Archive for the ‘Flustration’ Category

Tablet Catastrophe

Friday, October 5th, 2007

Towards the end of summer I sent my laptop in for service. One the Ethernet port had been jacked up cause its really fragile (not something I’m happy about). And two the screen was kinda fubar. It looked as if I was going to pull the screen off when i opened and closed the screen. But when I got it back, only the Ethernet port was fixed. I was just happy to get my laptop back I didn’t bother with it any more. Low and behold that problem manifested itself into an actual problem. The screen would literally stretch past the bottom of the screen when I opened it or touched it just right. So I sent it in again, this time the screen was fixed, but now whenever I suspend the tablet, the keyboard no longer works until I completely shut it down, a reboot does not restore the keyboard. Was on the phone with support for almost an hour. Not much to do after everything I did already before calling. We updated the bios, no help. Their sending me a replacement keyboard, but honestly, I doubt this will fix it. It’s gotta be the main board for some reason, but why is beyond me. All they did is replace the screen, why would that have fucked up the main board, unless they jabbed it with a screwdriver. Which is possible.

Well, while in the middle of writing this post I had physics class. We got our tests back, there was a double bell curve, at one end were D’s at the other end were B’s. You can guess where I was.

Anyways, I had a revelation. As I was packing up after class I hit my caps lock key and the light came on. I was like, woah! So when I got back to work I tried it and sure enough it didn’t work. I was like what the hell. I figured it had to be length of time being on. That’s then the revelation hit. While I was on the phone with the tech guy, I put the top in hibernation mode and then brought it back out. It gave a stuck key error and wouldn’t go any further. It made us (me and the tech guy) that it was a keyboard for some reason or another. Then I noticed the Esc key on my LCD assembly was kinda sunken in. Whadda ya know, the key was stuck, low and behold once I “unstuck” it everything started working again. Who knew that the LCD buttons and the keyboard were linked. I figured it was probably a proprietary connection though serial or USB, but I guess now that I think about it makes sense.  At least the tablet catastrophe is over and I can be at some what peace.

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Posted in Flustration, laptop | No Comments »

Ignorant Automobiles…

Sunday, December 31st, 2006
I’m good with computer because of several reasons, but the most renounced would be the fact that troubleshooting a problem is generally a logical and simple process, for me anyways. However, working with cars is a bit different. At the beginning of winter break my car desided to start vibrating. At first it was after about 35 it started making a weird pulsing vibration noise/vibrate. It literally happened over night; I hadn’t drove my car for about a week, or two. Before that no noise what-so-ever. Asked a bunch of people, each person said something different, but everyone suggested tires. So I took em some place and they balanced’em. It seemed to help, cept now it vibrates between 50 and 65. Swore it had to be tires, took it to Sears (where I bought my tires) they balanced them again, didn’t do anything. Took back to them, I road around with one of the techs and pointed out the vibrations. After a while they claimed it was my bearings and my control arm was bent. After looking at it again w/ my dad, he wasn’t convinced that:
  1. The control arm really had anything to do with that vibration
  2. The bearings didn’t feel like they were catching or going bad in any way

It’s quite possible the bastards just wanted me outta the store so they just made some convincing arguments about why its not the tires. Uggh, I hate people and cars. So what I’m probably going to have to go is try some other tires on my car, hopefully one of my buddies down in Edwardsville have tires the same as mine and we can swap for a few mins. If the noise is still there, then I’ll have to take it to a shop who knows what they are doing and look it over and see what they have to say. Ignorant Automobiles.

Posted in Cars, Flustration | 1 Comment »