Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

I had posted earlier that Surabhi’s laptop was having issues so I had gotten the fan replaced. Unfortunately after they replaced the fan the computer started shutting down at random times for no apparent reason. So I took the laptop back to the place where I had gotten it repaired and left it with them for a day to diagnose.

Today I went back to the shop to pick up the laptop and the guy told me that the laptop was working fine. I could hear the fan from about a foot away and the guy had the gall to tell me that the fan usually makes such noise. While I was talking to him the computer shutdown again and I showed it to him.

He (Girish) then told me that they had replaced the fan and since the fan was running it was not their problem or fault. I told them if they broke the laptop while changing the fan it was their fault. But they wouldn’t budge. Then the main technician (Satish) at the place started yelling (literally) at me and Surabhi and refused to look or fix the issue they had created. He told me that it would cost us an additional Rs 4,000 – 5,000 to get the laptop fixed. So we (me and Surabhi) yelled at him some more then finally gave them their fan back and got our money back.

This shop is called: “Tech India Solutions” and is located at 206 Ashok Bhawan, Nehru Place. Whatever you do, never take your laptop to these people. I have been their customer for a few years and have gotten 3 laptops fixed from them but I am never taking another laptop to them ever again. I feel that they intentionally create issues with the laptops they fix and then charge more for the fix. I mean how can a laptop suddenly stop working after they ‘fixed’ it, if they didn’t break something…

The best part is that they are supposed to give a 3 month warranty for any work they do. *Roll Eyes*

I finally took the laptop to the IBM service center and they will be sending me an estimate for the fix sometime tomorrow. Which means I will have to make another trip to Nehru Place this week… I need to figure out a way to create a portable AC and carry that with me when I go there again… Its bloody hot out there.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Finally watched the new Terminator movie today. I had been wanting to watch it for ages, but first we had the movie hall strike so the movie wasn’t released here. After that once the movie released I didn’t get the time to watch it till now. Even today we barely made it to the theater for the show; we were buying the tickets at 2:40 pm for the 2:40 pm show so we missed the first 2 mins of the movie.

Liked the movie. Its a movie for the theater, not that much fun watching it at home. Some things in the movie really made sense if you think about it. For example having the headquarters in a submarine makes a lot of sense, that way all your brass is safe and you are almost impossible to locate and destroy.

However some parts didn’t make sense, like the open air hangers. Skynet controls all the satellites so having a airbase in the open is an open invitation to be bombed back into stone age. Actually for that matter, the resistance having any aircraft’s that fly regular patrols doesn’t make sense with the Skynet controlling all the air space and satellites.

In this sense the terminator books by SM Stirling (T2 Infiltrator, T2 Rising Storm, T2 The Future War) are great. They are a lot more realistic and definitely worth reading.

Now the next movie I want to watch is the second Transformers movie. Lets see when that is released here…

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

Went to Nehru Place today to get Surabhi’s laptop fixed. The fan on the laptop wasn’t working so the system wasn’t booting up. Its an IBM Lenova. All I can say for that is my Sony Vaio was on for 24 hours a day for almost 2 years and only then the fan started making noise so I decided to get it changed, while this laptop is little over a year old and the fan already died… Same thing with my HP Compaq laptop. That one was on 24 hours a day for about 2 year + with no issues so far.

Anyways, so I drove to Nehru Place in the boiling heat, on the way there I got stuck in traffic and spent about 1 1/2 hour for a drive that is a max of 1/2 hour usually. Once I got there I saw a IBM showroom almost immediately so I asked them if they would fix this system and they gave me the address of their service center that was over on the other side of the complex. So I walked all the way over to the other side climbed 3 stories of stairs and found the following sign on the service center’s door “Due to the powercut the service center is closed for the day”. *Gah!* One would assume that IBM would have enough money to put a backup power-supply for their service center.

So I called the IBM guys again and they directed me to another center. That was also closed for the same reason. Then I decided to take the laptop to a shop I knew did good work and get it fixed. It took them a little more than a hour and a half to get the laptop fixed and I was good to go.

During all of this I also bought a 500GB portable HDD as a gift and a battery charger for me (I got sick of buying new batteries for my wireless mouse) Finally got home and just about crashed.

Right now I am sitting in a AC room and not planning on leaving it for a while. 🙂 Although tomorrow I might have to go and get my chair fixed. One of the legs broke (Its one of the revolving chairs with 5 feet at equdistance in a circle) and I have to balance on the remaining four legs when I want to work on the computer. Its sitting in the car right now but lets see if I have the courage to go out again tomorrow in the heat.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Today I decided to replace the stabilizer being used in my room with another model that supported AC’s upto 2 tons (The current one supports upto 1.5 tons) This was because we are having a 1 ton AC put in and it makes more sense to put the 1.5 ton stabilizer over there instead of the 2 ton.

So I spend 15 mins to disconnect the old stabilizer and then left it as is to go out. Once I got back I started to connect the new one in… Now the thing is that the AC plug is behind my desk and the desk is really hard to move. Its one of those L shaped desks and its fitted really tight over there so first I had to pull the desk out before I could get to the plug. Then I had to remove the plug from the input cable so that the wire could get through the little hole in the desk to where the stabilizer is supposed to sit. This was the easy part.

The hard part was to put the plug back on the wire when there was a distance of about 6 inches between the wall and the desk to work in… Finally got everything connected and when I switched the thing on it didn’t work… The power came on but no output. Seems like the cutoff was kicking in.

Called dad, he looked at it. We disconnected everything and then reassembled it but no joy. So after about an hour we give up and reconnect the old one back. Once the AC is back up and running we decide to check the stabilizer again in another room. There it worked perfectly… So we brought it back and reconnected it. It still didn’t work. 🙁

Finally we gave up. I am using the old stabilizer again and all I got for my time and energy was a sore back (you try standing bent over for an hour). My desk is still not in the correct spot as dad wants to try again tomorrow. (I think I will be out visiting friends tomorrow all day 🙂 )

Atleast my AC is working and my computer is connected to the web.

– Suramya

Finally got off my lazy backside and wrote my first article in 3 years today morning. 🙂 The last article I wrote was back in 2006.

I have sent it to the Linux Gazette and it has been accepted for publication. I think it might be published either next month or the month after. Once its published I will post a link here.

Yay, I am so proud of myself. Now off to write more articles.

– Suramya

Spent most of yesterday afternoon customizing my system so that it works just the way it used to. The upgrade itself didn’t take long, it was getting the shortcuts/look and feel of the system back to the way I like it that took time. Plus I was reading an interesting book, so it took longer.

Watched ‘Garfield: Pet Force’ yesterday. It is a decent time pass movie, It was animated so no horrible acting to deal with. Saw part of Terminator 4. Stopped in the middle as it was a bad print. I want to watch it in the theater but am still waiting for it to come out in the Theaters over here.

Watched Angels and Demons last week. Had completely forgotten the book so it was a fun watch and I liked it. I am planning on re-reading the book to see what was different in the movie. We went for the 10:30 pm show and there were hardly any people in the theater.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya