoke with a definite accent. However, it wasn't too difficult to understand her, so it wasn't so bad.
She wasn't able to provide me with much help though. No matter what I told her (name, address, phone number, whatever) she said she couldn't find any record of my purchase (which did occur in Feburary of 2003, in all fairness). While talking to her, I stood up and wandered over to a drawer with lots of papers in it. I started just randomly looking through the papers, and lo and behold, I found the invoice slip for my computer! I was definitely amazed. I gave her the info from the slip and she was able to find the necessary information for me. Great!
I called to police department and gave them the numbers provided by Dell (they have two: the Service Tag number, which is essentially the serial number, and an Express Service Code number). This number will go out to all the pawn shops in the area, so they can be on the lookout for my laptop. I can't imagine anyone stupid enough to take a hot laptop to a pawnshop, but who knows, if you're stupid enough to break into a house in broad daylight, maybe you're stupid enough to try to pawn the items you stole.
I then called my insurance agent and started that process going. I don't know exactly what's going on at this point, because I haven't heard anything from anyone, but eventually someone from the insurance company should get in touch. Hopefully with a check.
Because I couldn't wait for the check (which I know is coming, I just don't know when or for how much) I decided to go ahead and order a new laptop. I decided to go with Dell, not because they're such a great company or anything like that, but because I get a 10% corporate discount with them, and they offer a laptop with LInux installed. That means that I don't have to buy a machine with XP or Vista installed, which means I don't have to pay the so-called "Microsoft tax."
They only offer one machine (Inspiron 1420) with Ubuntu installed (I'd prefer Kubuntu if I had a choice). So that's the machine I'm getting. I don't know anything about it, or why they only offer the 1420 and not any other models, but so be it. I made a few changes in the base system (more memory, upgrade to the CD/DVD writer, and I forget what else), but in the end it sounds like a decent machine. I'm hoping that everything will work ok with this install of linux. I'm assuming that it's been pretty well tweaked to work on this particular hardware, but I think I had read of some problems. Hopefully there weill be a foroum somewhere for Dell usere with Ubuntu.
I had been using Mepis, which, like Ubuntu, is Debian based, but has some differences. One major difference for me will be that I have been using KDE desktop manager for most of the time I've used Linux (which is why I'd prefer Kubuntu, since it's KDE based). I have used Gnome (which is what Ubuntu uses). I guess if I don't like it or can't tweak it to my satisfaction, I can install KDE. But, just for the hell of it, I'll give Gnome a try and see what it can do (in fairness, it's been four years or so since I last used Gnome).
So now, I'm just waiting for my new laptop to come in. I don't have a delivery date yet from Dell, but from everybody I talk to, they're usually pretty fast. Hopefully in the next week I'll have it. They have a factory only about 20 miles away, so shipping should be a breeze (assuming I get it from that factory). When it comes in, I'll start writing about that experience.
Labels: Dell, Gnome, KDE, Kubuntu, laptop, linux. robbery, Ubuntu
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Happy Fuckin' Birthday
It's been a while since I posted anything. I always take forever to post. I have all sorts of excuses, most of them pretty good, in my honest opinion. And to be totally honest, a week ago I had actually put some things together so I could post them. I'd done some work on my laptop, upgrading the hard drive and making it dual boot so I could run either Linux or XP on it. It was an older Dell laptop, and I was really happy that everything worked so well, and so I had started writing up the whole procedure I went through, along with the very few problems I encountered, in hopes that it might help others trying to get the Microsoft monkey off their backs see how easy it was to get linux up and running on older hardware. I was holding off on posting it because I wanted to make sure I got all the details right, in case anybody actually tried to follow my lead.
Well, I never got a chance to post it and now it really doesn't matter. Yesterday (which was my birthday, by the way) when I got home from work, I found my backdoor kicked in. When I went in the house, the first (and almost only) thing I found missing was my laptop. It had been sitting in the middle of the coffee table in the living room. Now there's just a big empty space (it's not really that big, it just feels that way). They left my iPod and the other stuff that was sitting out (a USB mouse, which wasn't attached at the time, several USB cables, a pocket knife, a web cam which wasn't attached). But they did take my headset (which was plugged in) and my reading glasses, which I had laid on the keyboard and had partially pushed the lid down on. They also apparently went into my bedroom and took a flashlight off the nightstand, but left my Leatherman(TM). Who knows what goes through the mind of a petty thief, or if indeed they even have a mind.
I called the cops, which I hated doing. I live alone and am pretty messy, and so I had to explain that most of the mess was mine, not the thief's. He took my statement and called the local CSI unit (but it's not called CSI here). They took pictures and checked for prints and asked around the neighborhood, and that was pretty much it.
I had actually planned on taking the day off yesterday. It was my birthday and I usually do that as a treat for myself. But I have a project due at work on Friday and it's not going well. So I went to work. Now, today, I'm taking the day off. I've got to fix the backdoor and call my insurance agent and try to find the serial number of the laptop so I can give it to the cops so they can be on the lookout for it, yada yada yada... If I had taken my birthday off, someone (me) would have been here, and my house probably wouldn't have been broken into and I'd still have my laptop. I'm really pissed about my laptop being stolen. I put some work into getting it tweaked like I wanted it. A linux desktop is typically much more customizable than a Windows desktop and I had customized mine the way I wanted it. The only good thing (I guess) is that everything was password protected so they'll have some trouble actually getting into it. And even if they manage to get into it, they probably won't like linux.
Another great thing that happened yesterday is that my girlfriend apparently forgot it was my birthday. Not a call, not a card, not even an email saying "Happy Birthday." That's really all it would have taken too, just a two word email. I would have been happy with that. I spent the weekend just before my birthday doing her favors. Friday night I did her a favor and helped her move a sofa for someone. Saturday I did her a favor and moved more furniture from her house to the landfill. And Saturday night, which we usually spend at my place, I did her a favor and spent it at her house because her son was going to need a ride somewhere and I had to make sure she stayed awake long enough to actually give him a ride. But three days later she can't do me a favor and remember my fucking birthday.
So here I sit, in a major funk (another great reason to take the fucking day off and not get my project done by the deadline). Happy fucking birthday, eh?
Well, I never got a chance to post it and now it really doesn't matter. Yesterday (which was my birthday, by the way) when I got home from work, I found my backdoor kicked in. When I went in the house, the first (and almost only) thing I found missing was my laptop. It had been sitting in the middle of the coffee table in the living room. Now there's just a big empty space (it's not really that big, it just feels that way). They left my iPod and the other stuff that was sitting out (a USB mouse, which wasn't attached at the time, several USB cables, a pocket knife, a web cam which wasn't attached). But they did take my headset (which was plugged in) and my reading glasses, which I had laid on the keyboard and had partially pushed the lid down on. They also apparently went into my bedroom and took a flashlight off the nightstand, but left my Leatherman(TM). Who knows what goes through the mind of a petty thief, or if indeed they even have a mind.
I called the cops, which I hated doing. I live alone and am pretty messy, and so I had to explain that most of the mess was mine, not the thief's. He took my statement and called the local CSI unit (but it's not called CSI here). They took pictures and checked for prints and asked around the neighborhood, and that was pretty much it.
I had actually planned on taking the day off yesterday. It was my birthday and I usually do that as a treat for myself. But I have a project due at work on Friday and it's not going well. So I went to work. Now, today, I'm taking the day off. I've got to fix the backdoor and call my insurance agent and try to find the serial number of the laptop so I can give it to the cops so they can be on the lookout for it, yada yada yada... If I had taken my birthday off, someone (me) would have been here, and my house probably wouldn't have been broken into and I'd still have my laptop. I'm really pissed about my laptop being stolen. I put some work into getting it tweaked like I wanted it. A linux desktop is typically much more customizable than a Windows desktop and I had customized mine the way I wanted it. The only good thing (I guess) is that everything was password protected so they'll have some trouble actually getting into it. And even if they manage to get into it, they probably won't like linux.
Another great thing that happened yesterday is that my girlfriend apparently forgot it was my birthday. Not a call, not a card, not even an email saying "Happy Birthday." That's really all it would have taken too, just a two word email. I would have been happy with that. I spent the weekend just before my birthday doing her favors. Friday night I did her a favor and helped her move a sofa for someone. Saturday I did her a favor and moved more furniture from her house to the landfill. And Saturday night, which we usually spend at my place, I did her a favor and spent it at her house because her son was going to need a ride somewhere and I had to make sure she stayed awake long enough to actually give him a ride. But three days later she can't do me a favor and remember my fucking birthday.
So here I sit, in a major funk (another great reason to take the fucking day off and not get my project done by the deadline). Happy fucking birthday, eh?
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