It's not me, it's you, @Dell!

I have been a loyal Dell consumer since 2003. My first Dell computer was a desktop named Lola.

This is what I imagined she would look like as a person. 

I killed Lola in only a few months by accidentally pouring a ginger ale in the back of her while trying to fix my router. That was totally my fault. I immediately purchased a replacement Dell, a standard tower, no frills, and I salvaged what I could from Lola and pieced together my new computer, Frankenlola.

Personification of Frankenlola. I was doing a lot of pinups at the time. 

Frankenlola lasted for many years with no incidents. I eventually passed her down to my husband and bought my first Dell laptop for $1400 with money I earned as a research assistant at the University of Florida in 2005. Her name was Lucille. I played a lot of Sims 2 on Lucille, and when I replaced her in 2009, she was literally falling apart. Unfortunately, Lucille’s replacement, whose name I can’t recall, likely because of the trouble I had with her, was the beginning of a downward trend. On November 16, 2010, less than a year old, the hard drive on that laptop died.

http://cheeseblarg.blogspot.com/2010/11/ill-be-back.html 

After much arguing and complaining, Dell honored their warranty and replaced the hard drive in their depot.

A few months later, to treat my husband, since Frankenlola was getting mighty slow, I bought him a new Dell desktop (he doesn’t bother to name his possessions).

After the fight I had then with getting the hard drive replaced (because it was close to the end of the warranty period), the computer only lasted 2.5 years, until July 5, 2013.

On Feb, 8th, 2014, I bought yet another Dell laptop. This one was named the S.S. Lil’ Mare after my friend Mary who worked at Dell and helped me pick out the system.


In May of 2017, I bought another Dell (this time refurbished) for my husband when the hard drive on his desktop failed right before finals, and 2 months later we had to replace the replacement, when its hard drive also failed. Thankfully, the seller of that computer on Amazon happily refunded the price and another Dell desktop was purchased for an additional fee. When the Lil’ Mare died on July 11th of last year, having had to buy 2 computers for my husband, leaving us no extra funds, I saved up until November to buy my current computer, Ernestine, on Thanksgiving morning. My saga with Ernestine has been so horrific that I really never want to deal with Dell, ever again.

When Ernestine broke two weeks into my ownership, I asked Dell to replace it. They insisted on trying to fix it. Fixing it was a whole ordeal. I asked them, please, I’ve only had this for two weeks, just replace the computer. At one point, as I waited with no word from the repairman, they agreed to replace the computer over the phone, but were only willing to offer a refurbished unit. For some reason, they didn’t think I deserved a new one. Desperate, I agreed. Moments later they rescinded, saying the repairman would be there shortly.

The hard drive was replaced on my kitchen table as my cat looked on and it worked poorly for January and February, and then died again, with a catastrophic hard drive failure yet again on March 8th. I asked them to replace the computer once again. They insisted it be repaired and sent a repairman to my home again when I refused to send it in to their depot. Being a writer by trade, I am not pleased with losing my computer for weeks at a time and wanted it done in a timely manner. Forty-five minutes after the repairman left, the computer broke again, this time shutting itself off moments after booting it, repeatedly. After complaining bitterly on Twitter, Dell called me and attempted the third repair, which did, to use a colorful turn of phrase, fuck all.

As a person with processing issues from a chronic illness, talking on the phone is difficult. I can hear but I can’t process speech in real time, often times. I watch TV with subtitles because my brain can’t keep up with the sounds I hear. Having to follow directions from a person with a heavily accented voice in a noisy environment on a staticy phone when I was stressed to begin with was absolute torture, and I was not willing to try again when, predictably, my computer was still broken and I was told I was not eligible to have the unit replaced. After expressing my dismay on Twitter, completely distraught, they convinced me to send the computer into their depot, where it would be fixed once and for all, completely perfect and in tip top shape. I was told the turn around would be very quick. It took 5 days just to get there. And then there was a 5 day wait to get parts to fix it.

After 15 days, I was pleased as punch to have my computer back. I am in the middle of a manuscript for a novel I am excited about that I started in May of 2017, right before the S.S. Lil’ Mare died and am anxious to get back to writing, which I cannot do on my smartphone. Imagine my dismay, reading the documentation that came with my computer explaining that my computer had been carefully fixed and tested, when my newly “repaired” computer, shut itself off within 2 minutes of booting the system to Windows.

I am absolutely livid with Dell. The computer should have been replaced the very first time that there was a problem in the first two weeks I had it. Their bait and switch behavior feels like a scam, and it is making me physically sick. That previously mentioned chronic illness is an autoimmune disease and it is highly reactive to stress. I am currently on a month long course of steroids because my immune system was attacking my joints and internal organs to the point that the low dose chemotherapy I regularly take couldn’t do the job of suppressing it as it should, and my liver was being damaged by the attack.

Over the past day, Dell has offered to send another repairman to “fix my computer right in front of me,” as if this was some sort of treat. If they couldn’t fix it in their depot that is presumably a clean room, how in the hell were they going to fix it in my cat hair filled home? Upon asking that question, they thoughtfully offered to have me send it back to the depot if I didn’t want it fixed in my home. And for that matter, what the hell were they doing with it while it was in the depot in the first place? It was supposedly tested, and yet, Windows wasn’t reinstalled when I turned it on fresh out of the box, and it persisted in the behavior the moment it was fully booted. It seems clear that they didn’t test it and that the computer cannot be fixed.

What I would really like is to be able to buy a different brand of computer so I never have to deal with Dell again, but unfortunately, I am chronically ill and my husband and I depend upon student loans and my writing and art to survive. When I don’t have my computer, I don’t have a way to work, and his loans are solely for his education and must be carefully budgeted to get us through each semester. I would love to have an i Mac or anything, actually, reliable and sturdy enough for process intensive digital art and film making. But regardless, I honestly believe that Dell needs to make this right and that seems very far off.

As it stands, they have passed my case on to an escalation specialist. I was told they would call within 24-36 hours. They called way sooner while I was out assisting my husband with a photography project for his semester final. I was told there would be a call back number direct to the specialist should they be unable to reach me. Predictably, there wasn’t a direct line. I had to answer 20 questions to be patched through to a number where I was promptly hung up on. Mr. Christopher’s phone doesn’t have voicemail, and while he assured me he would be available until 6 pm, their system wouldn’t put the call through because it shuts down at 5 pm.

Over the past 15 years, I have been incredibly loyal to Dell. As the family computer specialist, I have instructed all of my family members to purchase Dells. I have told coworkers and students and friends. I want my computer replaced. I want a machine that works and that I can work with, with the same or better specs and I don’t want another damned platitude where I am told that being frustrated is understandable but their hands are tied. This is a shitty way to do business and it would take a monumental response to rectify the damage done to the relationship. At this point, I’m just assuming even if I am able to harangue a replacement computer out of them, I will forever be disappointed and will spend the rest of my excess energy warning people away from the brand because the treatment I have received and the difficulty I have faced is something no paying customer should ever subject themselves to.

My Summer from Hell- Part Two: She's Going To Die

While I was waiting this summer to find out if I had cancer, the night after my cat got the cat equivalent of heat stroke, I got a call from my sister letting me know that she was in the ER with our mother who was about to be flown in a helicopter across Montana to a hospital in my city because she was having a cardiac event that was giving her trouble breathing. The next morning at 5:30 am, I got a call from the ICU doctor telling me to get my ass to the hospital to say goodbye because my mom was about to die.

Thankfully, the hospital is about 8 minutes from my house so I threw on clothes and booked it to the ICU where my mom was absolutely dying. Her lungs had filled with fluid and she was drowning, but she had refused intubation so they couldn't do much to help her.

I entered the room with a crowd of people around her, she was fighting them and was almost unrecognizable with a CPAP mask over her face, out of her mind from the lack of oxygen that was making its way into her blood.

They sort of pushed me forward and told me to talk to her. My mother and her mother didn't get along at all and it just so happened that it was my grandmother's yahrtzeit (that's Jewish for deathaversary, which I always thought was "yard side" as that's how it's pronounced). I grabbed my mom's hand and made her look at me, "It's 7-11, you're not allowed to die today! I'm sorry, but if you insist on dying, you're going to have to put it off so you don't share your death day with grandma."

And my mother is so spiteful that she immediately stopped dying. She did have to go have heart surgery immediately afterward to sustain the whole living deal, but as soon as I got there and reminded her to breathe and fight, she cleared her lungs and was able to be transported across Montana yet again to go to another hospital for her surgery.

It was that night when I got home from the hospital, that my computer died.

And then my husband's computer died, having just died and been replaced two months earlier.

And then I had a hysterectomy.

And then I had weird side effects from my hysterectomy like white-hot leg pain, and 96 hours of full body itching, and phantom uterine cramping that felt like it was tearing me in half.

And then my car died. Twice. (It was the alternator, and then the starter, in a week's time).

And then I found out my neutered cat was an attempted rapist when we let in a cute little neighborhood cat who'd been meowing at our door, then immediately put her out because my cat is horrible and gross, but then she stalked us for five whole nights, howling like she was using a bullhorn outside our windows which, of course, made Stevie howl inside at the top of his lungs for 5 whole nights.

And my state elected a reporter-slamming jerk.

And then I was diagnosed with a breast tumor which probably isn't cancer but might still be cancer.

And then my camera died.

And I was turned down for disability because I have a good attitude which, of course, precludes actually being sick.

And the jerks in our government spent the summer trying like hell to take away my health insurance, which would have meant that I wouldn't be able to be treated for all the Schrodinger cancer I had (or didn't have as the case may be), which I was constantly worried about, which of course made my illness all that much worse (and of course, they're still doing it).

So yeah, my summer had a lot of suckage that just kept on pooping down on me, like a way less appetizing fondue fountain at Golden Corral.

But now that I have a computer again, and  the use of a working camera and I feel slightly less like spending every waking moment binge-watching Netflix (almost done with all eight seasons of Dexter) and playing Candy Crush on my tablet to drown my woes, it is my plan to make up for lost time with content galore, which I hope you will come back for and share.

I also have an actual smartphone now (for the time being, seeing how things go for me) so I'm all over social media as "cheeseblarg" and I'm actually posting stuff, so go ahead and follow me!

So what days of the week are you most looking forward to something to laugh at? Let me know so I can get on setting some kind of schedule, please.

My Summer from Hell - Part One: The Surgery

I just got a computer, yesterday, after 5 months of being without so my first task after restoring all my files and programs is posting for you guys. Thank you, Black Friday sales for decent computers cheap enough I can afford. The last time that I was without dedicated computer access for this long was in 1994, my freshman year of college, but most people didn't have computers then, so it wasn't quite as jarring then as it is now, especially when my entire life exists online.

So I wrote on Cheeseblarg's facebook page a while ago that y'all would find it hard to believe all the shit I had been through this summer, for those of you who aren't following along there, and you probably won't, but I assure you, it's all true, and it's absolute bullshit.

My wish for the upcoming year is that I never have to hear the words, "We're afraid it might be cancer," ever a-fucking-gain from a doctor. This summer started with a mysterious mass in my cervix. I went to the doctor in June because I was experiencing this weird feeling of all of my insides dropping when I stood up for more than 15 minutes which in itself is pretty alarming, but it was accompanied with sweating and feeling like I was going to pass out. Once it got to the point that I couldn't stand long enough to shower without feeling like I was dying, I decided I should probably do something about it, so I bucked up and went to have my lady bits probed by a stranger. I mean, she was a professional, not just some random person on the street with a speculum and a hankering for some gynecological exploring.

Since scraping my lady bits turned up nothing, we went to the next step of sonic spelunking. This revealed the aforementioned "mysterious mass" and then we went to the next step of traumatizing me forever and ever, amen.

Frankly, the whole business gives me more ammunition for the idea that there is a grand conspiracy of hatred for women in this world because I cannot believe that any kind of human rights coalition would allow the equivalent to a cervical/uterine biopsy to be done to any man without general anesthetic. And I've heard that testicular biopsies are done under local and still hurt like hell, but I'm arguing that that is not really equivalent, because testes are not muscles that try to slam shut when you drill pieces out of them causing your entire body to try to escape from what's going on in your nether regions. It was really awful.  So awful in fact, that before I even left that appointment, I made plans with my doctor, before the results came back, to have my uterus and accompanying accouterments removed as soon as possible so I would no longer have a cervix so that procedure could never ever happen to me again.

And my uterus was mint, guys, never been used, though it had been remodeled monthly since I was about 10, so I don't know if I could have gotten full price for it. Anyway, it's totally lost its value now because I took it out of the box. At the end of August, I had them remove my reproductive organs (though I kept my ovaries so they can grow cysts and be generally annoying to keep me off of hormone replacement therapy), and I finally finished healing last month after one of the holes popped open in a cinematic fashion when we thought they were all almost closed.
So that's the story of how I spent 3 months worrying that I had cancer before having a hysterectomy. I didn't have uterine or cervical cancer, but my cervix was faulty and if I had kept it, I would have continued to need biopsies regularly and it would have continued to make me feel like I was dying, and frankly, I wasn't planning on using it anyway, and I'm much happier to have it gone.

Spending all the time in a gynecologist's office, of course, led to appointments with mammography. And instead of just being routine, of course, I got my next, "it might be cancer." I was supposed to be going tomorrow, in fact, to have a lumpectomy to ensure that the tumor they found in my breast during the first biopsy is completely non-cancerous, but I got an ear infection, so now I get to add two more weeks to my 3 months of waiting to find out that this one is nothing too.

And I know that countless people who aren't so lucky would love to be told that it is nothing repeatedly, but having six months of your body constantly trolling you that is mutating and is gonna kill you only to have it yell "PSYCH" after you've had surgeries and near constant stress diarrhea, is relieving as hell, but also really fucking annoying that you had to go through all of that in the first place when your body could have just stopped growing benign tumors in the first damned place.

So that's part one of my trauma. I'm thinking I can wrap it up in one other post, hopefully, next week.

Neural Network Cookbook- Now Illustrated!

Janelle Shane, a research scientist, has been teaching cooking to a neural network. A neural network is basically Skynet if you didn't know. After letting it look at tens of thousands of cookbook, she set it free to create its own recipes, the best of which you can see here. Taking inspiration from the list, I have some cookbook illustrations for you:

to see additional cookbook illustrations 

Touchy, touchy!

Is everyone in the world just WAY less gross than I am or are touchscreen computers as awful an idea as I think they are?

I'm not a Luddite. I am happy to embrace new technology when I encounter it, but look... my screen is disgusting enough with me NOT touching it. I seriously thought a guy had a mole in the middle of his forehead scrolling through my Facebook feed tonight... until I scrolled a little more and then realized there is just a mole on my monitor.

Every year around Black Friday, I fantasize about getting a new laptop to replace the one I got 4 years ago that has no backspace key, that overheats in 10 minutes of being on, that randomly scrolls through page after page without any movement from me when it is in a bad mood, but if all of the laptops currently available are ALL touchscreen, I just cannot picture myself buying one.

And that is because... I have pictured myself using one.
I spend a lot of time on my computer, so it is not uncommon for me to be eating something while computing, or picking my nose, or. . . Look, lord knows where my fingers have been or what is on them when I am using a computer, okay? I wash my hands a lot, but I'm totally not getting up to wash my hands after eating an eclair while watching shows on Project Free TV so I can stop the video to obsessively check my email or whatever.

Beyond having to place your mouth or genitals on your monitor to use your computer, I cannot think of a worse design. So, is this working for people? Or do you all just have Cheetos dust covered, sticky, nasty monitors? Or am I just really really gross?

Skynet 1.0: Abuse of the RedBox

After watching my mother try to rape the Redbox Kiosk with the movies she was returning for me, because I have my nephew's cold and didn't want to get out of the car in subfreezing temperatures, I am fairly certain that this sort of thing  is the beginning of the Skynet Incident.
They didn't show it in the Terminator movies, but clearly, the repeated abuses of these machines are going to lead to a revolt where machines start attacking and murdering humans.

At the very least, RedBox should set up hidden cameras to record and broadcast, for our amusement, the various ways in which people are unable to figure out the operations of their machines.

Change is hard.

I don't buy into the whole, "If it's free, you can't complain" dogma.  My lungs are free, came with the package, but I am totally complaining, as loudly as I possibly can, if they stop working in a useful and helpful way. Something being free doesn't and shouldn't preclude it from receiving feedback, as far as I am concerned.

I do, however, think that making the best of everything is the easiest policy, for one's own sanity, and I rarely join in the "OMG! MAKE IT GO BACK!" crowd. I would rather just make fun of the situation and get on with it... so I have annotated my personal Facebook page below to give everyone a positive spin on all the changes that have happened to the Facebook Layout.

While it seems horrifically changed, it really isn't.  

• There is the addition of the "Awesome Stalk-O-Matic ™" scrolling bar on the right - which is perfect for people who like to obsessively keep up with their favorite people and see EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION THEY HAVE... which is right up my alley.  

          These can likely be cut down by altering your subscriptions to people you don't give a damn about.

• Then there is the "Ninja Algorithm Cool Stuff ™" that is marked by little blue triangles which seems to have no rhyme or reason, but a game can be made of trying to figure out the pattern.

• And all the other stuff that you saw before the change lives underneath the new stuff. Mostly. Except possibly your own posts. Unless you are popular. 

VIRUS WARNING! QUICK! GIVE ME MONEY!

While I am entirely against violence and revenge, people who create those viruses that pretend to be virus warnings that try to trick computards, like my sister and her husband, who don't have anti-virus programs on their family's laptop (because WHO NEEDS ANTI-VIRUS!? YAY! THE INTERNETS! OOH WHAT'S THAT!? CLICK CLICK CLICK!

)

into paying said virus makers to remove the virus on their site that pretends to be "Window's Helpful Security Tool"... those people, they should have acupuncture needles inserted into their peeholes. I'm just saying. I don't condone violence*, but they kinda deserve it.

*This statement, the result of 11 hours of wrestling with a fake security warning virus out of the goodness of my heart, which kept me up until 6am, running and rerunning two different malware removers and spybot s&d, to try to get my sister's computer usable for her work trip (which she told me about last night at 7pm), only to find that the virus keeps me from being able to finish the last step to remove it (installing an actual anti-virus program) so that the whole hard drive needs to be wiped, though the backup OS disk has been lost of course, is not representative of my usual feelings or intentions towards hackers, who really should DIAF until I get more than 4 hours of sleep. Really, die.

<3, JRose

I do have a magnetic personality!

I have a lot of problems with those fuzzy captchas that are quite popular on website these days. It is so difficult for me to read them, every time I encounter one, I become anxious and worried that I might actually be a spam robot without being aware.

Electronics Don't Get Thirsty!

No matter how they try to convince you otherwise, your electronics are not thirsty.  Even if you've just finished paying them off, and you'd like to celebrate with them, they don't want to share your ginger ale.  Please believe me, I know.
They also don't want to do a dance number with you with in the rain, as much as they say they really would like it.  Nor do they want to go for a swim with you.  It can be confusing, because they often seem up for this sort of thing, but no, they're just being agreeable as electronics are wont to do.

Merry Llamakkah!

It's the third night of Hanukkah and my computer is fixed so the quality of my art shall be improving!  Hope you are still enjoying your crappy gifts!  

Please, feel free to share it with your friends! 

I'll be back!

My computer apparently was not happy about all this work it was having to do and is currently on strike.  Lazy bum was less than a year old. 

It and I have had many words today... well, no, I have had the words, it has sat and stared dumbly off into space whilst blowing bubbles, or the computer equivalent, which is not booting, in this case.

If it had had words for me, it probably would have been something like this:

The artist also cannot spell "apologizes" consistently.

I'll be back as soon as possible! <3