October 2008 Issue

Previous Month | Next Month | Home page | Other Months

The Usual Chat

The past year has been quite a struggle for me. A lot of what I have done has gone wrong.

Car Problems

My old Daimler was put in for service and the garage manager was so impressed with it that he suggested a complete overhaul which mainly meant a few small jobs plus a valet of the complete car. I was very pleased with the resulting appearance and took the car for a drive where it performed exceedingly well. The next day the car would not start at all so was returned to the garage.

That was the last time I had the use of it and this was a year ago. The car was kept for months by the garage who could not get it to go. In the end I arranged for another company to take over.

They found the original fault, a failed automatic choke but also found a considerable amount of other damage done by the first company. The choke was not available at the time and I have had to wait months for a replacement that I eventually received at a cost of £250. This also proved to be faulty and I am still waiting for a replacement.

In the meantime I took the first company to court for a refund of £800 that was paid without too much trouble and I also received an apology from the director. I could go on but that is enough as it has nothing to do with computing but just paints a picture of my other troubles.

Computer Problems

I have also been having problems with my computer. I use the computer a lot for editing films and recordings. For the past several months it has been a bit of a hit and miss affair because when I have attempted to save the final work to a CD or DVD the computer has been crashing.

Finally I took the computer to a local computer store who replaced the hard drive but on getting the computer home I found it extremely slow and still failed when I tried to use the DVD writer.

I returned the computer and they then found that the memory was faulty and replaced it. Back home I found the computer still painfully slow so it was returned again. This time they re-formatted the hard drive and re-installed Windows but I lost all of my data and programs although I had kept a copy of these that I am re-installing at the present time.

The drive seems to be working OK but I have lost sound output and video input. This was installed when I purchased the computer but I was not given the drivers necessary to get things working again, so back to the local computer shop where I hope they will be able to load suitable drivers.

The computer cost £1400 when purchased, I am surprised to note, 5 years ago from Evesham Micro who are no longer in business. Although it has been a lot of hassle, the local computer shop have been very helpful and their charges reasonable. I just hope that all is well when I get it back this time.