HOL...

AKA: Heidi On-Line

Yay! I have a computer again! Woo Hoo!

I can't exactly remember how long ago, it seems like months, but I was blog hoping around the blog world. I was on a blog that I have looked at before and it had a link so I looked at the link and bam! I caught a virus. It was one of those pop-up ones. I tried calling qwest, then dell then McAfee to resolve the issue. No one would help unless I pulled out my credit card and spent at least $150 to fix it. I didn't want to do that so I went another way... it was the wrong way. I had someone try to clean it up and it crashed. A hard nosedive into a brick wall.

Luckily for us we didn't loose pictures or documents because of my husbands foresight to back up the computer with an external hard drive. So basically we were looking at either buying a) a new computer or b) a new hard drive and new programs. Each option was not cheap. Either was we were going to be out at least $300-$400.

So we both decided that we would wait and see if the Black Friday sales would have a great deal and barrow my mom's laptop until then. But my sisters volleyball team went to nationals and my parents went to Wisconsin to support Lee and she needed her computer. So we needed to see about getting a new computer.

One night a close family member of ours mentioned that we owned the rights to the programs that came on our computer from dell. We decided to get a new hard drive and load new programs. Much cheaper then buying a new computer. So Jer tried calling dell. They were horrible! The lady tried to hang up on Jer, wouldn't transfer him to the manager or give him her id number. Very frustrating. So I called the next day to try again. Much better luck this day! We found out our computer is still under warranty. We have talked to dell 3 times and no one mentioned the warranty. They wanted us to pay to fix it or buy a new computer. But since it is under warranty they fixed it for free!

So with in 3 days the tech was out here to fix the computer. He ended up having to put a new hard drive and mother board in it. We basically have a new computer in our old tower! I have spent way to many hours on the phone in the last month. I hate the phone.

So things I have learned in this process:

• Always buy a warranty.
• Every company outsources their calls to India.
• I cannot understand an Indian accent.
• People on the other end on my phone call get very annoyed at me asking to repeat every word.
• Qwest offers free virus protection if you are a customer.
• Qwest doesn't outsource to India.
• I like Qwest.
• After spending hours on the phone. I learned that the only way to keep kids quiet when I am on the phone and can't move from the computer is candy.
• Laine likes suckers.
• Bode asked me to get on the phone... so he could have candy.

I am glad to have a computer again :)