So since this acts as a blog of sorts, I figured I'd do my ranting here.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas (I limit it to Christmas because that's all I celebrate. If you celebrate something different, I hope it was enjoyable.) and enjoyed their time with family/friends. I also hope Santa treated you well. I got the external hard drive I asked for and the other stuff that didn't work out came with lovely things called gift receipts. However, some gifts require assembly, especially computer parts.
Along with my external, I recieved an extra internal notebook hard drive, as my laptop has an extra bay to install such a device. It arrived in the mail today and after a night out with friends, I returned home, ripped open the packaging, and proceeded to open up my laptop and install the hard drive. It fit comfortably and securely in the slot, but right away I noticed something was off. to avoid damage and remove the risk of the hard drive coming dislodged, the hard drive must be mounted. There are four screw holes in the laptop and the hard drive for a bracket, which I don't have. "No big deal," I thought. "It's snug enough, and I don't use my computer as a frisbee." I threw caution to the wind and proceeded to replace the cover... only for it to not fit on anymore. I turned the cover over and found two nasty prongs, designed to prevent cover from cracking to due precision force or impact. I thouht about breaking these off and using a dremel tool to sand the broken bit down to the base, until I decided to check online for solution. What I discovered was disheartening.
Apparently even if you do that, the cover still won't fit, and you need to buy a different cover. I checked the box the computer came in for extra parts, but to no avail. I click link after link and search ebay and newegg up and down for said parts, but that too was a failure. Every site I visited sold the two parts I need for about $15 each. The worst part is that every one of those sites only ship in Europe. Acer even has a spare parts website, but the Acer America spare parts site doesn't have the parts in their inventory. I don't even think any variation of Geek Squad (which is crap, never go there) can help me out without charging me more than the HD cost.
Essentially, it's similar to that feeling you get when someone gets you a gift they think you'll love, but you want nothing to do with it. You're torn up because not only will you run the risk of hurting them by expressing your distaste, but you really don't want pretend to like it, either. This goes double for me because the external I got was a gift from my mom, even though my dad had already purchased a [smaller] hard drive when she bought it. Now he's gotten me something I told only him that I want and I can't use it. I basically feel like I'm saying "You're gifts aren't good enough for me." And it sucks.
We might die from medication but we sure killed all the pain
Hey guys! Sorry for the late update. Such things as holidays and holiday festivities prevented me from putting this up on time, but I'm sure the long-awaited appearance of Dad makes up for the lateness. :)
Hope your holidays have been/are good.
Joe
scatman, fat man, black and white and brown man
