Seth Kinast’s Blog

Not Happy Holidays, not Have a Good Winter Break, not anything but Christmas. Political correctness is crap, and it ignores Christmas’ namesake: Christ. So give it up already. And have a blessed Christmas!

I spent some of my downtime cleaning off my desktop and filing mail in my inbox… went from 1865 messages to zero, and freed 2.5GB of loose files just sitting on the desktop that I hadn’t filed or deleted yet.

I’ll be going out tomorrow to look for tasty after-Christmas deals. Happy Boxing Day!

About a year and a half ago, my Dell Inspiron 600m’s USB ports failed. Inserting devices into them gave all sorts of weird messages about “Power surges detected on hub” and cryptic error codes. As it was still under warranty, I sent the thing in and they replaced the motherboard and bluetooth module. A couple months back, the same thing happened again, except this time the Bluetooth module would turn itself on and off depending on how I held the case, with the little hardware bubble that said “USB Device Not Recognized”. If I squeeze the front left corner of the laptop’s casing, the Bluetooth will come back on. As I’m not one to treat hardware badly (I’ve had the same desktop for 6+ years and my old Inspiron 7500 lasted me almost 5) I figured that there had to be something beyond my control that was occurring.

I did some research and found that the bluetooth card’s unseating is an extremely widespread problem for the Inspiron 600m (various Google searches bring up thousands of results). Apparently it goes like this: there’s a connector that sits perpendicular to the motherboard that attaches the Bluetooth module. However, it’s not attached in any secure way, so after natural flexing of the case (from carrying in a laptop bag, opening / closing the lid, etc.) for a period of time, the card loses its connection.

I also found that later revisions of the 600m include a plastic “strut” that prevents this problem by providing additional structural support in the left palmrest area. So I e-mailed Dell Customer Care to see what could be done. At this point I was out of warranty, but I felt that since Dell had acknowledged the presence of a design defect that they would be able to help me out.

Dear Mr. Kinast,

Thank you for contacting Dell Warranty Support.

I have read your email and understand the issue raised.

As per our records, your service warranty has expired. In that case, you can opt for Out-of-Warranty repair. To have an out of warranty repair performed on this system, you will need to send it to Dell for servicing. To have service arranged, you can contact our Mobile Computing Hotline at 800-822-8965.

Please note that as this particular information involves cost and compatibility factor, we do not have the required database for providing you the suitable information that you have asked, so I would request you to contact Dell Spare Parts at: 877-645-1322 or 800-357-3355 as they have updated resources to provide you with the pricing and compatibility details

I hope you understand and will cooperate. Thank you for your cooperation and patience.

If your issue is urgent and requires immediate assistance, please utilize our 24 hour phone support at 800-822-8965.

Thank you for contacting Dell Warranty Support.

Respectfully,

Mohit
Dell Rep ID #DH6101

Okay, so I sort of expected a form reply the first time around, since most reps probably haven’t heard of the issue. I e-mailed back, explaining my rationale about the design defect and asking the issue to be escalated, and received a second reply:

Thank you for replying back.

I appreciate the effort and time you have put in to provide the required Information.

I understand your concern. It seems that the situation needs to be analysed in a much more interactive manner Which is only possible over the phone, so I would kindly request you to call our phone technical support at 1-800-822-8965. They will provide you the reslolution to the issue much more quickly than through e-mail support.

However, please note this does not prove the incapability of the e-mail support, but there are certain issues which due to frequent verifications and confirmations get delayed over the e-mail. This is to ensure a better and efficient service to our valued customers. I am extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Thank you for contacting Dell Warranty Support.

Respectfully,

Mohit
Dell Rep ID #DH6101

Less form-letterish because of the typos and such, so this one was probably read a bit more carefully and responded to personally. However, he directed me to call in for help, which would just mean I’d have to explain the issue again My tech support experiences with Dell have been hit-and-miss. When something just needs replaced or shipped, I can usually get in and out pretty quickly. But in special circumstances, it gets harder to communicate— that’s why I’ve been using the e-mail system lately instead.

My next step is to try the Dell Customer Advocate address that crops up from time to time. Hopefully there I can get the links and facts read by someone who doesn’t have to meet the quota of 100 support tickets solved per hour

My wire transfer cleared, so once I fax in the appropriate documents to TD Ameritrade, I’ll begin playing with some stocks and funds I have 45 days of commission-free trades, so I’ll definitely try to make the most of it.

I’d like to document in a sidebar or such the current state of my portfolio… I should see if there is a plugin for that or something.

Fall 2006 ARTS-SCI MICRO/PR
DATA STRUCTURES C S 2413 03 A
INTRO-BIOCHEMISTRY CHEM 3653 03 A
FR CULTR THRU FILM FR 3753 03 A
PATH MBIO & IMMUNOL MBIO 4823 03 A
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY MBIO 4843 03 A
MICR PHYS/MOLEC LAB MBIO 4873 03 A
TERM: GPH 18.00 GPS 72.00 HA 18.00 HE 18.00 GPA 4.00

I am tickled beyond measure what a good Christmas present! This was probably my hardest semester I’ve ever had, not just in coursework, but just in general workload.

Yayyyy!

We all get tired of creating accounts for every website that we run across. A LiveJournal account to comment on friends’ entries. 11 different WordPress accounts for each blog regularly read, since there’s no way to link one account to all of them. Half a dozen accounts at different forums. Digg, Flickr, Delicious. Shouldn’t there be a better way to control access to sites, rather than having to duplicate effort and data across all of them?

Well, as with all leadingly rhetorical questions, the answer is of course yes. OpenID allows you to set up a single account with a single PIP, and then use authentication tokens to allow that site to distribute your information (partially or fully) to requesting sites. The coolest part is that you can set up your own site as an OpenID server or delegate, which means your login name can be yourdomain.com. If the PIP you are using changes its TOS or even goes under, you can switch PIPs with just a few lines of HTML and keep your same ID (assuming you hold on to your domain name).

OpenIDs are so ridiculously easy to set up that everyone should really get ahold of one so that adoption becomes more widespread. As more and more sites start to accept it as a form of login (and my site will do so soon), it will become easier and easier to use your existing credentials rather than create more. Here’s one of the easiest ways to create your very own OpenID.

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