Terminally Incoherent

This is officially awesome:

This would be so much better than playing with magnifying glass on a sunny day. I wish I had one of these when I was a kid. You know, we would really put it to use. It would be the ultimate tool for setting off fireworks. Yes I grew up in a big city - blowing up glass beer bottles with the biggest firecrackers or potassium-nitrate with sugar was one of our favorite past times. The fact that I have all limbs and fingers intact is something of a miracle.

Anyway, I’m really tempted to do this. I actually have a broken DVD burner lying around somewhere at work. The only problem is - I would probably get 3rd degree burns, set myself on fire or fry one of my eyes out of my head. And that’s just with a soldering iron. God only knows what damage I could cause with a functional laser. But I know it would be awesome, and quite dangerous for everyone around me.

People always tell me that Dell warranty phone support is utterly useless. I disagree. I think they are pretty good dispensers of free replacement hardware. I’m usually able to get a replacement part that I need in 15-20 minutes without doing much silly troubleshooting. If you follow the few simply guidelines below, you will be able to cut through their usual bullshit, skip right to the problem and get your part.

The main idea behind this is to circumvent their troubleshooting manual by preemptively answering all the questions that they might need to ask you.

1. If they ask you about your problem without taking your name and Service Tag number, give them short, succinct one sentence answer, or just ignore the question and recite your tag number instead. They will ask you to repeat your problem in detail once they take down your data, and check the warranty information. Before they do all of that, they hardly pay any attention to what you are going to say. Also they can’t be making notes in the system before they get your info down. So if you get into specific details right away, you will likely need to repeat them later on so that they can note them down.
2. Have a good idea what is your problem. If you have no clue what is going on, there is really no way to speed this process up. You will need to sit through the bullshit troubleshooting session, reboot several times, and etc. Troubleshoot the problem yourself before you call.
3. Run the Diagnostic CD that came with your system. It usually takes a while (around an hour to run all the extended tests), and they will definitely ask you to do it. The CD is not the be-all and end-all of Dell support, and the techs know it doesn’t detect many issues. But if you get lucky it will give you an error code that you can recite back to the phone support person. If you have a good error code that indicates hardware failure, they will skip all the bullshit, and dispatch parts and/or technician to you right away. If you don’t get an error code, at least you can tell them you have run it
4. Troubleshoot the problem ahead of time. If you suspect it’s a memory, start pulling out the chips, swapping them around and etc. See if the memory runs in another computer (if possible of course). See if you can use some spare memory on your system - and etc. Try to isolate the problem. The difference between doing this, and following the troubleshooting steps over the phone is that you probably know what you are doing, while the tier 1 tech is just following a script.
5. Explain all your troubleshooting steps in details. Try to cover as many steps as possible. Essentially you want to bombard them with information so that they put down the manual. Most of the phone drones have at least remedial technical skills, and they should be able to follow your logic. So if you present them with a logical progression of facts leading to a reasonable conclusion they will probably agree with your diagnosis.
6. Do not tell them what parts need to be replaced - let them decide that. The reason is twofold. For one, they might sometimes give you more than you need. For example you just need a new memory chip, but they are willing to throw in a new mobo for a good measure. Sometimes that might be a good deal. Second, if you let them have the last word, they will feel like they are “solving” your problem. If you tell them what to do, they will be more inclined to ask follow-up questions - either to avoid appearing clueless on the tape in case they get reviewed one day, or just to spite you (no one likes a know-it-all). I usually leave them with something along the lines of “I suspect that the problem is XYZ, don’t you think?”

Of course if you have no clue what the hell are you doing, then this won’t be much help. But if you can troubleshoot on your own, it will definitely cut down on the amount of time you spend on the phone with Dell or any other similar vendor.

I’m filing this under “cool shit I didn’t know about”. It turns out that if you cut a standard 9V Duracell you will get 6 small 1.5V battery cells which are essentially your standard AAAA batteries:

images © axecollector.com

Interesting. I had no clue that this was how they made them.

This is awesome:

Metacafe vodeo link found via haha.nu

I think this could be a cool educational tool to teach kids multiplication on large numbers. I’m guessing there is some mathematical theory that proves how it works.

My Samsung A670 has a little dust problem. The phone has a transparent window on the faceplate that reveals a secondary LCD which is usually used to display a clock and/or caller ID details. The faceplate window surface and the LCD do not touch - there is in fact few millimeters of enclosed empty space between them. In my phone dust tends to gather in that precise area completely obstructing the LCD making it really hard to read the time. I talked to several other people, and some of them experienced similar issues.

Here is how you fix it: you need to take off the faceplate and clean it up.

First locate the 2 screws under the main LCD. You can simply remove those little protective screw tops with a small screwdriver or a pen tip. They are held in place by some sort of adhesive goo and can be replaced easily

Remove the screws. You will need a very small Philips head. I was able to use PH00 from my Husky 14-in-1 Precision set.

Here is the hard part - you need to locate 4 snap-in points on each side of the LCD. They are located about an inch from the top and bottom edge of the phone. You will need a small flat head screwdriver to pry them open. They really have a tight grip, but if you manage to wedge your screwdriver in the right place they pop-off easily.

Now just gently wipe the dust off the LCD and the inside of the faceplate window. If you have compressed air this is a good time to use it.

Afterwards, the face plate should snap back into place easily. I hope this helps.

Disclaimer: the images are courtesy of thephonemall.net