Saturday, September 13, 2008

I'm sorry, did you want that computer to actully work,,,?



Monday rolls around and we need to get a new computer. We don’t have the luxury of shopping around as we pretty much need it now. Our shopping around really consists of 2 maybe 3 places, all in Belize city. I find a Dell that we like so I ask them to fly it down on a Tropic flight and pay with my Atlantic bank C.C. ,, she sez “OK, we will fax you a C.C. authorization form to be filled out and faxed back.”
She also want s photo copy of my passport with signatures! OK, we jump through these hoops and fax it all back. Keep in mind we are handicapped without the desktop computer to do all this from.
Later on they phone back and tell me that my signature’s don’t quite match? They now want me to fax a photo copy of my C.C. along with a new signature!
A hoop jumpin I go. I once stood at the counter of the bank signing my name over and over as the clerk is telling me that’s not my signature!!! I’m standing right there, signing, and she sez I’m not me?
Finaly the manager phones us up. He askes if I know an Adriane Taylor? I sez yea, she’s standing right here.
He sez ohhhh, well we have her info on file. We’’ll put the computer on the last flight.
I’m at the airstrip when the last flight lands. No box for me. The guy phones up Municiple and they tell him it’s an oversize box, won’t go out till morning. Bouncing down the road to home I go, empty.
See if you can guess what happens that night. Yep, power goes out. We sit in the candle light drinking beer yet once again. All the time I can’t help but to be amazed that BEL wants a raise!
With BTL in the house trying to restore internet and phone, I head for the airstrip. Yes, the box is here. 64.50$ for freight!!!!! ‘it’s oversize”. Gimme a break, I have seen many suitcases much larger come off the little trolley, and heavy-er.
Get the thing home and find BTL just finishing up. I get the unit all set up and we begin the task of loading all our stuff. We needed a bunch of things from the ‘old’ hard drive so I put it in an external incloser and fired it up. Bingo, worked like a champ. So, we saved all our data plus proved that the hard drive is good. Power goes out.
Power returns, keep pluggin along. Power goes out, comes back, leaves again, returns. In all this we get a lot of programs loaded and the thing is mostly set up how we like it. Power leaves for most of the night.

The new machine only has one gig of RAM memory. The photo software we use needs at least 2gb to work smoothly. Brainstorm! I take the 2gb memory from the old unit and slap it into the new one. Nothing, zip, nadda. It would appear that our memory is bad and that is what caused all this to begin with. I go online to search for new memory and find some very interesting facts.
I found 1gb sticks of RAM for 20 bucks each so I ordered 4. That should make photo editing much more fun no?
20 bucks each,, belize city wants for the exact same memory, same brand even, 227.00bz!!!! per gig!!!
That’s 113.50 US compared to 20.00 us!!! Oh,, and if I don’t pay the 64.50 freight each way to let them install it, I void the warranty!!!
So I ordered up the 20 dolla memory, sent it to a suitcase coming soon, and told BZ city they can keep their warranty! AND they can chew the bark off my big fat log!


So that’s what it’s like to buy a computer in Mental Breach.


I always finish my beers because there are sober people in China.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Famous words spoken by one of my drinking buddies in HS. I asked him what kind of beer he liked to drink? His reply" Any kind as long as there is not a cig butt floating in it"

Anonymous said...

Why did this sound so much like MY LIFE WITH COMPUTERS? Bin there Barn, pulled out my hairs many a day too.

Anonymous said...

Pg comp shop is worse. I had a friends comp die, brought it to me, ram was bad. Go to PG shop 1 stick 1, 1GB DDR ram, they wanted 250 Bze for one stick! Told him what he could do with it as well.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least you weren't punished for your lack of diligence in backing up! Good to hear the hard-drive worked as an external. Kenni

Barnacle said...

yep,, bring your computer parts with you! and anything else you can think of!