New And Improved Rant Thread, now with 50% more profanity!

[Demimonde]

Mother fucker. While installing a firmware update, my laptop refused to restart and now won't even turn on.

Fucking hell.

[lisarea]

Make and model, and how badly it doesn't turn on? Does it do anything, and if so, what?

I have to go do a whole bunch of shit, but if someone else doesn't halp you figure it out before I get back, I'll try to halp later.

[Ymir's blood]

n/m

[Demimonde]

Thanks lisa. It is a Toshiba satellite L755. I was doing the BIOS firmware update and when it entered the restart process it failed to restart and after that would not power on. I did remove the battery and it would turn on but not boot up after that.

I am on the horn with Toshiba tech support. We tried the F2, safe start up, but still had nothing. We tried a zero start up that I was not familiar with, but no dice. We tried hooking up my laptop to another monitor to see if it was just the display that was failing, but could not get anything.

It is so frustrating, I can usually figure out these things and feel like a geek failure. I have never had to send in a computer for repair before.

[Doctor X]

--J.D.

[lisarea]

Oh, man, so it's still under some kind of warranty then? Because as much as that sucks, it's probably safest to try to make them fix it then.

If you can get to a BIOS menu at all, though, you should be able to boot to a flash drive and run some diagnostics from there. This seriously can fix the vast majority of non-hardware issues you have; and it is my version of clearing your cookies.

[Demimonde]

Yeah, I declined the Geek Squad whatever coverage but it still is covered under the manufacturer's warranty. Thank God for that!

The really weird thing is, I can't get to any kind of menu. After the machine powers on, it is just BLACK screen of death, absolutely nothing to work with. I am really freaked out because I have never had a machine do that. I just hope that the BIOS is reparable. Most of my important files are backed up. I am groaning though because I did a shit ton of spreadsheets last week that I hadn't backed up yet. All that might be gone.

I hope the turn around time is reasonable. I would hate to be without my lappy for weeks/months/god-I-don't-even-know-how-long-it-is-going-to-take.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Demimonde

Yeah, I declined the Geek Squad whatever coverage but it still is covered under the manufacturer's warranty.

That is good.

And a general public service announcement is never ever ever for any reason take a computer to Geek Squad to be fixed. The only tool they have at their disposal in the stores is a thumb drive with some diagnostic tools on it. THEY DO NOT EVEN HAVE TEST BENCHES FOR TESTING COMPONENTS.

Anything Geek Squad can do you can do better at home with a simple thumb drive. In fact, since Geek Squad got busted for violating the software licenses on some of the tools they were using, you have access to better diagnostics than they do.

[Zehava]

Originally Posted by Demimonde

Yeah, I declined the Geek Squad whatever coverage but it still is covered under the manufacturer's warranty. Thank God for that!

The really weird thing is, I can't get to any kind of menu. After the machine powers on, it is just BLACK screen of death, absolutely nothing to work with. I am really freaked out because I have never had a machine do that. I just hope that the BIOS is reparable. Most of my important files are backed up. I am groaning though because I did a shit ton of spreadsheets last week that I hadn't backed up yet. All that might be gone.

I hope the turn around time is reasonable. I would hate to be without my lappy for weeks/months/god-I-don't-even-know-how-long-it-is-going-to-take.

By the sounds of that your data should be good. The BIOS is just borked. The techs may be able to boot off a flash drive and reflash the BIOS. Worst case scenario is they will have to replace the motherboard, but even that should leave your data intact. If they mention having to reimage the system, they are incompetent.

[Demimonde]

Seriously Universe? You seriously want to fuck with me don't you, you fucking asshole?

Mother fucking sewage back up. Nasty ass mess in my bathroom. Instead of having a lovely day at the botanical gardens tomorrow watching butterflies and smelling the roses, I get to wait for a freaking plummer to come out and most likely spent hundreds of dollars to make sure shit goes OUT of my house rather than coming back INTO IT.

You know what, Universe? Fuck you. Bring it on you bastard.

[Doctor X]

Wow. Writing of "That sounds like the shittiest of all shitty days."

show spoiler

Waaaaaaiiiiitttt . . . you are not all covered in shit are you?

--J.D.

[lisarea]

OK everybody, stop whatever you're doing and strap on your cryin' buckets so I can tell you about my tragic day. It's like Dancer in the Dark sad, but even more tragic because I did considerably less Bjork stuff in it.

So the plan was pizza night, which is something everyone is happy about and was looking forward to. So I start on the crust and I figure the yeast doesn't expire for over a year now, and it worked fine like last week, so I'll just skip the proofing. So I make my dough and I do the first kneading and set it in to rise, and you guessed it: It didn't. My yeast is dead! Worse, it was way too late to do anything about it.

So brave American hero that I am, I soldier on, and decree a scrounge night. I end up scrounging olives. I ate olives for dinner. Then, I have been sleeping spottily, and it's been a while, so I decide to make a night of it and take my Special Pill, which is this kind of pill that knocks me out and makes me sleep real good for the whole night, but if I take it more than once a week or so, I start building up resistance, so I don't. So my Special Pill nights are like All Summer in a Day, these little sleep windows I get every now and again.

So I've taken my pill and I'm sitting with the TV on waiting to get drowsy before I go to bed, when suddenly I get an olives for dinner tummyache! And I'm like, "OW," but it's too late to eat anything to counter the effect of there being only olives in my stomach, so I take some Maalox or something and sit in the chair to wait. And then I wake up in the chair with my head all flopped over and my neck all sore, and there's an infomercial on and I'm like, "Oh, shit," and I go to go to bed, and then...I wake up again, with my head still all flopped over and my neck even more sore, and there's a PREACHER on TV and it's almost 4am!

I didn't get my pizza! I didn't get All Sleep in a Night! I just got a stupid tummyache and a sore neck and overwhelming despair.

Poor me! My life is terrible!

[Sock Puppet]

I was going to [Thank] that poast, but I couldn't on accounta the tears making my mouse slippery.

[Ymir's blood]

Could you do a non-rising pizza crust and claim that it's unleavened?

[lisarea]

I GUESS IF I FIRST MAKE A TIME MACHINE I CAN.

[Demimonde]

Don't even front like you aren't able to hack a time machine together in twenty minutes with vintage tech and chewing gum, lisa. We all know that you are just bogarting the cast of Good Times for your own selfish amusement.

Updated rant:

Where the hell have all the good plumbers gone? When we had this issue four years ago, we had a great guy come out and he pulled all the roots from the line. It took him five hours of augering and dragging the line, tough ugly work, but we paid him several hundred dollars and everything has been rosie since then.

Today a guy comes out. He has a fancy camera and tells me that service is $150. But clearing the line is $200 and then the camera is free. That should have been my first clue. So he sticks a camera down there, but DUH, there is too much water to see. He runs a snake down there and pulls maybe three inches worth of roots out over the course of forty five minutes. He runs the camera again without showing me, takes a dowsing rod magic wand thing and spraypaints in my yard where he believes the blockage to be.

He presents me with two options: dig up a small section and replace a couple yards of my clay pipe with PVC for $1500 and a ONE year warranty, or dig up the entire line and replace it for $4700 and a FIVE year warranty. He offered no other option.

I pressed him on getting a bigger auger out to do the work and he reluctantly offered me a bid of $600 to do that, stressing how that would be a "Two man job" and they would have to "run the line four times" (whatever the hell that means) with wide-eyed dismay just how overwhelming that would be. My take away from it is that he would rather forman a crew to dig for a couple grand than take several hours to, I dunno, work hard and get the line clear manually.

Here is my rant: Why the hell should I pay half-a-month's wages or a month-and-a-half's wages to do this? What is wrong with just having someone come out every four years and clear the line at a third of the cost? Plumber gets the business, I get clear pipes, everyone's happy. Clay pipes don't have cooties, they are just more permeable than PVC (not to mention better for the enviroment but I am not even going there in this rant.) What the fuck is up with our maintenance free culture? I am used to maintenance. People used to be used to maintenance. I would have to have 31 years of maintenence free issues to recoup the costs to replace my pipes, and not only is the waranty not even close to that long, but it is highly unlikely it will be 31 years before there are any issues with it. "Maintenance-free" is a myth.

I miss my old plumber. He was a good old boy, who didn't need any video monitors or Star Trek tricorders. He just ran the auger in there and pulled out the roots until it was clear. He wasn't about trying to find the most expensive way that would have him doing the least amount of work. He would just "do the do" as my dad used to say. (Or "do the doo-doo" as it might be phrased in this case.) He sure as hell wouldn't have walked away after forty five minutes and left me with no resolution. If he had no other recourse he would have never have had the temerity to charge me when I still have blocked pipes.

Now I get to decide if I want to get a second opinion from a plumber who actually wants to work, or go back to this company, ask for another guy, and hope he is of a more intelligent school of plumbing philosophy in order to recoup the $160 I paid for that stupid camera shit.

I have never had such a strange emotional combination of "Fuck, being a grown up is hard" combined with "Goldern, young people being lazy asses and not appreciating the honor in hard work." It is a weird place to be.

I am too exhausted over this to properly swear, but I offer you: doody-sticks and lazy fucknugget.

[Angakuk]

1970s Roto-Rooter commercial - YouTube

Also, this.

Roto-Rooter Music Video

[wildernesse]

I am so tired, but if I weren't, i would have a good rant.

[Qingdai]

Arg! Fucking evaluations! I thought one batch was due on the 9 and one on the 19th! They were both due today!
Now I have a headache.

[curses]

Crap. They laid off 21 teachers at our school. That's a LOT of staff, over 1/3rd. That's asking too much of the rest of the teachers to take on that load.

This is why:
Education Management Co.: Litigation And Dependence On Title IV Will Sink The Company - Seeking Alpha

[Dingfod]

Apparently ATT Wireless wants to get their customers to all sign up for Autopay. I've had trouble with their online payment system for the last two months. Last month I paid at the kiosk at the ATT store after being told there was an extra charge for making a payment over the phone. This month, after running into the same problems online, I went to the kiosk at the ATT store. It gave me no payment option other than setting up Autopay or paying cash -- and their machine doesn't take cash, it's broken. Aaaarrrggghh! Don't make me go back to Verizon, ATT.


Profane words: fiddlesticks and dagnabbit

[Janet]

I put a new roof on my house last March, cost me just over $7500 which I'm still paying the bank. According to my property valuation from the city, my house has gone down in value $10,800, which means I have effectively lost over $18,000 this year.

BOLLOCKS!

Oh, and the best part? Since my library is funded by city property taxes and values have dropped by approximately 17% citywide, our budget is being cut drastically. Two years ago we voted for a millage increase that was supposed to counteract that. It goes into effect this year, but property values have dropped so much that not only will we not have the increase we were hoping for, our budget will actually go down compared to this year at the old rate. So my temporary, until we get our millage, pay decrease will no doubt become permanent and probably be decreased even further.

[Qingdai]

Here again I complain about the 8-9 year old girl that makes every neighborhood gathering a pain for me.
This time her father sent her on ahead to play with the other neighborhood children. Which means the little brat was complaining about everything my son did, while standing right next to him and then laughing when her favored friends did the exact same thing.
Oh, I hate that child. So very, very, very much.

[Pyrrho]

Dear Account Team,

How can I say this?

NO, YOU PEABRAINED IDIOTS, I CANNOT "JUST SAVE IT AS AN iPAD FILE".

Just relax.

Thanks.

Enjoy your app.

[BrotherMan]

ipad file? I am truely sorry for your lots.