Crime and Punishment

Do not buy this laptop...ever

It amazes me to think how important the skill of rhetoric is. What the ancient Greeks learnt as rhetoric has today become the techniques of propaganda and persuasion. Recently, I am in need of good rhetorical skills because of a serious problem that I am suffering from. In an earlier entry, I spoke of having a bad Internet connection in my room. I even went as far as to blame the Internet Service Provider for its bad quality and accused them of intentionally refusing to help me. Eventually, after numerous attempts to acquire a refund from them, they did send a technician to check on my computer during the night, which was when the connection usually dies. It seems that the problem was not with the ISP, but with my laptop. The techie was unable to provide an accurate description of the problem, claiming that these issues were really hard to debug because they occurred so randomly. The best hope for me, he suggested, was to have the computer checked out at a computer hardware store and hopefully, someone there would be able to find out what the problem is. All that he could think of was that my Ethernet card (or whatever that is) is faulty or that there was a problem with the driver.

I tried to think how it was possible that I did not notice this problem earlier. I realized that when I got my laptop, I had been using the wireless at home, so there was no problem with the Internet. When I moved into campus, I had to plug in a cable to use the Internet, and that was when the problems started. This new problem was just the latest in a string of problems that I have been having with my laptop. I realize now what an awful mistake it was to buy an Acer laptop. First their graphics driver kept on crashing whenever I played Halo 2 (when I played Half Life 2, it occasionally crashed as well). Then I realized that if it went into sleep mode, I couldn’t wake it up. Whenever that happened, I was forced to shut it down prematurely, thereby causing further damage to the hard drive. Thus, I have reconfigured my settings so that it would never enter sleep mode, no matter how long it stays on. In addition, the microphone was not working, even though Windows said that the device was working perfectly. With all these problems getting me all worked up, I am not keen on paying anyone to fix them. As the nearest Acer service centre is all the way in Ottawa, I have no other choice but to go home and get it fixed there, and that’s where my rhetorical skills will have to be used. I need to convince those Acer guys that their laptop sucks, and that they owe me for all the trouble that it has given. No matter what, I am not going to pay for any repairs, even if I have to fiercely threaten them. Damn Acer…

With my finals approaching and all the term papers due, I really need my computer to work but now that I know the problem is with the computer, rather than the ISP, there is no one else that I can express my rage to. I just can’t wait to go home and get it fixed (hopefully, for free). Something else that I need to pick up in KL is lots of wrapping paper- the clear, transparent ones that we use to wrap books to protect them. For some reason, I just can’t find them here. Not a single bookstore sells them. As for winter, it has snowed a couple of times, but it’s not that cold yet. I’ll have to wait for next year to truly experience winter. In fact, I haven’t bought any thick winter jackets yet. The main reason is because I don’t like the way they look, all puffy and fat, but I also want to see how long I can last with the jackets that I currently have. Even if the temperature were to suddenly drop, I can always wear lots of layers.