There are two things I have been meaning to post on here for a while, but as I procrastinate the writing of an essay, I shall post these two things now!

First off, Best Buy UK have closed down. All of them. Obviously, in the style of old fashioned Archaic Conundrum, I decided to post this a few days (weeks) late. I remember when I heard the news, it made the whole day great. I like to see it as one small victory, so all those little post it notes I left on the computers at other electronic shops didn’t go to waste. Of course they only complained about Toshiba, but still…

The second thing was about the game from last post. The shop I ended up buying it from didn’t steal my card details, in fact, I use them for most things now! They delivered the game on time, they also managed to ship me a Halloween costume last minute for free, and ship a book from another continent within a few days. Play, you people are awesome!

I’m sure there will be some kind of thing posted on here during Christmas, after all, I do still need to spread the word of the awful internet package we get…I might do that when I have found the solution for it. Or something. More likely the next post will be about Virtual Boy laptop, as I need to work on that a bit. Apparently.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been having a fun time with a wonderful little shop selling video game related items. “How is this archaic?” you might be wondering. Because Magnavox Odyssey, that’s why. I decided to write a review about my wonderful experience, and now I’m posting it here (Slightly edited to make more sense).

Now, I’ve been a huge fan of Game (the shop) for over a Decade, back when it was known as Electronics Boutique. Over the years, my brand loyalty towards this place has been so much that I have had stuff sent to me while being in other countries. I guess having a Loyalty card with them may have helped with that too.

I pre-ordered a game from this place, being lured in with the false promise of double points. I chose not to pre-order it at other places, because having a name like “Game”, you’d expect it to… y’know, be good at selling games. I went there a week before release date to get the fancy piece of paper for the pre-order, and the person gave me two, so I could decide what version of the game I wanted on release date. Said game was to be released on the 26th of August, I mean, that’s what every shop that sold it said.

On that day, for some reason, I had this strange idea that I should call them before leaving, to make sure they had it in. I’m not sure why a shop would let you pre-order something they won’t have in, but hey, let’s call them just in case! I swear I had the page with the game on on one tab, and their phone number on another, and during the phone call, the game changed from being on sale to being released on the 2nd of September. Yeah, they changed it on the day. The people on the phone were useless but that’s not quite relevant.

I waited patiently.

On the 2nd, I called them before leaving, again. After a few “try this number instead”s, I eventually find out they aren’t getting the game I pre-ordered. ever. Why let me pre-order something you were never getting in, Game? upon asking their customer service this, they kind of said oh well, followed by a very specific “Well, get it somewhere else.” Yes, they just advised me to buy THE VERY THING THEY ARE NAMED FOR somewhere else. With that brilliant advice, I found a lovely little online shop that offered what I wanted, and cheaper. If it actually arrives, instead of them just stealing my card details, I’ll be writing many a great review on how they saved the day.

Oh, they randomly deleted all my reward points, too.

The celebrations have gone down a little, so time for the good news, Sergio is back the way he should be!

Well, the way it was in January, but it’s so close to how I had it, I don’t mind at all. Norton no longer attacks me asking for a code. I no longer have a raging pop-up asking me what kind of English I prefer, or if I want to activate the webcam. Avast no longer shouts and throws plates at me, all is great!

Except for Kaspersky, which I accept could be my fault, mainly because I forgot to switch the time zone when activating it. Firstly, as it was restored from Jan, it had the trial version, bit of a problem as that ran out a few months ago. No problem! I did get a 3 user license for the actual program, so I can just throw that on there again…. So I forgot the date thing and it’s telling me the activation period starts tomorrow. So, I figure I’ll wait for tomorrow to see if it works. Yes, I’m posting my “yay, my pc is good again!” post on my not-pc. BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER THE THING IS GOOD AGAIN!

The four hours backing up the back up was spent playing Star Wars ep.1 Racer. Followed by two failed attempts at a restore because I needed to boot from a disc. Ending with a suspenseful 30 minutes of screen-staring and mouse-wiggling to make sure nothing went wrong. And all was good.

So, Archaic Conundrum has a bit of a break until something happens, most likely with Virtual Boy as it keeps beeping at us. Or maybe the old tower known as Porn House (the one from a year ago), as I’ve been signed up to fix that, too. And someone else’s Dell desktop… I don’t know why these people think I can save them, that being said, I’ve never met a person who both owned a Dell and knew anything about computers, so maybe that explains it.

Today’s post comes in 3 parts; pre-restore, a nice little picture (because I’m not writing this on Sergio), and post restore. Usually I would just write some notes and post it all together, but as the copying of files is going to take a while, I thought I might as well do it like this.

I’m quite excited at the possibility of getting Serge back the way it should be, instead of the shell of what it once was. But there’s also a slight nervousness that it might not work…y’know, because it’s a w - because of it’s history. Hopefully it will work! Then I can write a letter of apology to Bill Gates…

A bit of a slightly off-topic section here, well, I say off-topic. The Dell is gone, so now the oldest computer here is about a year and a half old, which brings me to next point. This blog hasn’t really been about archaic stuff for a few posts, so I thought I should branch out a little and mention my wonderful N64 that’s up and running again! It’s older than Hot Dog so it counts. I also got the Wii working with the help of a new adapter, which is slightly related because I want to celebrate the release of Ocarina of Time 3D by playing the original. I have the game on both of the home consoles, but felt the need to dig out all of the older stuff so I could play a slightly less edited version. At the moment the only thing I’ve done on there is bungee jumping on Goldeneye.

Back on topic time!

Apart from the picture that will actually be uploaded in a bit, the next text post should be in about 4 hours! By then the celebrations/crying in the corner like the girl at Best Buy should be finished, and I can tell the world about Sergio again.

Boot Failed.

So the people at Toshiba found my laptop, and I picked it up from Best Buy a few days ago. Today was the first day I have been able to look at it, and I was greeted by that wonderful message…and then it continued just fine. Works quite nicely, but two minor complaints.

They did a factory restore and cleaned some of the parts. That’s it. This in itself is a problem for several reasons, mainly they really didn’t do anything at all, and they deleted everything including the single copy of CS5 I have. Thankfully the brilliant people at Adobe were nice enough to let me have another activation, really not the point though!

The second problem is that they installed all of the shit (Best Buy Software Installer, Face Sign-in Crap) that I had deleted. And then some…I really don’t know where some of it came from, it never used to bother me about Wi-Max and what form of English I like. So I tried to to restore from a back up. While it did restore some files, didn’t really do what I wanted, so then there was the magical disc image recovery. Unfortunately this requires a restoration disc which I did make…but don’t have with me. Yes, you’re right, I can make another, but I don’t have discs, so I guess I’m getting more soon!

Quick post as Eastenders is now on. Thanks to the wonderful Best Buy guy who agreed with my feelings toward Toshiba, and awesome Adobe person. Toshiba are kind of lazy bastards, though.

I have a nice collection of images showing how nicely Serge currently works. They will be on here at some point, probably with the Sir Dick Linux videos…if I work out how to upload a slideshow on Viking/Meighan/whatever I named this thing. Now for the main news today!

I no longer have Sir Dick, it has been donated to lovely people. Not really the greatest gift, it’s a bit like saying you’re generous because you gave someone the clap, but still. Virtual Boy is uncomfortably close to my left ear. Functional keyboard is a safe distance. Worked out the wifi issue though, and that’s enough to make me feel special.

Ok, now for the real point of today’s post. I walked into Best Buy for the Intelligent, and politely threw Sergio at them explaining the problems. All of the problems. The rather pleasant man opened the optical drive, looked inside, and said “yep, motherboard.” well, at least two of us agree. So that all gets sorted, we get a receipt and leave. Apart from updating Virtual, not a lot (computer related, the charming people at aer lingus thought it’d be good to return my sex beast guitar a few days late, and some other stuff that may get on ant people.) happened. I think I may have gone around some pc shops opening stickies and writing how much Toshiba’s suck. “may have.”

Until today. We get a phone call from the repair place. “oh, it might get back early!”, “oh, it might get replaced for being terribly designed!”, “oh, maybe I can get shop credit so I never have to use the shitty prostitute we all know as windows ever again!” said some of the other voices in my head…not quite what the repair place said, though. What they had actually called for, was to ask if Best Buy had sent it back to us. Meaning they hadn’t received it. Ever. Sergio is somewhere in a shop or in a van, and no one knows which! The only problem I have with this is that cs5 is on there, and I would kind of like to use that again. Oh and the minecraft update, that’d be cool too. Oh, I got a sims 3 daily deal - not really a huge collection of problems. But that’s all I really wanted to say. Even when Best Buy ‘seem’ to do something correctly, they will still eventually fail somewhere.

No posts on here for a good month or two and now several in 24 hours!

After an ok phone call with some guy at Best Buy, 

(laptop just froze for a few seconds there, surprised to see that the cd drive didn’t disconnect, although I have noticed the hard drive indicator light has been solid since it froze…writing this in my notes too!…oh, a few mins later the cd drive disconnected, ah, the hdd lights functioning properly again!)

We decided it would be a good idea to go to the actual shop and sort things out. We thought going to Best Buy would fix the problem. Ok I lied, I knew it wouldn’t fix the problem, but instead would be fun to see my mother’s reaction to the geek squad’s obvious lack of knowledge. Over the past week I’ve had a sore throat and not been able to speak, unfortunately this meant that some poor unsuspecting employee was going to witness what happens when an angry English person has to deal with crappy customer service for more than five minutes.

This is what happened…

I took my laptop (all boxed and like new) out of the car, and walked up to the shop with mum. I mentioned that these people will be less than useless, and she said they might shock us both and be great. I asked how much she wanted to bet on it. Silence. We walk in and are greeted by a lovely man who placed a sticker on the laptop to prevent some twat accusing me of stealing it. I’m sure the tapes confirming that I walked in with it would have mysteriously disappeared. We located the the Geek Squad desk and joined the queue!

Thee things I want to mention before talking about my amazing experience!

1. Urban Dictionary defines Best Buy as: “noun, The hellish fire-beast of corporate america that disolves childrens minds and brings horrifying amounts of debt to those who follow it. The only known remedy is suicide. - Best Buy took my children from me because I bought a damn TV and the fine print on the contract said they could.[sic]”

2. What Mum took from this experience - “I had been told to go to the Geek Squad desk, what a miserable bunch of arseholes!”

3. There was a lady (my favourite person of the day) with a Toshiba laptop already there, the thing looked archaic, had a modem and a floppy drive. She was having extreme words about her laptop on her phone. I didn’t hear a lot of it, but when a discussion about a broken laptop involves the words “it can go back with him and the horse they came on.” and something else about a cat, it has to be good.

We get to the desk, greeted by someone most likely emo, but the work dress code doesn’t allow for things like that. I went in there aware of the possibility that my computer knowledge might exceed theirs. Within seconds I knew it did. I explained my problem and she disappeared, presumably to cry over the fact that someone wanted answers and she left her mcr disc at home that day. She came back, and she handed the laptop to me so I could log into it. She then pushed the eject button. As explained yesterday, it works for a while, then freaks out and stops working, so it opened all ok, but this is specifically why I took pictures. I think she disapproved of the pictures because they weren’t taken with a bathroom mirror and posted on myspace, she didn’t look at them, just said they couldn’t fix it and would need to ship it to the manufacturer. Due to several problems with timing, we can’t do that unless it can be returned sooner than they’re willing to do, but that’s besides the point. Don’t people pay $200 for Geek Squad support? $200 for someone to say “ur, we dun fix this, lets send it to the magic buildin’ where they come out like new!” …Seems completely reasonable…

As I mentioned, I couldn’t speak a lot, and this is when my mother took over. Real questions like “Why can’t you do anything about this” and “unless they’re going to ship it overseas? Then you’re dealing with it.” were asked. The person responded with “We can’t do that.” and “I need more eyeliner for this.” after being asked if the Best Buy several thousand miles away would fix this thing, or not as we hadn’t bought it from that one, we heard “They should be able to do that.” We asked for the manager’s opinion on this, and to have it in writing, and then she disappeared again. I was quite intrigued with what we heard next.

“The manager will not put that in writing.”

So, you want to try to guarantee that this will work, but you’re not willing to write it down on a piece of paper? you know, like evidence that you said it? Evidence that might be wanted in case what you were saying turned out to be total and complete bollocks? I guess Best Buy learned from their other lawsuits concerning them lying about things, I guess they won’t fall for someone actually wanting them to be honest again!

The girl was clearly distressed that Edward Cullen hadn’t saved her from all the crazy Toshiba people, so we turned around, laughed when she told us to have a nice day, and walked out. Today I realised that Circuit City was amazing, amazing won’t keep you in business if your competitor is a bag of phallus, and that Best Buy are masters of irony.