Sunday, September 26, 2010

Electronic Woes

Wow it has been a while. I have recently restarted school and am deep into wonderful software engineering papers and research. So exciting. Starting the semester turned out to be a lot harder than I originally anticipated. In order to give a proper understanding I must start back earlier in June. This is when I had my first clues that electronics just were not for me.

June: My desktop burns out its Video card. Luckily EVGA the producer of my card has a lifetime warranty policy and gladly allowed me to RMA the card for a new one. When I receive my new card my laptop promptly decides to short its own video card and give me lovely pink patterns on the screen. Still I fortunately have a replacement plan on the laptop and sent it in to get repaired.

August 20th: I have been playing laptop tag with the laptop warranty people for over two months now and they still claim to be unable to detect my problem. Finally I tell them to keep the laptop until they can find the problem. A couple days later my video card shorts out on my desktop computer AGAIN! This time it takes the motherboard with it (perhaps the cause of the first problem?). EVGA makes my motherboard as well and gladly lets me RMA both units for a free replacement. (BTW EVGA has incredible technical support well beyond the call of duty and they have fast response times, and allow you to leave your phone number rather then wait on hold. If you do this they will call you back when your place in line is reached. I cannot say enough about how awesome their technical support is.) At this point school starts in a week. Finally the laptop people find my problem and start sending it back.

September 10th: Middle of first week of school. Luckily I have had my laptop to complete assignments. My parts from EVGA arrive. The motherboard arrived dead with the dreaded FF error. (see internet for tells of woe and sadness over the FF error) EVGA again offers free replacement. I pull out my TI-83 calculator to ready it for classes to find out the memory unit has been corrupted and is dead. Missing my good sound system I plug my speakers into my laptop. A day later while sitting on my bed and NOT using my speakers at all they short out and die making HORRIBLE thumping, bumping, staticy screeching sounds. After sitting on hold with Logitech for FOREVER I finally get somebody who barely speaks english to explain to me since Circuit City (the store I bought them from) is closed they cannot complete the warranty and can only give me a coupon. Sad day... I also lost my jumpdrive.

Present Day: My computer and laptop are both finally back up, I found my jumpdrive again, and my replacement speakers are in the mail. Wow... I do not want to repeat that again. However I do have ALOT of experience in dealing with many different tech support lines now. I guess thats a plus. So much for the bonus money I got in scholarships though.

Well I've got homework to do so I'll see you later.