Hurray for IBM

I bought a refurbished Thinkpad T40 in March with a 90-day manufacturer's warranty. After having it for about two months, the USB ports died and the video card started flaking out everytime I pressed the machine in the wrong spot. This was about the time when finals were approching fast and I could not live without my laptop, so I sucked it up and decided I would just pay to get it fixed out of warranty after the end of the semester. This afternoon I found the invoice and called IBM. It turns out that in IBM-land a 90-day warranty that started in March expires in October so they are going fix it for free.

Additionally, in the past I have told Dell customer support representatives that the machine I'm calling about does not have Windows installed. Their response has pretty much universally been, "Then it's your problem, not ours." I told the IBM tech support guy the same thing and he said, "We don't care about that."

Hurray for IBM!

Mmm... Socorro...

The closer I get to moving, the more I wish it wasn't so near.

I've been in Socorro for just shy of six years, now. For the first 4, I didn't care at all about the town. But in the last two years, I've made some really great friends and I've come to enjoy many elements of Socorro and New Mexico Tech. I think a lot of it is the college-town aspect of this place. I enjoy walking around campus in the middle of the night for no particular reason and running into a bunch of other caffeinated people doing the same thing. I find it hilarious when I'm talking to a towny and they ask if I "go to the tech". I like writing code at El Camino til 4 in the morning. I like having conversations with random people I've never seen before who laugh at my stupid jokes about big-O notation.

I'll miss you guys. And El Camino's green chile cheese fries.