my friends at Best Buy

Last night my computer broke. It won't bring up the desktop unless it's in some crazy weird mode (the Best Buy guy was trying to explain to me but I didn't quite get it) and I can't get on the wireless internet. Dang it. So today I hauled it in to Best Buy and waited in line for the Geek people for forever and a day, and finally this guy tells me it needs $199 work of "diagnostics and repair". That comes to $215 with tax. Ugh. So I paid him and will patiently wait a week and a half for him to fix my computer. Or, I will pay him, wait a week and a half, and then listen to him tell me why he can't fix my computer and I'm really better off just getting a new one. Time will tell.

The Best Buy people and I actually have a pretty good relationship. I've gone in there with my laptop at least twice before, so it's not like we're strangers. The first time I went in there was freshman year when my power cord had a minor short and wouldn't charge my computer. Well, unfortunately it worked when they tested it, so I didn't get a replacement. The bad part is that it still sometimes doesn't work. I've found that if I just wait a little bit, it usually kicks on again, but it's touch-and-go there for a while. Last summer I went to Best Buy because my computer is obnoxiously loud and I wanted them to fix it. It also had this nasty tendency to get so hot it would nearly melt my legs off when it was sitting on my lap. I thought it was the fan so I asked them to replace it. They did. It still is loud. It still gets hot. And I gave up. In general, I would say that giving up is really the only thing one can do when faced with insurmountable technology problems. Because really, in hindsight, the people at Best Buy didn't do a single thing to help me, and I really would have been better off pretending my problems didn't exist in the first place.