Off Track

Although I would prefer a flame on the grill, I am more than happy with the fact that our furnace is working again. Especially seeing that the day started out at 13 below zero (Fahrenheit) and it has now climbed to a tropical 6. Now where are my shorts?

The last couple of days have been more than frustrating. It all started when my new Dell took a dive on Thursday. Long story short: after wasting a night trying to restore the hard drive image, I realized the drive was bad. Since it is still under warranty, I contacted Dell.

13 phone calls to India later, it is still down. I would love to be a fly on the wall of the "After Hours Dell Call Center" Bar in Mumbai to hear all of the "dumb Americans and their computers" stories. In fact, just for that reason I was extra nice. Admittedly, by call 10 that started to slip. Apparently the inter office transfer of phone calls doesn't work too well in India because I kept getting disconnected. Frustrating.

It was also fun being transferred to the Canadian call center desk in India. I should have guessed something was up when the phone prompts turned French. "You are not in Canada", they asked. "No...eh", I responded.

Now the reason I had so many calls is that I bought a computer through the Dell outlet. It was made for someone else, but never shipped. I got a great deal and I have been really happy with it...until now. Apparently the person that ordered this computer (a Canadian I learned) had some financial problems. Not only did he not get his computer, Dell blacklisted the service tag number. Every time I called Dell they told me the computer was back at Dell when it obviously wasn't. 4 people told me they wanted to send me a hard drive, but couldn't. Then the people that were supposed to fix the issue closed up shop. You can't miss happy hour at the After Hours Dell Call Center bar can you? I have been told that it will take 1 to 2 days to re-associate the service tag number with my computer. Great.

On the plus side, I noticed the spring seasonal beers have hit the store shelves. However, although it might say spring on the label, the weather outside says otherwise. Roll on spring and roll on Dell in getting my stuff straightened out and please furnace, stay lit tonight.