... with crappy tech support service. Yes, the Dell tech ended up missing his appointment with us today. Turned out that our computers were all warrantied for 3 years, which is great for us because the power supply died on me after more than a year. On top of that, the 3 year warranty includes on-site service so I didn't need to haul this giant case somewhere. However, no one showed up today even though we were told that someone would show up in the afternoon. In fact, we waited till 6pm and didn't even get a phone call.

Major props to Hyun Gu in my lab though. Even though this wasn't his computer, he took the initiative to call Dell, both to set up the appointment, as well as to complain to the service rep that they didn't uphold their appointment. On top of that, he managed to convince the rep to send a guy out tomorrow... ON A SATURDAY. We'll see if they do though. Really all I need is a power supply. If only they would FedEx one out to us, that would be super.

Actually, this reminds me of yet another story associated with this whole scenario. I opened up the computer case yesterday to see what was wrong with the machine. Using a voltmeter, I was able to determine that the computer's power supply was not putting out the +5V of standby power, which meant that the power supply was dead. When the UT tech came, he saw the computer opened up and FREAKED OUT. I wasn't in the lab at the time, but my lab mates said that he started going on this rant about how computers shouldn't be opened up, and voltmeters are dangerous inside computers. After he calmed down, Deanna asked him if he was gonna take a look at it himself. He just said, "well, this guy said it was the power supply, so I'm leaving". When I asked my prof about that, he said, "well it was probably because he doesn't know what he's doing anyways." The word on the street is that this guy's solution to every computer problem he encounters is: "Reformat the harddrive".

That's one more bullet for me under the "Things to do if this PhD thing doesn't work out": Be a computer repair guy:)