Ah, been negligent...

Wow, time flies when you're not having fun. Well, it hasn't been all bad, I guess;
- Politics: who to believe?
- Economy: when do I hit the panic button (not now!)
- Job: tied to #1 and #2
- Dell XPS notebook decided it didn't want to work anymore. After a (fairly) pleasant e-chat with tech support, they will send someone out to replace the LCD and motherboard. Guessing it is related to video, but don't know which end. No VGA out, so guessing the motherboard.
- An outing with the Flickr! folk. That was a nice half-day. Learned a lot.

Dell is SO helpful (NOT!)

For those that have a Dell system, you probably know about the Dell Support Center. Gives you "helpful" hints, system alerts, etc.

Got a notice that there was an "Urgent" upgrade for the hard drive firmware (the hard drives local operating system). This is for my system drive; gut-check. Okay, we've done this before; download the right file, unpack it, read the instructions, install. Easy, right? Uh huh. Download the file, unpack it. No instructions. Check the site; it says to read the instructions contained in the download. Hmmm.

I am supposed to be a "knowledgeable" IT guy; I can do this! Don't need no stinkin' instructions! Plus, I'm a guy, so.... Create the CD from ISO, boot from the CD, it runs, and... OMG! "No recognizable boot device"!!! I can't start my system! Think, think, think! Try it again! Run the executable manually this time...

Hey, maybe if I shutdown and do a "cold-boot"... Voila! I have my system drive back!

I'm getting too old for this... What do the non-technical users do? I am thinking that it would be a bad time to call Dell about now; didn't want to talk to India anyway.

[edit: I should note that the fact they sent a notification out at all is helpful. They need to work on the execution, though, especially when it affects something that can permanently disable your system.]