Ramblings of a Grouch

The other week my computer died. Saturday evening it worked, Sunday morning it didn't. Nothing. The light came on, the fans whirred. And nothing happened. For someone who spends a fair amount of time helping others with their computer problems this was a blow. But by the following Thursday evening it was all running sweetly again.

Happy ending to a short story? Well no, if I consider the hoops I had to jump through to get there.

I diagnosed the motherboard was the problem, so I set out to order a new one online (fortunately my spare system was connected). So it was off to my favourite online dealer. Found a new board at a reasonable price and popped it in my shopping basket.

But my processor wouldn't fit the new board (it's rather old), so I searched out a new one. In the basket it went.

Oh, and I needed some more modern memory, so that went into the basket of another online dealer. That was fine but the pennies were starting to add up now.

While I was at it I also popped a new power supply in the (now rather heavy) basket as the original one had a rather noisy fan. And that was it. All I needed to do was pay up and wait for the postman.

Yeah, right. Before I made my purchase I needed to log in. Email address? Fine. Password? On the dead computer. Bother!! Enter email address and request a password reset.

Message arrives with a link to the password reset screen, which I go to. "This link has expired. It is only valid for 24 hours". What??! Less than 3 minutes had gone by and it had expired. So I rang Customer Service.

"We're closed at the moment due to the Bank Holiday. Please try again tomorrow". What Bank Holiday? The last one was over 5 weeks ago. So I used my head. I created a new account.

And that worked fine until I selected the delivery address. As this was my first purchase (it wasn't) then delivery could only be made to the credit card holder's address. Which meant I would be out when it arrived. And sure enough, I arrived home at 2 minutes to 6 and UPS had called at 7 minutes to 6. And UPS wouldn't redirect. Aaaarggghhhh!!

As luck would have it the parcel was delivered the next day while I was in, so all ended happily.

And the fact that the new power supply looked like it came out of a nuclear power station of the future - stove enamelled case, mesh round the leads for protection, top quality power connectors (about 30 of them) - is neither here nor there. It works silently. So I'm happy.

And next time I'll make sure I know my password before I order.