Vroom

Is it wrong that I want one of these.. as well as my Jeep. I mean, I can justify it can't I??? Well, probably not, but it's fun to dream anyway. What would I do with 425 horsepower? It's probably one of those things that you would never know until you tried it, I suppose!!!

Did I ever mention how much I hate Dell products? I mean not just dislike, or dismiss, but actively despise? Their server technology is probably about 5 years behind the competition, for one. Well, today was a reminder of what Dell's "world class service" was like. Just two weeks ago, it took me about a week and a half to convince Dell's corporate support people that, yes, we really DID need a replacement backup tape drive for one of our servers. They kept suggesting, "did you try this??"... "Did you try that??" in an attempt to apparently just make me give up trying, I guess. I finally had to, shall we say, "speak strongly" to get it through to them that I WANTED A NEW UNIT.

Anyway, today yet another of their backup tape units went bad, this time emitting a loud grinding/shrieking sound. So, I call Dell's tech "support" and got hold of "Rob", who was probably the rudest tech guy I have ever seen. After responding "no" to his question about whether we had rebooted the server several times to see if it would get the tape unit working.. (wha?? When it's the (external) tape unit that is making the noise? That makes no sense) He says (imagine the snottiest tone possible) "Well, most people would at least try a couple of reboots before they called in a problem..." Asshole. The rest of the conversation he was just rude and dismissive and I was starting to lose my cool. He did finally agree (begrudgingly) to replace the drive however.

The upshot to all this is that when I arrived at my desk this morning, what was waiting for me but a brand new laptop to replace my trusty and dependable IBM Thinkpad - which is being replaced. The new laptop's brand? Dell.

*screams*