laptop update

Here's a laptop update and another case study in the Fedex phenomenon.

The new laptop (tentatively named "Halfdome") left Shanghai, China yesterday. (A Japanese company makes their laptops in China. Go figure.)As of 9:32 a.m. today, it was in Anchorage, Alaska.

The new CD-ROM drive for that laptop left Exton, PA yesterday. As of 11:33 a.m. this morning, it had left Lewisberry, PA, on its way here.

The old laptop (which will be renamed "Mt Terror") went to CompUSA's repair shop on Friday. As of 12:45 p.m. today, it was still there, and the person on the phone didn't know why. He said he'd find out. It's now 6:30 p.m. and I haven't heard anything back.

In this case, it's CompUSA that's getting bitten by the Fedex phenomenon. The shippers that are sending the laptop and drive have web sites that provide extremely detailed information about the location of the shipment along its path. I don't actually need that information -- the boxes won't get here any faster for my watching them -- so its main effect is to make CompUSA look bad by contrast. Especially since I keep having to call them to get information, rather than their voluntarily calling me with updates.

In the meantime, trusty ol' Everest is still chugging along, and I'm taking notes using the height of 19th Century writing technology: the legendary fountain pen Snardblott, the One Pen. By the way, the inventors of fountain pens really knew what they were doing: there is nothing as comfortable as a properly made and fitted fountain pen if you're going to do a lot of writing by hand.

Side note: It's normal for computers to have names, at least among civilized operating systems. As you may have guessed, I name mine after mountains. But how did a fountain pen earn a name? That's a subject for another post...