Hey Everyone sorry I am behind on my updates so I will try to catch you all up with several e-mails here is the first I starte in Canada last week.
Greetings from the northern wilderness they call Canada or as we like to call it North North America, or America Lite, or Diet America, or The Un America.....yeah our Canadian counterparts for some reason do not like any of those new names. They also really don't like it when we tell them if we wanted we could invade and take control over their little country over the weekend and still be back home to watch Sunday football!! lol
I am done racing with my former teammate and ex-brakeman Corey and now racing on the World Cup Tour with John Napier. The races with Corey went good we had a Little trouble in Park City where we finished in 7th place twice but we ended the races in Calgary on the Podium in Bronze Medal Position. It was a great time and Corey is improving rapidly so hopefully he will be driving World Cup by next year.
As of now the plan is to race World Cup Races here in Calgary Canada, Park City, UT; and finishing up in Lake Placid before Christmas. Sliding has been going well and I am looking forward to some great results. However I do have a few interesting stories to tell you all about so here it goes.
To refresh everyone memories about two years ago I went through a 4 month ordeal with an HP laptop I purchased that was having problems due to a faulty hard drive. In the long run I wound up sending the computer in to HP 3 times for them to replace it and every time they replaced it the hard drive was bad. After arguing for 4 months my I finally lost it over the phone and they ended up sending me a new computer with all the bells and whistles. But guess what?....Yup 1yr and 10 months later the new HP they sent me began experiencing problems. It started performing random memory dumps, freezing up, not playing media files correctly and etc. At this point I am about a good minute from just throwing this stupid machine against the wall or taking it out to a field like in the movie Office Space to introduce it to my Baseball Bat or better yet the bottom of my boot!
Two weeks ago Monday I finally had time to take it over to Best Buy's self-proclaimed Geek Squad (Bad Ideal), Ok, so I tell them the issues occurring with my computer and that I had downloaded some codecs for my media player to see if that would get the movies to play correctly. I informed them that when I ran the internal diagnostic to test the system and hard drive that the computer froze up without completing the full test. The guy there said they will have a look at it and it should only take about twenty minutes (lets be honest waiting twenty minutes in best buy for a guy is not long enough!lol). I agree to having them look at my computer,signing the paperwork for to the $69.99 Diagnostic fee the Bleak Squad charges hoping by some form of nerd magic they are going to perform some epic test beyond my understanding that will say what wrong with my computer. You know this dude runs the same internal diagnostic that I ran at home and I am looking like you got to be kidding me right now!! I come back twenty minutes later and he explains me that their are no malicious worms or viruses on my computer that is causing the problem and that they need to keep it over night to run some stress test on it, I agree and leave the store.
I come back the next day to pick up the computer and now a different member of the Bleak Squad comes out hands me my computer and tells me that I need to purchase a new hard drive. I say ok thanks and I will buy one later. However because I was in a hurry I did not turn my computer on in the store (Not Smart on my part). Immediately when I get back to the condo I attempt to start it and of course it would not even boot up! The screen did not even come on at all! I immediately take it back to the store and give the computer back to them and politely ask what happened during your test that caused my computer to not run or even attempt to start? She tells me well your hard drive is completely bad. I explain to her that I understand that but my computer screen should still come on and at least give an error message or something, but now the screen is not working and the hard drive is not even starting. She then returns a blank stare at me, you know the stare where someone has screwed up but don't want to admit it. With no other option at the moment I purchase a new hard drive from the store for them to install (in the back of my mind I am just thinking I know its not the hard drive because that would not affect my screen). Tjhe biggest thing about replacing a hard drive is that you have to transfer all your data over and re-install all your programs, in my case all my program disk are in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center so I am really not happy about the thought of this. The woman there tells me that she found 250GB of recoverable info on my old hard drive that she can transfer over and she should be able to Ghost my programs onto the new hard drive as well, so I am happy as a pig in mud and leave the store and await the phone call letting me know my computer is ready. Yeah.....she never called me, so I call back to the store later that night and end up speaking to the original guy I dropped my computer off to, he informs me that Patricia was not able to transfer the files over because my original hard drive was unrecoverable. I inform him that I believe she may have done something wrong and asked if he could take a look at my computer. He calls back 20 minutes later to tell me that yeah she had in fact hooked the hard drive up incorrectly and the information is recoverable. I am thinking great, then he thinks something is wrong with my media card which is causing my screen not to come on but he will look at it more tomorrow because they are about to close, and that I should come by the store in the afternoon.
The next afternoon I go to the Worst Buy to speak with the Bleak Squad and guess who's there.....Miss I Hook Up Hard Drives wrong! Sooooooo now they tell me well sir your motherboard is gone bad! I am like what!!! (Fyi Cool Calm Jesse has left the building at this point!) I then ask ok well my computer was working a lot better when I brought it in to you and now its not coming on at all so you all need to find away to fix it. The lady is just looking at me like she does not know what to say, I then ask to speak with the manager so they call him up to the front of the store. The manager arrives he walks to the back and is informed of the situation he then comes out and says they can not do anything about my compute! I say really you mean to tell me that you break my computer and now you can not fix it or replace it!? At this point I ask you are the store manager correct? He replies yes I am the manager on duty, I say see, that's not what I asked you, I asked are you the Store Manager, meaning are you in Charge of the Store? He says well I am the operational manager, I say ok so what time time does the Store Manager come in because that's who I need to talk to. He informs me that the Store Manager comes in at 3:30. I tell him ok I will be back at 3:30, he then tries to give me back my computer and I say no thanks you guys can hold on to that until I get back.
While waiting three hours for the manager to come I decide to call my sister Tina for some advice a.k.a calm me down a bit before I go back over to this store. My sister tells me to just relax and be civil and explain the situation and see what he says. I am like ok I will try it but I will make no promises and I will call her when I am done. She jokingly says "Don't make me your One phone call" lol
I go back over to the store at 3:30, by now everyone at the front of the store knows the situation and I can see it in there eyes and they can see I am not happy! The people at the Bleak Squad call up the manager soon as I walk in. He goes to the back to speak with them. Now I hear my sister's voice in the back of my head and I am listening. However, when I came into the store I head my USA full winter coat on so me being who I am and knowing I had a short sleeve shirt on under it I decide to take it off so this manager could get the full grasp of who he is talking too! (Yup today I am that guy!) Now I would not really hurt this manager in anyway but if he is a little intimidated by the frustration in my voice, my physique muscle in my arms flexing as I talk to him or the glare in my eyes then hey it happens. lol
So the manager comes out and he informs me that he is aware of the situation but I take time to explain it to him again. And when I explain it to him I am in full Chicago Mode!! I am fully using all types of hand gestures, hitting my hands together on occasion to explain things I mean this conversation is epic! lol I tell him how would you feel in your brought your car to a dealer ship to have the muffler repaired then you come back and they tell you, uhm while we were working on the car your engine fell out some how but it's not our fault. I go on to tell him that all my information for college and bobsled races is on that machine your guys broke and now you expect me to just leave without my computer and an inaccessible hard drive!? I don't think so (For the record I do have all the information backed up on an external drive but they do not need to know that :-) ). The whole time I am talking the Manager is looking at my build and has that "What is this guy going to do to me look on his face" and I am loving every minute of it. He then tries to point out that I signed a wavier that says they are not responsible if something breaks while they are working on it. I then point out a section on another one of their documents that says that they will fix free of charge any problems that may occur from them working on my computer (he was a bit speechless on that one). He tells me that he understand the situation and its bad on both sides. So I say listen if you all can not fix my computer that your technicians manage to break maybe you can give me a new one. Now I know he is not going to agree do giving me a new computer but he does end up discounting an $800 Asus Computer that was better than my HP down to $400 dollars, and they transfer all my data over for me and I should come back on Friday to pick the computer up. Oh and I forgot to mention this is all happening on the week of black Friday.
Now its Wednesday and I come to pick up my computer and its not ready. The tell me that its taking longer than they thought it would to transfer all the information over, but now they will try something different to speed up the process and It should be ready by Friday. The only thing I can think of is why did you all not do the faster method in the first place. I return to the store on Friday and Yup you guessed it they are still not done. This is the point where Calm Jesse leaves again and I explain that I leave out of the country on Sunday and I need my computer ASAP! They promise me that it will be ready by 11am on Saturday. On Saturday I call in at 9:30 to check on the computer and they said it was ready for me to pick up! lol
I arrive at the store at 10 am, they boot up the new computer to show me that everything is working and that all of my data is in place. Then they hand me my old laptop back as I requested since I think someone smarter can still fix it. But when they give it back to me my power cord is nowhere to be found. I ask excuse me but where is my power cord that I gave you all? The Bleak Squad member ask me "You sure you gave it to us?" I responded yes I left it here because what on earth could I do with a power cord and no computer!? He then goes to the back comes out and says sorry we can not find it. I say well you all need to replace it because I gave it to you. At this time the Store Manager comes up to make sure everything was being taken care of, which it was not. The manager then says well there is no place for it to be in the back its a pretty clean area. I tell him that's all good and fine but the fact is that I gave you a working computer and you manage to break it causing me to purchase a new one and now you all loose a piece of equipment to that same laptop! He asked me what do I need it for anyway since my motherboard is broke, I told him because its mine and I am going to leave with everything I brought into you all! He replies "Hey we did you a favor with this computer and transferring your information over...I stopped him mid sentence a and channeled my inner Allen Iverson and Said "Favor! Favor! you did me a Favor!....how exactly by replacing a computer your technicians broke and putting my information back on my computer if anything that is professional courtesy I started to continue but I was getting so mad I had to stop. Also by this time he was marking down a new computer cord to 0 to give to me. lol
So as you can see I had a great experience with acquiring a new laptop :-)!! Well stay tuned for an update to my Calgary adventures!
P.S.
here is the link to where you can watch the bobsled races on-line http://www.universalsports.com/bobsled/index.html but it is delayed playback.
God Bless you all
Jesse
www.jessebeckom3.com
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