Just tell me the truth

I'm becoming convinced the computer repair shop is lying to me.

First - the background. On the 30th of October my oldest son spilt a glass of water next to my laptop, which pretty promptly stopped working. The next morning I rang HP to tell them my laptop wouldn't turn on and the tech support guy walked me through a few things to get the laptop going again. It did start up so I was all "yay!" and then I asked him if he could help with something else I'd been having trouble with, the fingerprint security thing that had stopped working a couple of weeks before. Whatever he asked me to do didn't work, and each step didn't work through several restarts of the computer until finally the computer just stopped working again. At this point he declared the job required more help then he could provide and told me it would need to go to a repairer. Since the repair shop is pretty near my house I decided to drop it off, so I have a receipt for the laptop dated 31 October at 12:04pm. I was told at this point that it would likely take a week because they were pretty backed up but they would order the parts that day so when it came up on their job list it would be pretty quick to fix.

Friday last week (so exactly one week later) at around 2pm I got a phone call from the repair shop asking me for my log-in password. The lady who rang me told me that they'd had to order a second part but they'd finished installing it so after a few tests they should be calling me back later that afternoon. Except they didn't. Yesterday (Tuesday) I was going to be in the area anyway so I popped in around 1pm to ask what the status of the job was, I was told that it was on the guy's desk and they would be probably returning it to me later in the afternoon. Except they didn't.

Today I just rang up to find out what was going on after starting to experience moderate panic about the whole looming-end-of-semester-with-all-relevant-information-saved-on-that-laptop business. Today the story is that the tech who was working on it yesterday was called away for an emergency, he wasn't there right now but one of the other techs believes that it should be ready by either this afternoon or tomorrow.

Now I don't know about anyone else, but this is starting to look a lot like I'm being fobbed off. Either they've lost it, they are incompetent, or I keep getting bumped down the priority queue. No matter what it is, I would far rather they told me the truth than keep getting my hopes up. Not to mention that this is a warranty repair and their stated service standard is 2-4 working days for warranty repairs. I almost hope HP send me out a customer satisfaction survey if I ever get the laptop back.

Bad Mother

It's the weekend again and I will now reveal my poor parenting skills. Today's lunch for the children was hotdogs. Tonight's dinner will be sausages. I do plan on making some salad to go with the sausages but I already know that at least two of them will turn the sausage into a hotdog then tell me they are too full for salad.

To top off the poor parenting today, I laid down on my bed with my 3 year old around 2pm to encourage her to go to sleep and woke up over an hour later with no 3 year old next to me. So the only person who had an afternoon nap is me, the only person over the age of 10 in the house. Luckily the only damage is the crumbs all over the dinner table and the apple core on the coffee table.

Cyclone season ahoy!

I may as well stick this here too rather than keeping it on my hard drive - I know how that turns out from my experiences over the last month! When I took the kids to school this morning and came back through the security gate the Cyclone Watch board was up for the first time this cyclone season so it's definitely time for me to start thinking about what to do.

Since this will be my first full cyclone season in Darwin I have had a bit of time to think about it. I also need to think about the fact that for most of December there will be no-one in my house since I am staying with the in-laws for about 3.5 weeks. So far, this is what I've come up with to do before I go away in early December:

1. Bring outdoor furniture inside


2. Put bikes in shed


3. Bins inside shed or filled with water


4. All windows and blinds closed


5. All external doors closed and locked


6. All internal doors closed


7. Fridge and freezer empty


8. All electrical appliances switched off and unplugged,
   including dishwasher
   excluding telephone

Now I have to remember to add to this list as more ideas occur to me.

Swimming lessons, aka the military don't love children

One of the more interesting parts of moving to Darwin was that our house is on a Defence base. There aren't too many Australian Defence bases that have housing and this is very likely to be the last time we get to live on a base, but it's a kind of cool place. The housing itself is pretty shoddy, despite our actual house having won design awards about 15 years ago, but the community on base is good and the fact that we know we will not have to worry about someone breaking into our house is great.

For the first month or so after we moved here, my oldest son's head was pretty much on a swivel looking out for people wearing camouflage, people carrying guns, APCs driving down the road - you name it, he loved it. Then it all became a bit passe as he gradually realised that he was seeing stuff like this pretty much every day. What he hasn't experienced before today was swimming lessons run by an actual Navy PTI (physical training instructor). The usual swimming teacher is on holidays this week and this guy is filling in for her. He assured me he is AustSwim qualified but it was very obvious that even though he is qualified, he's very underexperienced.

So although Olly was great and he does know his stuff, lessons for the toddlers this week was a bit hit and miss because he didn't quite know what he wanted to achieve or how to get them to listen. Lessons for the bigger boys were more constructive, although the slight case of hero-worship my boys had for him probably meant they weren't listening as well as they should either.

I'm convinced this house is cursed

So, the desktop computer went belly-up and I needed to reinstall Windows XP on it to make it work again. This of course means that all the other programs that used to be installed no longer have registry files associated with them so they all need to be reinstalled. I decided that was all too hard and it could wait a while, so I didn't bother setting up much more than FireFox on the desktop, thinking I could use my laptop which was all set up the way I liked it.

Perfect plan, right? Keep everything in the one place, don't have to worry about forgetting passwords or usernames.......Perfect plan right up until a Vista update coincides with the fingerprint security device magically disconnecting itself, requiring me to suddenly remember a password again (luckily I did, DH doesn't so he can't use the laptop anymore) and then last night the power supply in the laptop stopped working. Unlike all the other power supplies in the house that have stopped working (TV, DVR, desktop computer) there is an identifiable reason for the laptop to stop working and it is a glass of water which was "by accident!" knocked over next to the laptop - by the oldest child, who is nearly 10 years old.

So this morning was spent firstly on the phone to HP support, then trying to find their registered repairer after being given the wrong street address. This afternoon was spent on the desktop computer, reinstalling certain programs that are necessary and finding that I've completely forgotten my email password.

Luckily today is Friday which means wine o'clock comes earlier. Unluckily the kids want to go trick-or-treating so wine o'clock will have to be postponed until after we've finished that.

If anything else powered by electrickery stops working I may go completely insane. And if the laptop takes longer than a week to repair I will be furious.