Inspiron
My week has been hectic so far, big surprise.
Yesterday, I had to make a service call to fix some wireless internet. Did that as quickly as possible and left, not only did I have my posse with me but my next stop was downtown St. Louis where I had to go to DHL to pickup my laptop. What Dell says is next business day delivery apparently means ground to DHL and so when I saw they were definitely not delivering it on Monday I knew I had to go get it since I would not be home on the day they said it would come, or the other day it might come. And I’ve heard enough horror stories about attempted deliveries and then packages getting lost, so I wasn’t about to take my chances.
However, though I had called first in the morning and they had about seven hours to get the package ready for me, I still had to wait for an hour because they couldn’t find it! I wasn’t the only one, either. Another woman was in there with me for about a third of my time. They had attempted delivery for her twice (she said, they claimed three times) and she arranged Saturday to pick up her package. They couldn’t find hers, either. She had to go home empty handed, too, with only promises that they would find it and deliver it that night. I hope they did - whatever it was, she said it was for a wedding this week.
She ended up calling out the manager and then he talked to me after her and when he found out I had been there an hour, his eyes bugged out of his head. He wasn’t about to send me away since I’d driven approximately 70 miles to get there. Of course, within five minutes of his discovery? I had my package. Smell fishy to you? Sure does to me.
Anyway, because this took much much longer than I expected, I had to get back south very quickly as I had a meeting halfway between here and St. Louis at 6. However, the guy who flew in from wherever who was leading the meeting and a few other key people didn’t get there until 6:45 so the whole evening was just made later. And somehow… I got myself a title for something I didn’t even realize I was taking part in and I’m now something called an INdeavor Director. Heh. :) So far so good, though, I guess - looks like in mid-August I’ll be extremely busy with this thing though.
Today I had to take the Jeep into the dealership. We are within a thousand miles of our warranty being up even though our lease is for another year. We’re already at over 29,000 miles, just since April 2006! We’ve been hearing this ringing sound and twice before the dealership guys have not been able to hear it - it is not a constant thing. Steve finally figured out where he thought it was coming from and so wanted us to get it in again. When I told them what he thought it was and went in, I was under the impression they’d fix it, I’d wait for it, then go home. They were under the impression that they were keeping it overnight and that I was going to walk the 30 miles home, or something. No rental for me.
Steve was pretty ticked off at this. I had no choice but to call my mother-in-law, where I’d left Elijah already, and beg her to come get me. Of course, she was happy to. But I felt so dumb. If I had known they were going to keep it so long, I would have left the carseat and a few other items that were in the vehicle at home or at my in-laws’ house. But instead, here I am with my purse, laptop case, the carseat, five DVDs, and my brunch. So I waited about an hour in all, ate my food, read some of my book, and installed a few more programs I need on the laptop; then my mother-in-law picked me up.
Back at their house, E was being watched by my sleeping father-in-law (he’s sick) and Sarah. I ended up staying there pretty much all day until Steve got back. And what did he do? Went by the dealership and showed them the noise and where it’s coming from and they ordered a new drive shaft. He then came home in the Jeep and got me and E at his parents’ then we all went back north, again and got his truck! (His truck is small and the carseat doesn’t fit well in it, let alone the three of us plus all our junk.) So I’ll get to take the Jeep back in sometime next week for the new part.
So now I sit. Still getting the laptop the way I want it and blogging. I really like the laptop so far. It’s quite a bit heavier than my last one, the body overall is heavier and it’s slightly bigger. I got laughed at last night at my meeting when we were talking about the laptop. One of the guys pulled his out and he has an Inspiron E1705. I said that I had just picked up my E1505 and was telling them that I had debated about getting the E1705 but decided that I didn’t need the 17″ inch screen because that would mean buying a new laptop case and I adore my case. For some reason they all thought that was hilarious. I do love my case!
I already turned over my old laptop to Sheila. When I knew I was going to pickup the new one yesterday, I went ahead and moved off my files and uninstalled the stuff she wouldn’t need. It was pretty quick, easy, and painless once I moved my files and especially after I created her a user account and deleted mine. I had already decided not to reformat it since I just did it not long ago. It’s also not like she’s a “stranger” or that I had sensitive information on it, because I really didn’t. She’s just having trouble getting the dialup to work. I walked her through setting it up but she says it’s not connecting. I was going to look at it today but she took it with her, so another time. When she moves in with her sister and their roommate and starts college this fall, however, they have a wireless connection set-up, so the home dialup won’t matter so much.
Anyway, I love my laptop so far overall. Besides the weight, the only thing I’m really having to get used to is the location of the home, end, delete, page up, and page down buttons. On my old Compaq they were in a column along the far right, now they’re in two rows of three at the top right.
I’m also really glad this thing has a built in five-in-one card reader. I had an add-on six-in-one card reader in the PCI slot of the other laptop and I kept it because I know Sheila’s not going to need it and I thought this one had a PCI slot, but apparently not. It’s called an “expansion slot” but apparently it’s just a remote holder (which I didn’t get, I don’t figure I need a remote for my laptop… my laptop is my remote)! Oh, well, as long as the other one works, it’s not like I really need it, but now I have a hardly used card reader I don’t know what I’m going to do with.
I also love that this has four USB ports, in non-inconvenient places! The other one had two, one of which was in the way if you are right handed and using a mouse! There’s also an IEEE 1394 connector though I don’t guess that I have a use for it…
I’m also now all Vista’d out. No more XP in my house. Not that it really matters one way or another, but that’s them facts baby. I like Vista better now, too, than I did at first. Especially since I don’t use Norton Antivirus anymore, I don’t have many problems with it at all. We still have XP up on the Avid though, Avid and Vista don’t play nice yet, I’m told.
And speaking of the Avid, I bought a book last week and it gave me a different method of laying off to tape and that seemed to have fixed our video/audio out-of-sync/drift problem. Sweet!!!!!
