service

Last June 5th we broke down and bought an air conditioner. We went to Sears to buy it, because they had 'em and nobody else in town has much selection. This turned out to be a gigantic mistake. We used it throughout the summer, and then put it away in the back room. When I brought it back out the GFCI-equipped power cord's breaker decided to blow every time the unit was plugged in. I figured it was just the cord. The girl I talked to on the phone said that servicemen carry that kind of part with them, which turned out to be a lie, shock amazement.

When preparing to go to Panama, I realized I was badly in need of sunglasses which would fit my head. I'm a big guy with a big noggin, and in the past that has meant one of two things; Gargoyles with adjusted frames, or the Oakley Mambo, later renamed M-frame. Unfortunately, Oakley has discontinued the M-frame, so I decided to buy some Gargoyles oversized ANSI classics. This turned out to be a very wrong decision.

Today, the UPS man brought two packages, as HP made good on their promise of replacements within 24-48 hours. As promised, my replacement battery was in one of the packages. In the other was another incorrect power supply of the same type as the last. I have now spent over two hours (over several days, even) getting a replacement power supply for my warranted, business-class HPQ laptop.

In the ongoing saga of My Compaq nw9440 laptop, the DC power cable coming from my power supply developed a break and subsequently caused the repeated full draining of my battery, which will now not charge above 49%. So I decided to try the online chat system and see if it works on Firefox/Linux - which, amazingly, it does. I tried to use it less than a year ago and was rebuffed, so I took this to be an encouraging sign. You'd think that by this point in my life, I would know better...