HP wow...

Just when you think you can't be surprised by how terrible the service at big name companies is anymore... you get HP. (As if Microsoft support isn't enough) Since you guys probably don't know, last year I sent the laptop in because the DVD player wasn't functioning right, and it wouldn't allow me to use the restore partition. It had some other quirks and since it was the last month of my warantee I figured it'd be best just to send it in so they'd look it over. After two weeks and several ulcer-inducing conversations with techs about things that had nothing to do with my computer (and after they figured out they had the WRONG computer the first time) they sent it back to me without having done a thing. NOTHING had been changed. I contacted Customer Service who were very professional and apologized a million times and sent me restore CDs. These have been life savers many times and worked to repair the issues I was having... so I forgave them. Well this time I sent it in because the left hinge on the thing blew and caused major LCD damage, to the point I had to use a second monitor. Turns out this is a defect with all HP Pavillion 9000's so it was covered. Sweet! They sent me a box I sent it in, after a week it arrives back. Now I remember last time, and I think I got the same tech, so I expect problems. But I open up and it's gorgeous! All new plastic everywhere, not a scratch or dent. I was so excited I stuck the battery in fired it up and... x.x The same screen. As I type this it's with a second monitor set to clone. Somehow this is worse than the last time, because I actually expected it to be fixed.

So I started with the bad, but as I'm loading up my computer, that's what's on my mind.

There is some good. Last night Alisa and I attended the toastmasters local speech and evaluation competition. It was nice to sit back and relax watching some good speakers. All in all I thought they were pretty good, and it was cool to hear some fresh voices. Steve Cameron of windharps.net won both the speech comp and the evaluation comp btw and will be moving on to regionals. Kudos to him! I was not entered, Alisa and I just brought food. One speaker was particularly awesome and reminded us of our New Years Resolutions! He actually went so far as to hand out his business cards and instruct everyone to send him one res. that we want completed by Dec 31st so he could actually mail us then and see if we had. I am much better when being held accountable. You're 10x more likely to do something if you write it down, and for me 20x more likely to do it if you tell someone you will. So I'm going to mail him.. and I'm going to put it here in my blog. They will be mostly professional, but I'll mix in some personal goals as well. :)