As promised last Thursday, spleen ventage, but first, a little commentary on language.
You may have noticed the "nerf curse" stand-in in the title. I borrowed it from the new Battlestar Galactica (which is a tasty piece of sci-fi in a post-Trek world). Here's what I'm pondering: clearly, we're using the word "fracking" to stand in for a more popular f-word ending in a nice satisfying hard 'k'. Interestingly, to my tongue, "freaking" doesn't have the same satisfaction to it that "fracking" does (and neither come close to the Universal Adjective). So, if the replacement is more-or-less globally recognized as a stand-in for the naughty original, to the point where every viewer knows what's really being said, what's the point of the substitution? How is it that "fracking" gets a pass by the FCC (which is clearly who SciFi is afraid of, though don't even get me started on the terms used in "Tripping the Rift"), but the good ol' Anglo-Saxonism we all know and love, which is clearly and unapologetically stood in for by the nerfed term, is still stigmatized? MIJM.
Okay. Careful of the bile. Last Saturday (the 11th), as I'm sitting using my computer, the Intel Storage Utility pops up and tells me that one of the hard drives has just failed. Now, this ordinarily would be a pretty catastrophic thing, but in this case, more of an annoyance, since the drives in my computer are set up in a RAID1 array, so that all of my data is mirrored. Without the second drive, I'm pretty much operating "without a net", but I view that the RAID array (and the extra money I spent on it) is doing its job, protecting me from data loss.
I had a similar failure (on the other of the two original drives) last August. After a few go-rounds with Dell support chat, I got a tech dispatched to my house to fix it. I was less than pleased with that experience, partially because what the tech did is nowhere near out of my skill set (I've worked with computer hardware for decades, and at one point had 14 running computers in my house, all built or recofigured by me from parts), but mostly because nobody gave me any advance warning, so this idiot calls me when he reaches my neighborhood, lets me know he's near my house, and expects me to be there. Of course, I'm at work, so I have to drop everything, dash to my house (1/2 hour away) and let this guy in, all so he can crack the case, unplug the old drive (SATA, even), plug in the new drive, and then fart around for half an hour trying to get the case closed again. I'm the one who had to point out what the case was getting hung up on. Sheesh.
At this point, I should mention that by and large, I'm deliriously happy with the computer. It's got a big, gorgeous 21" LCD monitor, the aforementioned RAID array, dual-layer DVD burner, and a kick-ass video card to go with the 3.8 GHz processor. Even the drive failures don't dampen my enthusiasm (though I have to suspect that Dell uses even crappier drives in the RAID systems than they do the non-RAID, specifically because of the failure tolerance).
Back to Saturday. I fire up the Dell Support Chat again, and get a fellow who's name escapes me, because the chat session died before we got anywhere on my problem. The second fellow, Amit (hmmm...think Dell outsources their support to India?) wanted me, as the first step, to shut down the computer, open it up, and inspect the drive cables, looking for bent pins. I told him there was no way I was going to perform that step, because it was unnecessary (the computer remains stationary, and has for months, and besides, the failure happened WHILE I WAS ACTUALLY USING THE COMPUTER!). After a few minutes convincing poor Amit that his level-1 support script was asking me to do stupid, stupid things, he suggested I restart the machine to verify that it showed up in the BIOS. I informed him that since the Intel Storage Utility had reported the specific drive, and I was able to pull up information about it at that moment from within Windows, that it was a pretty safe bet that it shows up in the BIOS, and I wasn't doing that either. Finally (after asking for his supervisor and informing him of my computer hardware and technical support bona fides), he gives me the magic incantation I need to chant to re-contact Dell Support so they can verify that yes, indeed, my drive is fracked.
I ran the diagnostics he specified, noting the failure points (unrecoverable data error in block blahblah), and then attempted to start Dell Support Chat again. After 45 minutes of dorking around with "all our agents are busy" messages (guess that means that they are actually humans, and not clever little ELIZAs), I finally get connected to Kumar (I can't tell you how badly I wanted to ask about Harold and White Castle). After I report the results to Kumar, he dinks around a bit and finally says he's going to dispatch someone. After regaling my tale of the previous tech dispatch, he agrees to just send me the drive, on the agreement that my credit card will be billed if I fail to return the defective drive within the specified time. He asked if I felt confident that I could perform the replacement, and I assured him that it was well within my skillset. At the time, I was told it'd be about three days. Well, three days was up last Wednesday, even if I'm generous and allow for three business days. Turns out, when I went and looked it up on the Dell Support site, it didn't even show up unless I do a particular query, and even then it wouldn't show me details.
Which brings me to the title of this post. The Dell Support website goes to great pains to point out that they are an "award-winning" website. Yet, it's harder than Chinese arithmetic to find the status of a technical ticket, or even how to submit one. Everything is geared around "order support", it seems. So, which frackin' award is given for the "most obtuse technical support website by an internet retailer of computers?" No, really. I'm asking.
Oh! Here's the best part...I just got off the chat (after another 45-minute go-round with the "all agents are busy" crap) with a friendly fellow named Harshit, who informed me that my dispatch for the replacement drive had been cancelled due to some internal data faults. He's promising to re-create the dispatch for me. Yippee.
I'll tell you what. I'll believe it when I have the replacement drive in my hands.
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