{"id":124,"date":"2008-05-18T21:26:26","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T05:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=124"},"modified":"2009-09-23T19:29:58","modified_gmt":"2009-09-24T03:29:58","slug":"nop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=124","title":{"rendered":"<code style=\"font-weight: bolder ;\"><abbr title=\"No OPeration\">NOP<\/abbr><\/code>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, while waiting at <abbr title=\"George Bush Airport\">IAH<\/abbr> between flights, I spoke with a representative from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geekavailable.com\/\">GeekAvailable.com<\/a> about repair of my note-book computer.  The rep said that turn-around time would typically be about 72 hours, allowing for order and receipt of parts.<\/p> <p>I took my computer to them on Thursday morning.  On Saturday after-noon, a technician (the same fellow with whom I had spoken on Wednesday) told me that he believed that a voltage inverter had failed, and that he had ordered a replacement on Thursday or on Friday. (My computer has a large screen with an odd aspect ratio &mdash; 1920&times;1200 &mdash; so it's no surprise that this part would require a special order.)<\/p> <p>(It's <em>not<\/em> good policy for them to order such a part without my clearance to actually effect the repair, but in this case I would have given my okay.)<\/p> <p>I'm hoping, then, to have my note-book computer back to-morrow or on Tuesday.<\/p> <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"center\" \/> <p>While I await the return of that computer, I am using Bessie, a desktop computer that I maintain as a <abbr title=\"Windows 9x\">Win9x<\/abbr> legacy machine.<\/p> <p>As such, Bessie has only 512<abbr title=\"megabyte\">MB<\/abbr> of <abbr title=\"random-access memory\">RAM<\/abbr> &mdash; <abbr title=\"Windows 9x\">Win9x<\/abbr> actually becomes <em>more<\/em> dysfunctional if there is more <abbr title=\"random-access memory\">RAM<\/abbr> than that installed, though <abbr title=\"Windows 9x\">Win9x<\/abbr> can handle <abbr title=\"gigabyte\">GB<\/abbr>s of <em>virtual<\/em> memory.  But, with that memory constraint and with Windows' otherwise poor memory management, applications frequently hang or crash or otherwise do intensely annoying things.  I really need to clean-up Bessie's file system and free-up a drive so that I can alternately boot Linux on it.<\/p> <p>And Bessie connects to the <abbr title=\"Internet\">'Net<\/abbr> at noticeably lower speed, probably because of crummy telephone wiring to the computer room.<\/p> <p>So I am not doing nearly as much on-line as I otherwise would.<\/p> <p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/mocketymock.com\/\">The Woman of Interest<\/a> has been kind enough to manage my principal character in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingdomofloathing.com\/\">the Kingdom of Loathing<\/a> since my return to San Diego.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Wednesday, while waiting at IAH between flights, I spoke with a representative from GeekAvailable.com about repair of my note-book computer. The rep said that turn-around time would typically be about 72 hours, allowing for order and receipt of parts. I took my computer to them on Thursday morning. On Saturday after-noon, a technician (the [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,5,4],"tags":[68,268,214,217,215],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-technology","category-personal","category-public","tag-computers","tag-geek-available","tag-geekavailable","tag-laptop-repair-san-diego","tag-rodrigo-pereira"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}