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Jun. 5th, 2002 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaobellThe customer was actually right this time, though he didn't know it.
He brought in THE! nastiest-ass computer I've ever seen yesterday, in a cardboard box. Monitor, speakers, the whole shooting match. He said it was dead, lightning strike. But he didn't want us to try to fix it. No, he wanted us to tell him we couldn't fix it so his insurance company would buy him a new one.
Mmmkay.
I discussed this with Boss #1. He agreed that we could get in Heap Big Shit if we fibbed, so we decided to go through the motions of running Troubleshooter on it and see how broke it really was.
The monitor was completely dead. We don't fix monitors, and as far as we could tell, it was dead enough that any attempt to fix it would have cost about as much as a new one.
Problem #1: When trying to insert the Troubleshooter floppy into the drive, it stopped about halfway in. Intern peered in with a flashlight and saw something--whether it was a foreign object or part of the drive that had come loose, we couldn't tell--blocking the drive. Okay, he needs a new floppy drive.
We hooked one of our drives up, popped in the Troubleshooter floppy, and turned it on. Nothing.
Eventually, we narrowed it down to the motherboard. And this was one of those oddball Packard Hell I mean Bell boxen, with the weird daughterboard thing and a case that no other motherboard would fit into. So he'd need a new case, to fit the new motherboard. And a new video card, because we don't get motherboards with onboard video. And probably a new modem. Basically, a whole new computer. And there was no way to prove it wasn't killed by a lightning strike, as we did have a really hairy thunderstorm last week, and he lives in the area where the lightning was hitting pretty hard...so we wrote up the claim letter and taped it to the box. He may ask us to give the computer a proper burial in the dumpster out back when he comes in.
Did I mention that this computer was gross? It was, obviously, a smoker's computer. Which I have no room to bitch about, as I smoke near my computer when I know I shouldn't. But I at least clean the damn thing inside and out every month or so. Intern had to wipe the case down with Windex before he could bear to touch it, and I don't blame him. We won't even talk about the inside. Suffice it to say I half expected Intern to dig up potatoes from under the floppy drive. And it smelled like ass. I smoke a pack a day, and the smell nearly gagged me. That should tell you how ass-nasty this thing was.
People, for the love of God, if you smoke and/or have animals that shed, spend the three lousy bucks on a can of air, open yer case, and blow the crap out of it once in a while. GACK.
He brought in THE! nastiest-ass computer I've ever seen yesterday, in a cardboard box. Monitor, speakers, the whole shooting match. He said it was dead, lightning strike. But he didn't want us to try to fix it. No, he wanted us to tell him we couldn't fix it so his insurance company would buy him a new one.
Mmmkay.
I discussed this with Boss #1. He agreed that we could get in Heap Big Shit if we fibbed, so we decided to go through the motions of running Troubleshooter on it and see how broke it really was.
The monitor was completely dead. We don't fix monitors, and as far as we could tell, it was dead enough that any attempt to fix it would have cost about as much as a new one.
Problem #1: When trying to insert the Troubleshooter floppy into the drive, it stopped about halfway in. Intern peered in with a flashlight and saw something--whether it was a foreign object or part of the drive that had come loose, we couldn't tell--blocking the drive. Okay, he needs a new floppy drive.
We hooked one of our drives up, popped in the Troubleshooter floppy, and turned it on. Nothing.
Eventually, we narrowed it down to the motherboard. And this was one of those oddball Packard Hell I mean Bell boxen, with the weird daughterboard thing and a case that no other motherboard would fit into. So he'd need a new case, to fit the new motherboard. And a new video card, because we don't get motherboards with onboard video. And probably a new modem. Basically, a whole new computer. And there was no way to prove it wasn't killed by a lightning strike, as we did have a really hairy thunderstorm last week, and he lives in the area where the lightning was hitting pretty hard...so we wrote up the claim letter and taped it to the box. He may ask us to give the computer a proper burial in the dumpster out back when he comes in.
Did I mention that this computer was gross? It was, obviously, a smoker's computer. Which I have no room to bitch about, as I smoke near my computer when I know I shouldn't. But I at least clean the damn thing inside and out every month or so. Intern had to wipe the case down with Windex before he could bear to touch it, and I don't blame him. We won't even talk about the inside. Suffice it to say I half expected Intern to dig up potatoes from under the floppy drive. And it smelled like ass. I smoke a pack a day, and the smell nearly gagged me. That should tell you how ass-nasty this thing was.
People, for the love of God, if you smoke and/or have animals that shed, spend the three lousy bucks on a can of air, open yer case, and blow the crap out of it once in a while. GACK.
