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feeling: royally peeved, but slightly... compensated? (read below and figure it out dangit)
listening to: nothing... not in the mood
In the name of all things holy, I CANNOT STAND THIS COMPUTER! This thing has had it in for me since the day I ordered it! Ok, I placed the order at a renowned online computers-and-stuff store for this sweet deal of a computer, about 2 steps down from top-of-the-line (that doesn't include those industrial 4000-gig monsters that regular people can't buy yet), for only $1500. The beauty was, I could afford that MYSELF - I had around $1800 in the bank, including my graduation money and a $500 scholarship. Yeah, this was the summer between graduation and beginning college. So, the thing's to be at my front door within, like, 2-4 weeks. Wrong. I go to college with no computer. Very, very, VERY bad. I have a writing class and 3 other classes, all of which require the web, essays, or both, regularly. End of the first quarter rolls around... I have a monitor. But STILL no computer. I go home for winter break royally cheesed after a very trying quarter. Several letters have been sent to the company by this time, by the way... about a month before, they'd told us that the machine I ordered was no longer available. That's the techno world for ya. But they CAN send me the next-best system (which is by this time probably the slowest and worst they sell), for an additional $50. Okay. Wait around some more... finally, a few days after Christmas or thereabouts, it arrives. Everything but the printer and scanner. But that's ok. I have my own computer now. I'm overjoyed. Buuuut, that's not the end... there's still the matter of my rebate forms, which haven't yet arrived. Those things make the difference between that original $1500 and a ridiculously higher $2000. Well, those rebate forms never come, no matter how many letters we write to the company AND the Attorney General. Why? Because the freaking company's gone BANKRUPT. Bankrupt! What is THAT?! Anyway... this means that, no matter how much they screwed me over, I have to pay over $2000 for a $1500 system that was not even the one I originally wanted AND that I had to wait 4 MONTHS to get, and we can't sue them. Illegal to sue a bankrupt company. Well, at least they can't steal anyone else's life savings. -_-
Anywaaay, the time comes, and I take my new computer to school (and soon after, my printer and scanner). Woohoo! A much easier quarter is in store!... umm, nope. Four months later, it crashes. Fried processor or something. So we have to send it back to the manufacturer, who puts in a new motherboard - in other words, a reformat of the worst kind. Everything lost. So, during the time it's in New Jersey or something being fixed, my parents very generously let me use their computer at school while they use an old crappy laptop with, I kid you not, about 26 megs of RAM. Hey, it only had 4 when Dad got it. Well, my computer doesn't arrive back until almost the end of SPRING quarter - in other words, right before summer break. I don't bring it back to school. Too much work, and I'm almost done anyway. So summer starts, and I go home psyched to have my own computer in my room for the first time ever. A great life it is - for exactly one week. Then lightning fries my modem. ARG!! Sooo, all summer, I have a computer in my room, but no internet. Fall comes, and I'm ready to lug the thing back to campus, and back to this lovely T1 connection. Ahh, the good life. Guess what? Major DNS error. I have a computer in the dorm, but no internet. Double ARG!! Four weeks later, a local techie working for the dorm comes up to fix it, and thinks a recovery-without-format is the only fix he can find. Okay, fine. So he does that, and... Bingo! I'm online! Buuut... that's about all that works. He leaves me with not-working printer, scanner, video drivers, Office, graphic program, sound drivers (no music!! NOOOO), and lots of other stuff. Again, I'm royally cheesed. So again me and my parents switch towers (they have a "new" laptop too, so they're not stuck with crap), and Dad prepares to reformat mine while I use his here. At least this time I have enough warning to back up my files before the reformat, and I do just that. It takes about 40 floppies. (CD burning software's dead too) He reformats, and it works. Glory hallelujah. I reload the thing, bring it back to school... and the printer won't work. WHYYYY?!!
So, a very short time later, it's time for winter break. I take my computer home, planning to have a grand ol' time with the new cable connection at our house. Unfortunately, we never do get the home network running right, so no internet on my machine all winter. Oh well, I can always go downstairs, and the rest works fine. So then, winter ends. A week later, I sit in this very chair just waiting for something to go wrong (besides that the printer still won't work).
I didn't have to wait long. Less than a week later - tonight - I put in my favorite floppy disk, the one holding the majority of my fanfics, school stuff from the past couple years, and other stuff I work with frequently. About three-quarters of it is gone. GONE. I put in another disk that I use semi-frequently, much less essential, but still important to me. It's COMPLETELY gone. There's one disk left, and I'm afraid to let this evil machine touch it. Because it holds my longest-ever fanfic, I believe 68 pages and only half done. I will NOT risk opening this disk on this computer... it gets to wait till tomorrow, when I go to the library. And if it's gone too... I'll start breaking things. I'll give up. I'll never write again. That monstrous document, an FF7 fanfic, has given me enough crap... back when it was less than 50 pages, it got virused or something somehow, and I had to retype almost every word of it, looking off a read-only Notepad view of the garbled document. It was not fun.
Sooo, anyway, someone on ICQ with a hard-to-pronounce name ~_^ sent me some links when I told him of my dilemma. One of them is a recovery program from CNET that just might restore the lost files for me. I try it out... praise be to God, a few of the lost files are there! Not all of them, but a few of them. And they now sit safely in My Documents, far away from any evil file-eating floppy disks. But I still refuse to even TRY opening that third disk till I get to the library tomorrow.
...Enough depressing stuff. I'm gonna eat some fruit salad now. Mmmmm, fruit salad.
Daria rocks, by the way.
Endnote: Terribly sorry if there are any glaring typos here. Typing in a blind rage isn't easy, and I didn't feel like proofreading. I want my fruit.
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 1/17/2002 10:03:00 PM
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