A Dell Scare, Dinner at Pineapple Hill, And NCAA Day 1 Thoughts
Four straight days of blogging? What’s going on???
Quick-hitter:
- My sister asked me to look for some supplements for her. I looked up the active ingredients in one of her requested supplements, and one particular ingredient made me do a double take.
The ingredient? EPO.
“Listen…who is this guy who suggested these supplements to you?” I asked. Was my sister training with Floyd Landis?
I quickly pulled up the nutrition facts of this supplement, and was very relieved to find out that EPO stood for Evening Primrose Oil :P.
- My sister, after acquiring a new laptop, asked me to format hers and help her with the sale of it. Yesterday, I finally got around to formatting it (shocker, I know).
I went through the original shipping box of the laptop, looking for the restore CD. That’s when I found this square of paper with a picture of a CD on it, saying that no restore CDs were necessary to restore the laptop back to its original configuration; I would have to access a recovery partition on the system’s HDD to perform the restore.
No problem, I thought. I fired up the laptop, and pounded Ctrl+F11 as instructed. The next thing I knew, I saw the Windows XP logo. I guess I must have missed the prompt, I thought to myself.
Lather, rinse, repeat…and nothing. I used Windows Disk Management to verify that a recovery partition did exist, and of course it did. I tried Ctrl+F11 once more, and nothing happened.
I contacted Dell Support via email and explained that I needed the restore disks, as I could not access the restore partition. Dell replied, saying that they would have the restore CDs out in the next few days.
Today, I checked my Dell account to see if the CDs were en route, when I noticed an order created March 20, for the amount of ~$37. Looking at the order status, I noticed that Dell was trying to charge me $10 each for some Roxio software and some other non-essential software. What the hell? If I had to pay for the disks, shouldn’t I have been notified of this before creating an order? And all I really wanted was the Windows restore disk; I could care less about the other software!
I fired off an email to Support and asked why an order was created before notifying me of the necessary charges. The Dell rep quickly responded, letting me know that I would not actually be charged for the disks. Whew!
- My sister and I had plans to join her friends at Pineapple Hill—a “saloon and grill” on Van Nuys Blvd.—to watch the UCLA v Mississippi Valley State game. The food was great: fresh guacamole, buffalo wings, and burgers all around. Too bad the game was utterly unwatchable; I got bored of the game after five minutes.
(I know…what was I supposed to expect from a 1-16 matchup?)
Well, at least I got to watch the first part of the Lakers-Jazz game. Oh wait; that was pretty unwatchable too, at least in the early going. Did I mention that the food was good?
- And finally, some NCAA Day 1 thoughts:
1) Even though it would have wrecked by bracket, I was rooting for Belmont to beat Duke.
Too bad I was on the road during the last 2 minutes or so of the game.
2) USC v Kansas State held up to its billing…for about 35 minutes. What the heck happened to USC down the stretch?
Kansas State:Michael Beasley::Syracuse:Carmelo Anthony? Quite a reach, I know.
3) Thanks for showing up, MVSU. Twenty-nine points? Same to you, George Mason.
4) After Day 1 of the UngsungBlog Bracket Challenge (UBC), I’m trailing 13-12. Shocking, I know.
Until next time!
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