Well, THAT Was Easy
Thu 2012-01-26 10:50:05 (in context)
It was around 5:30 PM on Tuesday when I spoke to Dell Technical Support about my non-functioning speakers.
It was around 8:00 AM on Wednesday when the technician who'd visited me Tuesday called up and offered to return between 10 and 11 that very day. And so he did. And though he did not need to install the replacement speakers after all (as expected and hoped), he did indeed have them with him, freshly overnighted from Dell HQ.
Does your math tell you what my math tells me? My math tells me this is barely more than 12-hour turn-around time. I'm not sure how this is physically possible, even under the rubric of "overnight delivery." What I'm trying to say is, I should like to borrow Dell's TARDIS, please.
So, yes, when the tech installed the new motherboard on Tuesday (which continues to perform splendidly, thanks), he'd just managed not to securely plug my external speakers into it. On Wednesday, he opened up the computer again to correct this. It was a matter of five to ten minutes.
"Awesome," was my take on it. "As mistakes go, this one's a lot easier to fix than the one that results in yet another flawed motherboard."
"Well, that one would be easy, too," he said. "I'd just install another motherboard."
"Yeah, but -- how depressing would that be? Another flawed motherboard. Ew. I'm glad it wasn't that."
He pointed out that maybe his employer wouldn't feel the same way. A flawed motherboard would mean someone else had made the mistake, someone that employer didn't have to answer for. I guess field warranty support contractors expect their techs to be perfect. But that's silly -- not to mention deeply unfair. It's not perfection that's obtainable but rather the striving for perfection. Any company policy that expects employers not to make mistakes is a policy that expects employers not to be human. Seems much more practical, more effective, and more humane to focus instead on how to respond to the inevitable mistake that does crop up. And I've got no complaints whatsoever in that department. No one dragged their feet, no one tried to weasel out of the warranty, no one tried to evade responsibility. Everyone concerned had the same goal: me with a functional laptop. I'm happy to say that goal has been achieved. Hooray!
Tangent: While the speaker fix was simple, the tech's visit was a bit longer than planned because an unrelated part of the motherboard decided to give him problems. If you've ever taken apart a Dell Inspiron 1564 -- and why should you? But if you have -- you'll be familiar with the ribbon cable that attaches the power button to the motherboard such that pushing it actually has an effect. It's teeny and fiddly, and so is the plastic clamp that secures it in place. When that plastic clamp pops off, it can be very tricky to pop it back on. He had to use his entire set of pliers and my own pair of needle-nosers AND the tweezers from my Swiss Army pocketknife, in various combinations, before the thing finally decided to cooperate. Then he cloth-taped that sucker into place so there'd be no more of that nonsense.
So now my laptop is stable, functional, and ready for me to move both my working life and my playtime back in. I can now go on with my life.
(Yes, I'm aware of how pathetic that is. Possibly my life needs an overhaul if a broken laptop can bring it to a screeching halt. First world problems ahoy! Still.)
In other posts I've mused on how stress is habit forming. It totally is. And there are different flavors of stress. Right now, I find I'm in the habit of stressing out over the possibility that my laptop will crash if I pick it up, adjust the angle of its monitor, or just shove it farther away from me on the desk. It's downright Pavlovian. Either a week with John's perfectly stable Inspiron 1440 wasn't enough to put me at ease, or being back at the keyboard of my 1564 is evoking stress once more. My guess? A bit of each. Give me time; I'll get back into the habit of taking functionality for granted eventually.
On the other hand, I managed to get almost two years of productivity out of a cracked motherboard. Go me!