I seem to have been stuck in a patch of ridiculous technical glitches in hardware and software for the past few months, and am well over it. Bear with me, I’ll get to the mind tweak…
First off, my new silver shiny HP laptop with the big screen and all-bells-n-whistles Christmas present was dodgy from day one. The DVD drive disappeared from the system when I changed a disk and didn’t come back until I rebooted. At the same time the touchpad and keyboard did really strange things. The mouse cursor would suddenly flick off the side of the screen and emerge on the opposite side, annoying when I was working in the middle of a page! And when typing I’d suddenly be in the middle of the previous paragraph. What the?
So took it back to Harvey’s, they did a system restore – lovely, all that software I’d installed had to be done again. Still the same issues and Harvey’s now recommend taking it up with the manufacturer. The way to them is – tadah – through their call centre in India. So more hours on the phone downloading, installing and testing new drivers. (The call centre techs were brilliant though: smart, articulate, and great followup service. HP have got that bit right anyway). I was plugging in both a keyboard and a mouse so I could use the HP laptop. By now the USB ports were intermittently disappearing as well, so plug and unplug and replug was usual to be able to use the keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals.
Three months in, I had enough and said I want a new machine. Oh, you’re out of the period when we replace the machine (14 days!), we can only repair it. What the? They insisted on trying all the driver updates and system restores etc. The HP customer service system is immovable on this point, so I took the machine for a repair. Ten days later they’d replaced the DVD, the keyboard, the motherboard, the USB ports, but they still didn’t have the replacement touchpad from Singapore (yes, HP keep NO spare parts in Australia, they ALL come from Singapore, so don’t expect an overnight repair on anything HP here!) They thought they might get the part to Brisbane sometime after Easter. I insisted I get the machine back so I could get some work done; and drove another 40 minutes each way to pick it up again. I was using my hubby’s old laptop and there was a reason it was retired, poor slow old thing 
Anyway about a week after Easter I contact HP again – where’s the new part for my laptop? We’ll get back to you, they say. And they do a couple of days later, with the news they’ll be refunding my original purchase price because they can’t replace the touchpad. Mind you, I’d written letters and emails to various people that’s too boring to go into here. But I’m thinking, yes, result! And starting to plan what to buy instead, because it’s not bloody going to be another HP!!!!
Two days later another phone call – we don’t quite know what happened with our internal communications, but there’s been a mixup and there’s a replacement laptop on the way to you now, instead of a refund, sorry. No, there was no way to change it. Was I shocked at HP’s apparent inability to get it right? Uhhhhhhh, no.
Anyway, the replacement is all up and running after a couple of tries at importing email files and so on, another few days’ wasted time. I did put HP on notice: any issue with this machine, no matter how small, and I’ll be raising the roof to get my money back. This is a $3000 laptop, not a $500 second hand deal (which incidentally never gave me a minute of trouble, poor slow old thing )
And meanwhile over here on the blog, in March I discover hundreds of errors in my website statistics logs. Whaaat? So I track it back and it seems to have started in January, here and on all my other sites using the same template software, and the sites of friends for whom I’ve made templates! After many more hours of trawling forums and trying all kinds of fixes, I’m stumped. I “found” the fantastic justanswer.com website (something led me there, thank you! ) and connected with a great tech called Mike, who for $45 helped me narrow it all down to a problem with my template, only affecting those visitors using IE6; still most of the internet it seems. So, much more to-ing and fro-ing and communication with the template software company, and they’re still running tests.
Meanwhile the 68% of my site visitors coming from search engines and also using Internet Explorer 6, are getting a 404 file not found page because something in my template is adding /none/ to the end of my URLs. I put a message to that effect on my 404 page, but I’m Not Happy, Jan. So I started looking for another template solution, one that is reliable, versatile, scaleable would be nice, well supported, and won’t take too much time to set up. I’ve just about decided on a system called Thesis; just undecided about more time away from real dollar-earning work! (I think I need to tap or balance about my personal tech-wreck. )
And in all that, I found a terrific site called MindTWEAKS. Run by “Tori Deaux”, she’s a girl after my own heart – her slogan could be mine: “fixing the world one mind at a time, starting with mine”. Heh.
You’ll find a big but not overwhelming collection of articles going back to January 2007, a few each month, on tips and ideas to keep your brain healthy right through your life. I’m a big fan of brain research, particularly neuroplasticity (your brain keeps growing and changing as long as you use it, regardless of your age). Tori’s tips and reviews are interesting and personal. She’s not a therapist, coach, psych or any kind of mental health professional, but she’s highly qualified in the field of owning a brain she wants to keep healthy. Her passion drives this site and to me, that’s the most important qualification.
Tori is also offering a Brain Fitness Bootcamp, a three-month long online course designed to kick up your brain fitness so your life doesn’t become one long senior moment I won’t be doing it until my techwreck gets unbent and I get some time back, but I think it’s worth a look, especially at the introductory price of something less than $40 US.
I had a very similar experience with the great HP. While i was reading you post i was thinking to myself ‘surely this couldn’t be happening to someone else’. It all worked out in the end though with a replacement machine and a promise to replace it if it played up again. Its been a few months and fortunately all is well with HP (touch wood). Wouldn’t go there again though. The entire experience took 5 years off my life i’m sure of it.
Hi Bookshop
). But I was well ticked off about the whole thing and so I called them and had a bit of whinge 
They said no problem, we’ll have it installed, the techs will contact you. Which they did about just a couple of days later, and I drove the half hour over there to get the thing installed – except HP forgot to send the cabling for the component. So we’ve been to-ing and fro-ing for another few weeks while I try to fit in another couple of hours to sit around while the really efficient techs do the job. But the upside of all that was that was the tech said the new machine was optioned up where it counted, with a faster cache and better video card etc… so the old rule of when one door closes, another opens, seems to sort-of apply here too 
Well my little HP adventures continued for a while. They replaced the machine and it wasn’t specced up the same, at first look. For example the original machine had a TV tuner in it, which I’d never have wanted to buy myself as I’m not a big TV fan at the best of times (except Spics and Specs and New Tricks, but that’s another story
Thanks for posting