Oh noes! Dell Dead Line

Call you what you will, dead line pixels, LCD defect/failure.

I woke up last night to use my laptop to do some emails, and behold, what's this wierd blue line vertically down my screen?

And wait, there's another one!

I popped on Google and sure enough, there's actually quite a few Dell customers that have already complained of this issue.

http://dellverticalline.com/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/23/dell_vertical_lines/

http://www.spectrumz.com/z/dell_vertical_line_letter.html

http://www.spectrumz.com/z/dell_vertical_line.html#res

The good news is that Direct2Dell has acknowledged there is an issue, and they will offer replacements for up to 3 years from the date of invoice.

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/04/09/10675.aspx

But the general response on the forums is that you'll have to dog hound Dell support until they agree to send out a repair tech to visit you, but after that it's smooth sailing.  (This mirrors my previous experience with replacing a Dell part under warranty as well).

So anyway, with my fingers crossed, I contacted Dell support.  I'll be blogging the process. 

Apparently the same issue plagues the Apple laptops, but to this date, Apple has been deleting/locking threads of their customers who are complaining about this issue.  So Dell is supposedly one step ahead in the customer support area.

I remain hopeful, because it is day one. 
This is day 1.  There are 2 lines on my screen.

UPDATE - the BAD news
I called up Dell support and they absolutely refused to repair my laptop (after 1hr of talking and transferring).  This is despite what their own website says.  Apparently they have already done a recall of the affected laptops in Australia and my name wasn't on the list.
I think it's a bunch of poop really.  There was no recall mentioned in the article.  Since this problem does not affect all laptops immediately, there's no need to recall the product unless it is reportedly broken.  I doubt the so-called "recall" even happened.

Anyway, here's the email of the guy I spoke to at customer-care: [email protected]

Perhaps someone can educate him about the procedure in Dell.  He hasn't even heard of Direct2Dell.

Why is Dell support so painful to work with.

Car insurance is a joke?

This is an old story.

About a year ago, I had someone who smash through my car's right side-mirror.  I called up NRMA and asked about their policy "if it's not your fault we won't charge you excess" which they were heavily promoting at the time, they informed me that I would lose my no-claim bonus for next year.

Which just means I'll pay the money later when I renew the insurance.

I ended up calling off the claim and just replaced my mirror from a second-hand parts store.

Mirrors aren't that expensive to replace, but I've had this insurance for 10 years and each year it's cost me about 10% of the cost of the car, if I totaled it.  In hindsight I don't think I needed car insurance at all.

Keith's birthday

Keith, my firstborn son, eh has been born.

Lina had some issues over the entire weekend leading up to the birth, but finally contractions started just past Sunday midnight, and baby came around 6:35am on Monday morning.

About 5 hours of labour, which we're really happy about - we both know we're very lucky to have a relatively short labour.

Labour is terrible. 

But the joy when the baby arrives is indescribable.

I can't stop thinking about my beautiful baby.

So in two days, I've managed to:

1. Spam everyone about my baby, emailed, blogged, posted in every freaking forum I visit
2. Take lots of Keith's pictures... but he appears to be sleeping whenever I take pictures!  In ALL of them!!  Sneaky baby.
3. Sneak food into hospital for Lina
4. Clean up Keith's poo twice
5. Clean up Keith's wee once
6. Ate all of Lina's biscuits, and cheese
7. Had Keith mistaken me for mum and try to extract food from my chest - no son, man and woman are different
8. Got kicked out of hospital for staying there past visiting hours - yes, I don't understand why hubby can't stay...
9. Oh and I managed to upload Keith's first YouTube movie - I'm sure that'll stick around until he's old enough to watch it himself.
10. And I've fallen in love with Lina and baby all over again.  They are the two bestest thing to happen to me.

Tomorrow, we try to get the hospital to kick us out so we can get Lina and baby home (trying to get a hospital discharge).

Lina is missing her bed terribly.

A little bit of confession...

I'm scared Keith's grandma (Lina's mum) will try to do something different to what I want to do with Keith - (I think) she seems to think the best thing for Keith is a bottle of milk in his mouth at all times, just because that's how it's done in Indonesia.  I'm a bit worried.  I firmly believe in breast feeding and I'd rather Keith go a bit hungry so he has better appetite for breast feeding, rather than stuffing him with a bottle all day.

I know one of my nephews is picky about breast milk or formula (powder) milk.  I personally prefer if Keith have no such options.  It's breast milk or nothing.

Here are the links for sharing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52753426@N00/sets/72157605014742716/

This is what I would do if I ever quit IT

1. Hire out accessible office building balconies in Sydney, or park space
2. Get a bunch of beach chairs
3. Put up lots of beach umbrellas (for the sun and rain?)
4. Hire out the beach chairs for lunch and nap afterwards

• Pump up lots of beach balls for decoration (and to keep the kids busy)
• Complementary sun block if they don't want to stay under the umbrella - though sun burns during lunch probably is great advertising.
• Soothing beach sounds and music

Premium service

• Martini, Coke, Tea
• Clean beach towels for hire.
• Alarm clock fitted to the previously mentioned beach chairs
• Wind breaker walls - I imagine on top of office buildings in Sydney the wind will be quite big

The company will be called "5 Minutes to Beach Paradise"

The workplace Wiki

I'm a pretty strong believer that anything related to the development should go on the project Wiki.

Most people will agree on a few obvious topics:

• Rules & standards
• Design decisions (which typically turns into documentation of some sort)
• Setting up the environment
• Development processes

I prefer if the Wiki was more a 'place for everybody'.  Because the goal is that you want to drive your team to firstly Read the Wiki and then secondly to Update the Wiki. 

This means it needs topics that are less hardcore and has a more personal touch:

• Bus / Train timetables - tips for getting home on time
• Good restaurants near work - with Google/MSN Maps integration
• I love this one - a Quotes page of who said what
• Office Foosball / Table Tennis championship scores (and champions)
• Team money jar summary
• Breaking the build fine
• Late/absent for scrum fine
• Swear jar
• Playing foosball / table tennis out of legal hours
• Wearing jeans to work (usually this goes to some sort of charity though)

When someone on the team has a problem, what do they do

1. Yell out help - can anyone help me?!
2. Or they search the wiki

On most projects, #1 happens all the time, and #2 pretty much never happens.  Which is a pity.