My Sister's Computer Trouble

Earlier this month, my family got my sister a new computer. She needed to get one because her school, Northern Illinois University, made it a requirement to have at least Windows XP on a computer on their network. We got her a pretty nice HP computer with Windows XP Media Center edition on it (apparently, it's hard to find Win XP Home nowadays). She had been using and enjoying her computer at home since she got it.

She went back to school on Saturday. I couldn't go with her and the family because I had to work. My sister had gotten used to her new computer and knew how to hook it up. I assumed (and hoped) that things would go well without me. Unfortunately, they didn't.

NIU's network uses a program called Clean Access Agent in order for students to go online. This program conflicts with Norton security software. Like my computer, my sister's computer came preinstalled with some Norton software. She decided to uninstall the software from her computer before trying to get online at school. When she did, some type of error happened and her computer shut down. When she restarted it, she found out that her Windows was suddenly messed up. It wouldn't load at all. The PC recovery function on her hard drive didn't work. To make matters worse, her computer did not come with recovery CDs. HP, like other manufacturers, makes you burn your own recovery CDs, which she didn't realize she had to do. [Note: I feel really guilty about not making sure that she did this since my computer was the same way.]

I found out about all of this when I got home from work. I called her up and we decided to call the tech support at HP and Circuit City (we bought a protection plan on the computer). HP told her that it was the hard drive and said that Circuit City should fix it. When I talked to Circuit City to get them to come out, they told me that because the computer was still under the manufacturer's warranty that HP had to deal with the repair. I ended up leaving home to go to a movie but my sister told me that she would call HP and tell me what happens.

All of this reminds me of the crap I went through when I bought my first computer. Within my first quarter at NU, my hard drive, motherboard, memory, and floppy disk drive were replaced due to a startup issue with my computer that never went away. It got to the point where I got so many repairs that Best Buy had to give me a new PC. That PC is the one I recently replaced and it's still working today.

It's really sad that my sister has to go through this type of drama. Her classes start on Monday and as any college student knows, it's hard as all hell to do anything there without a computer. I really hope that this can get resolved as soon as possible. My sister suffered through a spyware-infested Windows ME computer with only 64 MB of memory for years and she deserves a computer that will actually work for her. I'll let you know what happens.


Update: HP is going to send my sister a box so that she can send back her computer and get a replacement.

News

I'm happy to report that I got a promotion at my job. I'm now (finally) full-time after more than a year working there. This means an increase in my hourly wage, benefits that kick in after 60 days, and the ability to get holiday pay and accumulate vacation days. I will have more responsibilities than before, but I know the area I will be working in very well and I'm confident that I'll be able to do the job.

So, does that mean that I'll be blogging less? Nope. My hours won't really increase that much since I was already working near-full-time hours anyway. However, the increase in wage is a big plus for me and hopefully, I can start actually saving some money and paying more of my bills.

Speaking of that, I am now in the market for a new cell phone. My current phone is a pretty ancient Nokia that I've had for at least 4 or 5 years. When I first got that phone, I had AT&T Wireless if that's any indication of how long I've had it. I don't even really know where to begin in terms of what phone to get. I don't really want or need a cameraphone and I don't necessarily have to have the latest thing. I just want a cell phone that gets good reception and has maybe a bit more features than my current phone. Oh, and maybe it'd be nice to have a flip phone this time.

There's still time to join in on the next Mixmania. This time around, the theme is 9/11. This is a really difficult theme and not for everyone. I have to admit that I'm finding it challenging to think of songs that express the variety of emotions I felt on that day. You have until August 23rd to join if you're up to the challenge.

The finalists for the 2006 Black Weblog Awards have been announced and I'm not one of them. However, there are some great blogs that are among the finalists and I encourage you to go to the site and vote. I'd say that maybe I'll be a finalist next year but that would be as delusional as saying that I'll be a multimillionaire tomorrow.

Finally, I found an old notebook of mine the other day and it had a skit I completely forgot I wrote. The skit had Lil' Jon as a guest on the PBS talk show Charlie Rose. I'm pretty sure that it predates Dave Chappelle's famous Lil' Jon skits, but since it was handwritten in a notebook with no date on it, I can't be sure. I didn't finish the skit (and I even left a note to myself to figure out how to end it) but it certainly reminded me of my eternal quest to get back to fiction writing. Whenever I eventually restart my creative writing blog, I'll have to remember to put up that “lost” skit.

Edit: I'm now on that beta version of Blogger. You might see a couple of changes here and there to the look of this blog over the next few days as I adjust.