RJ45 jack on Lappy broken. That’s bad.

But it’s under warranty, so Dell will fix it. That’s good.

It has to go to Newmarket, Ontario. That’s bad.

But Dell will pick up all the costs associated with shipping! That’s good.

It will take up to 1.5 weeks for the repair to be completed. That’s bad.

But it actually came back today (Friday), after being sent out on Wednesday! That’s good.

Unfortunately, it came back even more broken than it went out. That’s bad.

I give Dell props for fixing it fast. We’re talking about a sub-48 hour turnaround time; my box made it to Newmarket at 9:44 on Thursday (according to the tag on the machine), and Purolator had it again nine hours later according to the tracking information. Apparently, since it’s been a long time since I moved anything by air courier services in this country, I had forgotten how frickin’ fast these things can be. (And, let’s face it, getting something from Victoria to Toronto is not like getting something from Victoria to, I dunno, Inuvik or whatever.) So that’s pretty cool. But somewhere along the line, something didn’t go quite right — a cable got banged loose, the LCD got jostled, something happened that made Lappy arrive dead. Well, not exactly dead; I am, after all, typing this entry on it. But the LCD will glow as though someone has applied power, but will not actually display an image. When it does display an image, it flickers, like the cable’s not seated properly. But the cable is seated properly, because I checked (it’s amazing what you can accomplish with a phone tech and a screwdriver). So back to Newmarket it goes.

I have high hopes that this will fix the problem in a suitably speedy manner, and that I will get my machine back by, oh, say, Wednesday next week. Because that would be sweet. Because I’m going away on Sunday next week, and then I’m going to have to play follow the package, and that’s never fun. So there’s always hope. In the meantime, it’s nice to have Lappy back, even if I have to use an external monitor (thus more or less rednering the whole point of having a laptop, um, moot).

Have I mentioned I hate computers lately? I do. I really, really do.