Death to Dell

That's right, I am through with you. You will torment me no more. You are banished to the corner of my room where I will mock you until some far off day when I decide that I need to put a real piece of furniture over there. Damn you for getting my blog off track again. I am supposed to be writing about my trip to Africa and not how much I hate the demonspawn of Dell.

Sure, things started off well enough a year and a half ago when you were born and delivered to my doorstep. I know you had big shoes to fill since your older brother had served me well for nearly 8 years, which is an obscenely long time for someone of your kind to stay useful. I really wasn't holding you to his standard. But SIX MONTHS? I never had a hard drive fail on me (knock on particle board) except for yours which failed before you'd seen more than half the seasons.

That's when I learned about your mother's "Warranty" policy. She would send me a "refurbished" hard drive if I handed your busted one (you know the one filled with all my passwords, tax data, compromising photographs, etc.) over to her Eastern European delivery boy. Does this policy strike anyone else as ridiculous? It makes sense for every other one of your parts, but not a hard drive. I let your mother know my feelings on this in a politely worded letter, and some not so polite follow on phone calls to her Indian henchmen (BTW my issue is with you and your mother, I have nothing against Eastern Europeans or Indians. Don't try to change the subject!)

But I forgave you for that (or at least we reached a compromise so we could continue to coexist). I bought you a brand new hard drive with my own money and we went on our merry way. Until you decided to start whining. I ignored you for a while but you wouldn't shut up. At first it was just kind of annoying. You'd whine. I'd smack you upside the head. You'd shut up. We went back and forth like this for a couple of weeks but you just kept at it, whining as soon as I tried to get you to do any work at all. I should have just tossed you in the corner then. But I had pity. Maybe I'd worked you too hard. Maybe I shouldn't have expected you to have a fan that would last longer than a year. Perhaps that's just asking too much these days.

Well we'd written your mother off completely by that point. She wasn't paying child support. She's got too many other kids to take care of as it is. You're mothers a ... well I'd have plenty of other things to say about your mother, but my mom reads this so she will be spared my full verbal wrath. Again, I'd never had a power supply fail on me... before you... but still I appeased you and bought you a brand new one to shut you up. And you did shut up. For another six months. Until I came home from a lovely Red Sox victory last Friday and found you blinking at me.

Your face was blank except for a single blinking cursor. Now I thought I knew how to handle you by this point. But a reboot wasn't enough for you. Not this time. I decided to just let you sleep it off. But that wasn't enough either. Nope. You just kept blinking. At least the blinking was new. I'm familiar with you spouting off about "OS Not Found" or when you are just too lazy to start up at all. But blinking, that's new. You were healthy enough to start up but too sick to even show me your setup screen. Cute. But I've had enough. Off to the corner with you. Just wanted to take one last photo of you blinking at me for your obituary here. I had the camera pointed at the screen to capture the blink you'd given me a dozen times in a row and you... boot the frak up! Ha ha. Very funny.

We had a good last few moments together. I won't say I didn't appreciate the chance to say goodbye to you (and move everything that I really cared about you off to one of your detachable brains - those are handy BTW). Then you were gone. Blinking again. Points for originality because you didn't blink at me with a blank faced cursor anymore. You actually took your usually green cyclops eye and started blinking that at me. A blinking yellow eye. Sure, your mother claims you just need another new power supply... or a new mother board. To which I say: Screw you, and screw her. You need to sit and rot in the corner of my room.

And that is where you are right now. You've been gutted and already replaced. Lest you derive any joy from forcing me to spend some more money to replace you, you were so easily replaced that I just picked up the former hunk of silicon from the corner where you now sit and transplanted all that was good and right about you (which wasn't much) into her. And we are very happy together.

And the moral of the story is: Don't buy a Dell! (well except for your new laptop mom, that will be fine :-) )

And while I am ranting, who decided that it was a good idea to put a hotel up right next to Camden Yards and block the formerly lovely view of the blue lit clock tower? Somehow Dell must have been involved...