Daily Blogs!

I own a Dell Latitude XT (yeah, it’s a really cool covertible tablet, and yes, it cost a nuclear bomb). In a class today, I depressed the stylus in its housing to release the stylus and sort of misjudged the rebound, whereby the stylus flew from it’s housing and landed on the ground, a good three feet below. Now, this has happened before, but I don’t know if it was the angle or what, but the stylus buttons have stopped working. They won’t get pressed, and so I have no right click and erase functionality any more. (Dell should consider a redesign to prevent this from happening in the first place.)

So, after the class, I call up Dell Support (because for some weird reason their chat isn’t working, and email takes ages) and had to wait for all of six minutes before my call was answered by someone who was noting down people’s details so that the real tech guys can call them later (an arrangement as they were experiencing a large volume of calls at the moment; still better than dropping my call – am looking at you, Nokia).

15 minutes later I get a call, and I tell the chap truthfully that the stylus fell and it won’t work anymore; needs replacement. He takes a minute to figure out if they can replace it, and probably misunderstood me thinking that the screen was broken. Clarified. He said that he’ll get back in an hours time after checking inventories.

2 hours later, the local service provider from Kolkata calls: “Sir, we have received a call from Dell. Your part is here, but because there’s a bandh in Kolkata, we cannot deliver it to you tomorrow.”

“It’s here? Already? How is that even possible? No problem, send it across on Saturday then.”

“Thank you sir, for understanding [as if i had a choice]. Please return the defective piece to the technician.”

“Sure.”

Now that’s some service! Kudos, Dell.

I don’t know how Dell does it, because this isn’t a standard part, and I’m sure you don’t just have them lying around everywhere, given that there must be single digit XT machines in the country! Pretty cool.

—-

Also 1: You get what you pay for. I paid some 12k extra for the ProSupport and Dell Complete Care for 3 years. But totally worth it.

Also 2: No, I don’t get paid for this, but I wish I did.

—-

UPDATE: Received the stylus today. The retail price is Rs.1744.62/- Of course, the warranty meant I didn’t have to pay for it. The delivery guy from Dell said that they had the stylus in stock, which is why they were able to get it in such short a time. Even if they didn’t have it, they’ve got in within a day. So I can now erase and right click!

They also took the broken stylus away, as part of their policy. I understand that they refurbish it and reuse, which is cool. Also used to study what went wrong and thus improve the product.

The fun thing is that the stylus came in a relatively BIG carton box, and had the usual add-ons of nibs and the princer to pull nibs out, and the teether, all of which was packed in a nice plastic case which was loaded on a foam package which in turn was in the BIG carton. Funny to see something so small come off that big a package. Such waste!

The foam packaging is actually “Sealed Air” Instapak. It has toll free numbers on it for return and disposal locations, including a cell number for India. These custom packs are designed with requirements in mind, so lesser material is required. The polyurathane foam is covered with a polyehtylene film that can be resued as a carton filler or disposed off with ordinary waste. The packaging material can also be processed in municipal waste-to-energy facilities. It also compresses to 10% of its original volume in a landfill, complying with international legislation restricting the presence of heavy metals. It will not degrade to pollute air or groundwater. It also conforms to 94/62/EC = European Packaging Directive, and will be accepted by third-party collection organizations in Germany and throughout Europe.

All of the above is detailed on the packaging itself.

I finished reading the book quite some weeks back now, and here are the remaining quotes:

• The burden of happiness can only be relived by the balm of suffering.
• Real suffering is measured by what’s taken away from us.
• People always hurt us with their trust.
• A man must love his bear.
• She always told the truth, even when she was lying.
• Wealth and power were measured by the privacy that only money could buy and the solitude that only power could demand and enforce.
• I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.
• Yes, what is it, Tariq? I’d asked him irritably. Oh, I’m sorry, he’d replied. Do you want to be lonely?
• A kings is a bad enemy, a worse friend and a fatal family relation.
• Some of the worst wrongs were caused by people trying to change things.
• Like everyone else in the world who smokes, I wanted to die as much as I wanted to live.
• The devil is in the details.
• She was beautiful, and she was just naive enough, just sanguine enough to stop sympathy slipping into pity.
• Silence is the tortured man’s revenge.
• You’re fucked. Your life is over.
• Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey.
• Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.
• Every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.
• The only victory that really counts in prison is survival.
• Cruelty is a kind of cowardice.
• Despotism despises nothing so much as righteousness in its victims.
• Evil is the root of all money.
• A secret isn’t a secret, unless keeping it hurts.
• If you make your heart into a weapon, you always end up using it on yourself.
• You don’t inform on people, not for any reason.
• It is possible to do the wrong things for the right reasons.
• We can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.
• Happiness is a myth; it was invented to make us buy things.
• They were unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in appearance. They were also intelligent, honest, and unconditionally loyal to one another.
• If I’d been a different man, a better man, I would’ve cried. And who knows, it might’ve made the difference.
• The moment was lost.
• Such is life.
• A man has to respect himself before he can respect anyone else.
• Can one act of genius allow us to forgive the hundred flaws and failures that bring it into being?
• She had to become a widow for life, before she was even married.
• There is nothing so depressing as good advice.
• We never feel or express any one emotion without feeling something of its opposite.
• I think I love him, in a kind of insane way, but I don’t trust him. Is that a horrible thing to say about the guy you stay with?
• Every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret.
• Danger was one of the lances I used to kill the dragon of stress.
• We were red-lining our lives.
• Fighing to save a life is a better and more enduring reason than fighting to end one.
• The fully mature man or woman has about two seconds left to live.
• You can never tell what people have inside them until you start taking it away, one hope at a time.
• If we envy someone for the right reasons, we’re half way to wisdom.
• Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships.
• Fate gives us all three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives.
• We lived out a life together in that kiss: we lived and loved and grew old together, and we died.
• Sometimes the worst thing you can do to a woman is to love her.
• The nothing that it gives you, the unfeeling emptiness it gives you, is sometimes all and everything you want. (it = herion)
• But I hadn’t asked the right question. I hadn’t asked about her. I’d asked about him.
• A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.
• The end mirrors the beginning.
• One of the agonising truths for a battle media is that you pray as hard and almost as often for men to die as you pray for them to live.
• The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open.
• Negative space.
• It’s bad, loving someone you can’t forgive. It’s not as bad as loving someone you can’t have.
• Fate always gives you two choices: the one you should take, and the one you do.
• The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads.
• The wheel had turned through one full revolution.
• There is no man, and no place, without war.
• Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.
• No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.

Of course the standard disclaimer applies: Quotes are fair use and the original right of the author is asserted.