Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Technology Tuesday

This is the song that never ends...
Yes it goes on and on my friends...

Remember that tune? It was written by writer/composer Norman Martin. That's the one I'm singing today.

Last week I was complaining that my laptop had been at the repair center for over 3 weeks. The gods of technology must have heard me and had sympathy because 2 days later I got my laptop back. Yeah! They replaced the mother board and the CPU. Again.

As soon as I got home from Circuit City I fired up my laptop, reset the clock, and launched my browser to check my email. So far so good. Fifteen or so minutes later the fan starts up and sounds like a jet engine taking off. Oh, oh. I let it go for a few minutes until it was obvious that the poor thing was having a melt down. I didn't want to risk a fire after all.

Feeling like I'd been abandoned by the technology gods, I shut the laptop down, allowed a few tears to stream down my face, and fantasized about heaving the damn thing out my bedroom window.

That was Wednesday evening, the night before Thanksgiving. Circuit City wasn't open on Thursday and I wasn't stupid enough to try to take it in for service on Black Friday.

Saturday I marched back in to Circuit City and insisted on speaking to the store manager. When he met with me I explained what I'd already been through with this laptop and their service department. I told him that I needed this laptop fixed pronto. Not in 3 weeks. Not in 2 weeks. I wanted it back in 1 week tops. I told him I wanted him to throw his clout around and see that it got done. He said he understood and that he would do just that. He walked me back to the service center where he instructed the Firedog team to write up the work order and put a copy of it on his desk so he could follow up on it and get back to me with update reports. It would go out first thing the next day, he assured me.

That was Saturday morning. This is Tuesday evening. Have I heard from him? Nope. Nada. Did the laptop get sent out? Was it received at the service center? Has it been assigned to a technician yet? All good questions that I should have the answers to but don't.

What are the odds that I'll get it back by Saturday? I'm thinking slim to none but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised. What are the odds that it won't have to go back for service in say the next month or so? I have no idea. I've lost all confidence in the laptop and the whole Circuit City repair team.

I'm not writing about this just to whine. I'm writing about it in hopes that the technology gods will have mercy on me and do a little better job of intervening this time around! LOL! If you pray to the technology gods, please keep me in your prayers!