Shuarian’s Weblog

- I’ve passed my second semester of the AME, and after all the time and effort I had to invest, I’m relieved, proud and happy as well. Especially since I did a lot better than I expected, given the unfortunate start I had. The next two semesters begin in August; while it certainly won’t get easier, I’m highly motivated to give my best. Which is always a noncommittal phrase during vacations, though…

- Speaking of vacations, my planed four week trip didn’t come true. This is, however, due to my own choice. Instead, I made a short, six day long, trip to Berlin. Despite being less exotic than, say Uzbekistan or Japan, Berlin is a fantastic city to visit. It offers some nice sightseeing opportunities, an excellent selection of places to eat and, most importantly for a history buff like me, a rich and well documented history.

- The main reason for cutting down my vacations lies in another good piece of news - at the end of July, I’m moving out to my own three room flat. This is something I’m really looking forward. Besides saving me about one and a half hour of commuting every day, it also feels like it’s the right time now - after all, I turned 24 a few days ago. An unexpected side benefit is the shopping for furniture and other items, which I quite enjoy. And thanks to sites like firebox.com and eBay (and stores like good old Ikea) I have some neat stuff together already.

- Last but not least, I’ve finally completed my website, which now can be seen in its full glory at http://www.zaki.ch/ :-) It’s recommended to use either Firefox or Opera, even though Internet Explorer works - apart from some small graphical glitches - fine as well.

 
The Day Dell Lost Me

I’m currently using a Dell Inspiron 2650 notebook, which I bought in 2002. The notebook itself was a good choice, and it still runs very reliable. However, it starts to show that a 5 year old computer isn’t up to my needs anymore.

After some pondering, I decided to buy myself a decent desktop computer, and keep the notebook anyway. Because of my good experiences, I was looking into buying from Dell again. I found a nice one on their online store. I didn’t order it directly, as I still needed some time to think it all over. A few days later, when I wanted to buy said configuration, I got a nasty surprise - the option to order it without a monitor was gone.

As all other configurations without a display were only available for Windows Vista computers (I want to run XP Pro), I called their sales desk. After having described my problem to the nice lady of Dell’s sales desk, her only answer was that this would mean the monitor is already included in the price. Gosh. I dug deeper, asking if this meant I couldn’t buy a computer from Dell just because I already have a monitor. This left the lady more or less unimpressed, she just repeated her sentence and suggested I could go to Dell’s website and see if there’s a computer available without a monitor. Other than that, she seemed uninterested in the sales of computers.

And that’s how Dell lost me, because that is just poor service quality. In the end, I bought the new computer from Ackle Computer Technology, a small business company near me. They had the exact configuration I was looking for, and responded fast and friendly to my e-mail inquiry.

 
The Day My Keys Could Be Stolen

Today I got a phone call from a lady who introduced herself as being from a keys company in Bern. After that, she immediately asked me if I had ever lost my keys. I haven’t. She then asked me what I would do if I were to lose them. I didn’t answer, and wanted to know the reason for her questions. She ignored me and said I should imagine what bad things could could happen if I lose them.

As she seemed fixed on my keys, I answered that I actually don’t intent on losing them. To which she replied that this can happen to absolutely everyone! Also, lost keys can be a source of danger and are very expensive to replace. But luckily for poor and innocent people like me, they have a solution for this, maybe I have already heard of them? I said that I haven’t heard of them, and that I can live quite well with that fact. She brusquely hung up the phone.

In retrospective, that last call was worse than my call to Dell’s sales desk. While the person at Dell only was incompotent and/or bad trained for the job, the keys lady was trying to sell a product based on fear-mongering and scare tactics.

Just a quick note - after I had some trouble upgrading Wordpress to the most recent version, everthing should work fine and as usual again. I also used this opportunity to make some minor changes. Well, that’s it.