Hit It With A Wrench . . .

There are times when it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed . . .

Last April, after a fair amount of time debating with myself and exploring the pros and cons of buyer’s remorse, I finally decided to go out and purchase a laptop. The idea, you see, was to have something dedicated solely for the use of my writing projects and, well, to have a new toy to supplement my aging desktop. So, much to the delight of the local Best Buy, I soon walked out of the store with a brand new Gateway laptop for the bargain price of $1,500.00.

Did I say "bargain"? The laptop worked beautifully . . . for about a month. Then, one fine morning, the motherboard decided to commit suicide. I’m guessing that it had some pretty severe pre-existing psychological problems, or it took one look at the stuff I was working on and decided it had nothing to live for. Or, at least, that was my initial theory.

Lucky for me, being only a month old, it was under warranty, so I trotted it back over to the local Best Buy and paid a visit to the Geek Squad. They pronounced it DOA, and packed it off to the Gateway repair centre in Chicago, telling me that I should see the laptop again in about a month.

Wait a minute, a month? I live about forty miles away from Chicago; what were they doing, walking it to the city? This, I guess, should have been my first clue. Or the second, if you count the laptop offing itself as the first.

Be that as it may, the laptop did indeed return from the dead about a month later. Once back in my hot little hands and subjected to what I can now only assume is my turgid prose, it worked beautifully . . . for about a month. Then the hard drive decided it was time to exit this vale of tears. Great, another editorial comment . . .

So back it went to Best Buy and the Geek Squad, and thus it was sent on a return journey to the Gateway repair centre. It was at this point that I began to consider what a wonderful thing warranties and service plans are. But once again, I was without the laptop, on which all of my work resided . . . while my desktop just kept chugging away and, thankfully, resisting the temptation to say "I told you so."

Eventually, the laptop returned, now with a new hard drive in addition to the new motherboard it had acquired from its first trip, and a little note from Gateway saying "We really fixed it this time."

Count that one, if you will, as clue number three. Once again, the machine worked beautifully . . . this time for nine months. Call it a case of being a refugee from the law of averages. But then, this past week, having failed in its two previous attempts to leave all worldly lamentations permanently behind it, the laptop decided it was time for a third attempt. But this time, it dumped both the operating system and all the drivers, and then the motherboard took itself out in a blaze of electronic glory.

Oh. Well, I guess that I should have been used to that by now. The problem is, everything that was on the hard drive also disappeared into the ether, wiping out months of work and a half-dozen or so projects. Now, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and take the hit for the latter, since I was apparently too stupid or too lazy to make any hard copies or backups of all that work. Really, I should have known better, and doing so probably would have saved my editor from having a stroke. But why cry over spilt milk?

Anyway, back to the Gateway repair centre the laptop went, courtesy of the Geek Squad. For those of you keeping count, this would be the third time and, yes, I’m really getting some good mileage out of that warranty. Doesn’t help with the fact that I’m never going to be able to recover all that work I lost but, hey, at least it’s not costing me anything but a lot of aggravation, right?

So the laptop was returned to me yesterday. Eagerly, and with great anticipation to get back to work, I brought it home and fired it up. Only to have the hard drive say "N’uh uh" and kill itself. Again. Ah, well, back to the Geek Squad it went today and, really, they’ve got to be getting tired of seeing me by now. On Monday, the laptop will, for the fourth time, make the great journey into Chicago and the Gateway repair centre. Go, warranty!

I really can’t wait to get it back this time. You know, just sort of a morbid curiosity to see what it will do next. I have a new theory, you see. Apparently, there is some sort of really bitter cold war going on between the motherboard and the hard drive, that periodically breaks out into a massive thermonuclear exchange between the two in which all the hapless cyber life caught in the middle is wiped out.

That, or I just really suck as a writer, and my continued mutilation of the English language has turned me into some kind of serial computer killer . . .