Rants

Step 3

Busy SkyStep 3 in repairing my Garmin Venture HC was to call Technical Support. But first, for funzies, I decided to try and load the software using my work computer, as expected it didn’t work, so I dialed the 1-800 number for Garmin. There I was thrown into the voice mail pit of despair. The last email I received said I needed to talk to the Software Support Team. Well, as you can guess, there is no option for Software Support even after trying two separate branches of the hollow tree of hope. The third time through I opted for the next available Technical Support Representative.

After not too long a wait a nice young man answered and wanted nothing to do with the trouble ticket I had from my email steps and made me explain the whole story all over again. When I go to the part about being elevated to Software Support and he put me on hold and set up a transfer to the appropriate desk. Shortly I was transferred directly to a nice young woman with a hint of Indian accent.

I quickly explained how the unit was acting, she had me try the three finger start up that would reset the unit to its default settings. I once again got the same blink and fade out as before. After that she went ahead and set up my RMA.

This afternoon I set in motion the Venture’s trip back to Kansas, not via hot air balloon or clicking together my ruby slippers, but by FedEx ground. Now we wait.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 378

Technical Support Song & Dance

Step 2 is possibly blame it on something besides the GPSr. (emphasis mine)

This can be caused by a few separate issues and will cause the unit to not update. If the USB cable is bad, being connected to anywhere but directly to the back of the computer, and incompatible USB core driver system on the computer itself. These, or the device is just not operating properly. I would recommend calling in to our software team from this point. We will need to check some advanced settings on the computer to see what could be causing this.

I’ve tried it directly from the PC on the desktop and the laptop. Tomorrow before I call the Software Team I will try it on my work PC. Odds are heavily in favor of the unit being bad, but I’ll dance the dance so I can get this fixed under warranty.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 378

17th Level

Sorry CharlieGarmin Tech Support replied to my email cry for help. Step one was to download the latest version of the software for the unit and reinstall it. How was I going to reinstall the software you ask, seeing how the unit won’t fully boot up?

The way they told me to start the GPSr was a lot easier then those four fingered web variations from the other day. They gave me the secret handshake. Press and hold the toggle stick (think mini joystick or more like IBM laptop TrackPoint button) in the up position and power on the unit. You have to keep holding the stick up, double click the updater program on the PC and hold on while the software loads. I tried to load the software three times (just in case I wasn’t holding my tongue right) and all 3 times the process went something like this: erasing, loading, erasing and loading a second time, error message.

I replied to the email with my failure status and now await further instructions. Probably have to box it up and mail it back, I just hope they don’t require the original box, I can’t find it. And I usually keep everything, I mean I have the box this Dell PC came in six years ago…

Today’s title came from a piece of email we received from a friend today, it had been forwarded 16 other times before being forwarded to us.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 376

The End Of Reality

We were up early this morning to ride the tandem to work, but as we started down the drive way something was wrong. The back tire was flat. Seeing as this ride was optional, we just parked the bike and Plan B was implemented, drive the car. Because we were early instead of finishing breakfast and heading right to the Bogardusmobile there was some time for TV watching.

During a break in Sportcenter I surfed the channels until I stumbled on VH1 playing an old Beatles tune, “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Wow, VH1 is back to playing music. They, like their big brother station MTV, seemed to have abandoned playing music videos in favor of other crap, including “reality” shows, nice to see them back to music videos again.

Wait a minute, that’s not the real John, Paul, George & Ringo, its a computer generated facsimile. Turns out it is a video-slash-commercial for something called Rock Band, which as best I can figure is a cross between karaoke, air guitar, your TV and an expensive gaming console. So much for back to reality.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKRyKVDvO6U

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 347

Keeps Getting Better

Tried to print something this evening and my free for buying a laptop Dell 720 printer wouldn’t print. Wouldn’t turn on. Zippo. I measured the output voltage at the terminals of the transformer, it is supposed to be 30VDC, it read zero.

I can take a chance on some fly by night outfit and buy a new power cord/transformer for around ten bucks with shipping or I could just go ahead and buy a new printer. There is a dealer on Amazon that is selling the same Dell 720, new, for just $39 including shipping.

Or I could get something else in the $50-60 range, but what? Our printing needs are minimal, an occasional receipt for an internet purchase and the Miata Club Treasurer’s Report once a month. Color is not required at all. Anything fancy I do it at work where I have access to everything from a letter sized color laser to a 36 x 48 ink jet plotter…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 344

PayPal Bonus

A couple weeks ago I had an unauthorized charge show up on my PayPal account. I only had a little over $10 in there, the charge amounted to about $35 and because my checking account was linked, they took the overage from it. I disputed the charge with both PayPal and the merchant and they both agreed I was wronged, so my money was returned with in a couple days.

I basically only use PayPal for an occasional eBay purchase, but in the past I’ve used it for snap deals found on the net, so a credit card is also linked. After digging through the PayPal help pages I discovered that they could do an instant transfer from my checking because I had that CC listed as a back-up source. Wanting to ensure that they couldn’t just yank money out of my checking account again, I removed the credit card.

Well, because someone had used my account without permission PayPal had me do a couple of things before they would let me access my money again. One of which was change my password and another was to change my security questions. Both were no brainers and easy to do.

The third thing they wanted was to confirm my address. This was the sticky one. The easy way to confirm my address was to link a charge card to my account. Nah, don’t want to do that, that’s what got me in this mess in the first place. There is another way, PayPal could mail a code to my snail mail address that I could, when received, enter into their site. Trouble was I didn’t meet the requirements for this option, because I had a dispute within the last 3 months.

I stewed for a week figuring out what I should do.There were no worries about anyone getting any money out of the account during this time because it was frozen while we confirmed my address. The plan I came up with was to confirm with a credit card and then once I had access to my money, pull it all out and close the PayPal account.

To make sure that the card, and consequently my address, were good they were going to charge the card $1.95 and then promptly refund it. I forgot all about the whole thing until about 5 days later when I got an email from PayPal saying they were giving me a bonus. I thought, wow, that’s nice, must be to make up for the hassle I’ve been through, they added a dollar ninety five into my account.

Hey, wait a minute!

I checked my CC online and sure enough they had no trouble withdrawing money, but they never refunded the card. They turned around and credited my money into my PayPal account and called it a bonus.

That cinched it, I transferred my measly $60 back into my bank and I’m shutting down my PayPal account.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 300

Another DNF

Nope, didn’t go geocaching today. Nor yesterday either for that matter. The F in this case stands for finish, not find. We started to watch a movie from 2001 called Happy Accidents that stars Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio, but stopped after 15 minutes. It seems like we are on a streak here with not finishing movies. In the last six weeks we have received 16 discs from Netflix and we have DNF’d 6 of them or almost 38%. The ratio is even worse because there were 6 discs of West Wing which are golden to us, so if we forget about WW the ratio jumps to 60%!

The search for good movies for us is kind of like geocaching. The stars of the movie are the coordinates and the blurb on the Netflix page is the cache description. Roger Ebert’s Review is the hint and all those reviews on the Netflix movie page equate to the logs of fellow geocachers. With all that information, finding a good movie should be easy, but sometimes you just can’t see it.

The car has sat in the garage all day because we rode the tandem around town early this morning paying 3 bills and saving $1.32, so I was going to title this post “The Emperor’s Day Off”, but there is now a possibility that we may have to make a run to the store for some essentials that were missed the other day when we did our weekly grocery shopping.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 292