Kicking Back is moving to Wordpress

After much thought and agonizing, mainly along the lines of "do I really want to have a blog or not?", I have decided that I do, but not at Blogger. I no longer use this google account, and the daily chit chat about my own little world was boring me anyway, so I have decided to make some changes.

Most obvious of them is that I am moving to Wordpress. The url for Kicking Back is now http://kickerblog.wordpress.com/ so if you had links or bookmarks to this blog, make sure you change them. I seem to recall having as many as three regular readers at one point, which made me feel very special. So I'm posting this little announcement so you three will know where the blog is going to be from here on.

The new blog will look different than this one (I think it looks better), and it will have more of a consistent theme to it. Or three as it were. I like gaming and computers, and I enjoy following politics. The blog will be about those three things from now on.

And it will be on kickerblog.wordpress.com.

Speechless Moments

Customer: I installed the RAM upgrade. I know now that I should have turned off the computer first, but I didn't when I installed it. Could I have fried the memory?
Tech Support Agent: That is very possible.
Customer: I should probably mention that when I installed the memory with the computer on, I smelled something burning and now the computer won't start.

No, I imagine it won't...

At long last, the withdrawal ends

We finally have internet set up in our new house. My only internet access for nearly a week has been through work. But now, thanks to the nice Cable One installer who set up all the hardware in about 15 minutes, I am finally back online from home.

Since we moved to a new district we had to get a new wireless modem/gateway, so I need to re-set up all our wireless devices. Every single one, including the consoles. I look forward to a few hours of work on that tomorrow. For now, I have read the blogs I missed out on, but not commented on all of them. In fact, I commented on a very small number. I apologize to everyone I left uncommented. I am tired, and my brain is not quite working right, so I do not have a lot of thinking capabilities right now.

In addition to the above, the new wireless gateway means brand new setup of access rules, with in turn means my Dungeon Runners client can't get online, and that makes me sad.

There are some good news though: After several fruitless trips to the local EB Games I have finally managed to get my hands on a copy of The World Ends With You. I am really looking forward to playing that one.

June 6

Du gamla, Du fria, Du fjällhöga nord
Du tysta, Du glädjerika sköna!
Jag hälsar Dig, vänaste land uppå jord,
Din sol, Din himmel, Dina ängder gröna.

Du tronar på minnen från fornstora dar,
då ärat Ditt namn flög över jorden.
Jag vet att Du är och förblir vad Du var.
Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö, i Norden

June 6th

On this day 1523 A.D, Gustav Vasa was crowned King of Sweden by the Stockholm nobility who preferred being ruled by one of their own rather than by a Danish king. Gustav Vasa later proclaimed that Sweden would follow the Protestant reformation, he took control over a few key factors in ruling a kingdom--primarily the army and the money, and he is generally considered to be the king that founded the Swedish nation.

On the very same day 351 years later, June 6 of 1974, the Swedish king legally and officially lost his last remnants of power, as the country became a constitutional monarchy with parliamentarism written into the constitution.

And the Democratic Nominee is...

...Barack Obama.

This really should not surprise anyone who has followed the news coverage of the US election. As an open Obama supporter I am, of course, very happy about this outcome.

I moved here in august of 2004, at the height of the Bush-Cheney abuse of power and executive privilege. I moved from what is widely hailed as the most liberal nation in Europe, Sweden, to the most religion-abusive, devisive, and narrow-minded presidency that the US has seen in my life-time. And I didn't care.

I have good friends here. My college degree is valid here, my career is here and my life is here. Opportunities I thought I would never have where here, and I was able to grasp them and make something of them, and of myself. Most importantly of all, my husband is here. Which means that everything that matters to me is in this country now, and this is where my home is.

The speech embedded below is the one that Barack Obama gave in Iowa, on January 3rd, when he had won the first Democratic primary of this election season. I've chosen to post that speech, rather than the one from Minneapolis tonight, for one simple reason: Despite all of the things I listed above, I could never understand how anyone could love a country like the US that I moved to. Like it? Of course. Respect it? Definitely. Fear it? Goes without saying. But love it? The nation that re-elected George W Bush and Dick Cheney?

When I heard this speech from Iowa, on the night of January 3rd, it was the first time since long before that August of 2004, that I fully understood how anyone actually could love this country.

Barack Obama talks about America in a way that makes it worth loving, hoping for, and fighting for. He seems to honestly believe that this is a good nation, of genuinely good men and women who can and will do what is right, no matter the cost to themselves, if they are only given the chance to do it. When Barack Obama talks about America, he makes it sound like it deserves the hope and faith he puts in it. And suddenly my new home country is one that I can love and be proud of.



"We always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it."

Time for a YouTube again

Because it impressed me.

Hermaphrodites only?

I have finally caved in. I bought a package of Midol.

For my non-US readers, this Midol contains 500 mg of acetaminophen, 60 mg of caffeine, and 15 mg of the diuretic pyrilamine maleate. It advertises itself as "Menstrual Complete: maximum strength relief of cramps, bloating, fatigue, backache, headache".

For the record, it works. It was well worth walking up to the shelf in the store, search frantically for 15 minutes, and finally decide to buy the only product I could find that had both lots of painkillers and caffeine that could help my body absorb said wonderful drugs. (And no, I don't care how stereotypical this makes me. The pain stopped. Nothing else matters.)

Ever careful, remembering my mother's constant warnings to treat over-the-counter drugs with as much caution and respect as prescription medications, I turned the package over to read the warnings on the back before making my decision. Among the warnings I found this:

Ask a doctor before use if you have

• glaucoma
• a breathing problem such as emphysema or chronic bronchitis
• difficulty in urination due to enlargement of the prostate gland

Now, please correct my if I am wrong, dear family and friends who work in the medical profession and know this better than I do, but isn't it extremely unusual for a person to have both a menstrual cycle and a prostate gland...?

In the Land of Midgets and Pygmies

We went out to a nice restaurant last night, to celebrate the new house. We invited Froli’s parents, since they were the ones who found the house and helped us to get everything set up so we can buy it. A nice dinner seemed like the least we can do. The restaurant in question has a dress code, so we did our best to accommodate. I dressed in a skirt, nice top, boots, and a dress jacket. My outfit created a problem.

After a very good meal and wine (snow-crab stuffed rainbow trout and a glass of sauvignon blanc), I excused myself and headed out to the ladies room. The counter by the sinks was lower than my hips. I am 5′7″, and in the boots I was wearing I became a bit taller, but a bathroom sink below hip level? Come on!

To make matters worse, the sink was position so I had my back towards the door into the ladies’ room. My options, in other words, was to squat very low, in an uncomfortable and highly undignified way, or to bend forward and moon whoever happened to walk in.

This is one of my biggest gripes with this town. Don’t they know that not all women are midgets?

Big News

Today we bought our first house together. The picture doesn't quite do it justice. For anyone who is interested, and has time on their hands, there are more photos of the house in the album on Froli's blog.

Brief blog host musings in the morning

I am more and more tempted to move to Wordpress every day now. What stops me is mainly that is seems like such a big project, and I already have a lot of them in my life. I don't need another one, and I suspect that if I do pick up another one, I will have to drop one of the existing ones first. That would not be good.

I am trying to resist the temptation to at least check out Wordpress by creating an account for myself there and play around with the many features. It's hard though. It just seems so... shiny.

The Ultimate Showdown

Get a job? I have a job!

PC Gamer, my favorite gaming magazine for several reasons, featured a column about Fable 2 in its latest issue. It was written by staffer Yahtzee Croshaw, after attending the Fable 2 presentation by none other than Peter Molyneux himself on GDC, and the column made me choke on my afternoon coffee, cough and then blink, and then finally think to myself, "what is wrong with that guy?"

Then I decided to research the matter. I went to Gamespot's coverage of the Fable 2 presentation on GDC. I looked at IGN, I went to the official Fable 2 website, but none of it convinced me to change my initial thought: From a fantasy gaming perspective, there is something wrong with Peter Molyneux's vision.

The first thing that is wrong is that the man scoffs at mini maps. If you tried playing Overlord on the 360, you know why scoffing at them is just wrong. Because without the mini map there is no way of knowing where we are, where everything else is, and where to go in a game. Apparently the reason the mini map is not there is to encourage players to explore, with the help of the marvellous dog that an entire 20-minute video was dedicated to. The video was submitted to Xbox live, in an effort to make other players as excited about The Vision as Peter Molyneux is.

But as far as I am concerned, he has lost me, my enthusiasm, and the time I would have spent playing the game, and here is why: He has told me I will not be able to earn an in-game living on adventuring.

According to PC Gamer's column, and supported by everything else I find, it is not possible to earn a living simply by adventuring. Especially not if you marry someone and start a family, because now your income needs to support them as well. As an extra bonus, by the way, if you play as a female, the extra weight, loss of agility, and over-all vulnerability of being pregnant will be a very noticeable factor in game-play.

It appears that I am going to need a job to finance my death-defying adventuring life-style. According to Croshaw's column, Peter Molyneux spoke proudly, "with breathless enthusiasm", about the many extra features of game, and all the things that you can buy in the game... houses, furniture, villages, or dungeons. Monsters are not going to drop gold at all, instead you need to find gold elsewhere, either by hiring out as a henchman to another hero, by using the multi-player co-op function of the game, or by playing the Xbox LIVE Arcade mini-games, that will allow you to start amassing in-game cash for purchasing armor and weapons, long before Fable 2 hits retail shelves.

I refuse to believe that I am alone in asking Mr Molyneux, in stunned disbelief: What the hell are you trying to do? If you are aiming for realism you are so far off it is not even close to making sense.

Conan never settled down with a family, whom he then had to provide for, neither did Elric, Red Sonja, or the Grey Mouser and his far less mousy friend. Geralt of Rivia spoke for all of them when he stated that his high-risk profession, with extensive traveling, was not conducive to marriage, and if you want realism, shouldn't you factor that in? In fact, if you want to be realistic, shouldn't you take into account that none of the above mentioned adventurers want to settle down and start a family? They're all adrenaline junkies, commitment-phobic, not to mention that they are constantly broke. The reason they are broke all the time is because an adventurer has no retirement to save up for. Slaying dragons is a risky business, not to mention that all the loot inevitably is used up too repair or replace the armor and weapons that were damaged while slaying said reptile. Whatever is left over is used up on babes and booze (and if you are Conan, a second babe the same night, for good measure), and that is why adventurers go back out on adventures, and why they take on mercenary contracts. They have nothing to save for, and no one to share with, and nothing to anchor them to any particular place, and that is the appeal and romance of sword & sorcery fantasy literature and games.

But apparently in this game, I will have to take a second job to be able to go adventuring once in a while. I will not have a mini map to help that adventuring, and as an extra realism-bonus I will have to put up with an unhappy spouse who complains that I am never home.

Once again Peter, what the hell are you trying to do here? Didn't Black & White 2 make it clear that however pretty your vision might be in your head, the rest of the world doesn't want to spend money on it?

This is supposed to be a fable! A fairy tale! Give me a high-fantasy world, with high-fantasy realism. If I wanted to raise and feed an ungrateful family, I'd be playing The Sims.

The Cardiac Card Game

In an effort to avoid spending copious amounts on expensive workout equipment, I have started to use a deck of cards. It creates variety, while taking away all the effort and thinking that planning a consistent but varied workout would normally require. It's very simple.

This is how you play:

Every suite represents a muscle group or exercise. Diamonds are your abs, obliques and lower back. Spades are pectorals and shoulders, clubs are the legs, and if you draw a heart, you'll be doing cardio. Pick an exercise you like and stick with it. For diamonds, I do a yoga plank pose for as many seconds as the card value. A king is 13 seconds, and an ace is 14. (To avoid cheating I have my watch count seconds for me.) Spades are push-ups, clubs are lounges, and on hearts I do jumping jacks, mainly because they're easy to do in a small space. At least if you're not standing too close to the wall.

To get started, do the following:

1. Take a deck of cards and shuffle it, very thoroughly.
2. Make sure you've changed out of those tight work slacks and that dry-clean only shirt into sweats or jammies.
3. Make sure you are not wearing high-heeled shoes or heavy and dangly earrings. This cannot be stressed enough.
4. Flip a card, and start the workout.

The card is a nine of hearts, so you'll do nine jumping jacks. Next card is the Jack of spades, so now you'll do eleven push-ups. Next card is the five of spades, so now you get to do five more push-ups. After that you get the seven of diamonds, so now you'll hold the plank pose for seven seconds. Or do seven crunches, if you prefer.

Important side note: You cannot train and build your abs, without also building the corresponding back muscles. Well, you can, but it will lead to very strong abs and back muscles that are too weak to balance it, your torso will be unable to stand up straight and instead be pulled crooked whenever you try to stand up straight, and excruciating back pain and injury will follow. Build your back and side muscles.

Back to the card game. The two most important rules are to keep going, and to never ever skip a card. It's a cardio workout, and if you pause to catch your breath your heart rate won't stay up where it needs to be for the exercise to actually benefit you, and then all you did was waste 20 minutes and get sweaty for nothing.

The only time you are allowed to skip a card is if you draw two face cards of the same suite right after each other. However, if you get the eight, five, nine, and four of spades in a row, you unfortunately have to suck it up and suffer through it. That, by the way, is why I suggested shuffling the deck thoroughly.

Having a water bottle handy is also recommended.

All pain, some gain?

Last night I crawled home from my first workout class in nearly ten years. If I had stopped to think, spinning would not have been my first choice. Yet it was at a good time, and there was a bike available, so I joined.

Did I mention I haven't taken an actual workout class in nearly ten years and that I have not done anything at all as far at workouts go, in nearly as many months?

After ten minutes I could taste blood, after twenty I thought I was going to die, and after twenty-five I wished I was. And after thirty minutes I realized that I wasn't dead yet, and that although my legs were burning, my stomach was on it's way up into my mouth, and every breath hurt, my legs were still moving, it was still possible to keep going. So I did. For the full hour.

We ended the class by sprinting to Freebird. Well, I'll be honest, the others did. I plodded slowly on my bike, grateful that it was finally coming to an end. But I kept moving the entire class, and I am very proud of myself.

Sweet mother of mercy, I hurt. Thank god for endorphins!

There's another new spinning class again Thursday, and I'll probably go, because this was fun. I'm hoping they'll play Freebird again.

Through the Gold(en) Gate

I have now explored a Gold's Gym. Froli has been saying for a while that since it has such a convenient location it is well worth looking at as an option for that gym membership he promised me for my birthday. So last night, after dinner and recovery from a long and frustrating workday, we went to check it out.

Froli, his usual charming self, nodded a greeting to the young woman behind the counter, strolled over to the cardio section, and found an elliptical whose TV was showing a college basketball game. I left him there, and begun scouting out the premises.

First impression was that it is an intimidating place. It is filled with fit and focused young men, lifting heavy weights in complete silence.

But it looked remarkably clean and there were HDTVs everywhere. And aside from the music,kept at a more than tolerable level it was also remarkably quiet. So far, so good.

After a few moments of strolling around and looking at things, I noticed something odd. No one was paying attention to me. The young weight-lifting men were acknowledging me just enough to avoid bumping into me if they had to walk past me, but other than that, no one was talking to anyone else. Everyone was concentrating on what they were doing, and there was no trace of distracting children either, for that matter.

All of a sudden that intense focus wasn't so intimidating anymore, it was fascinating. All these people, so singularly focused on their workout. (It has of course occurred to me that maybe I was just lucky enough to walk in just as all the die-hard freaks were there ;-) )

I went back to the front desk, grabbed a class schedule, and asked what their membership fees were. The girl behind the counter said I had to talk to one of the consultants about that, offered to get one for me if I had a seat. So I had a seat and waited, and soon enough a Gold's Gym Fitness Consultant came over and introduced himself.

And thus the sales pitch begun.

I suppose it is an inevitable part of the gym industry, especially a franchise as large as Gold's, but I reserve the right to dislike it as well. He was good at selling his gym, I'll give him that, and he gave me The Tour, showing off all the equipment, most of it new, in very good condition, and as clean as everything else in there. I liked that part, having to wipe off someone else's sweat from the elliptical is an unpleasant thought to me.

He also showed me the room for spinning classes, the basketball court, and of course the pool, and waited outside while I checked out the locker room and showers. (Very nice showers! A+ for how clean they were.) Froli finished his workout and came and joined us between cardio equipment and spinning room, so he got the last half of the tour as well.

We then sat back down to look at pricing, which supposedly is based on what you want to get out of your membership. At this point, I sat back and let Froli carry the conversation, since he is a lot better at negotiating anything than I am. He got us a reasonably good deal, and we then spent the next 15-20 minutes filling out papers.

Yes, I now have a Gold's Gym membership, and Froli has one as well. We'll go there together and work out, and I will check out the pool. It's a non-chlorine pool! I have extremely dry skin and eczema, words cannot express how excited I was to hear that there is saline in their pool, and not chlorine! I love pools. I love water workouts. I can't be in pools because the chlorine turns me into a scaly red freak that itches as if I had been rolling in asbestos.

This pool doesn't have chlorine. I love Froli for discovering that last week, and dragging me to Gold's Gym so he could surprise me with that. I'm now going to get up early on Saturday so I can be there for the 8:30 AM water aerobics class.

The Nerd Test

Click on the picture to take the test.

A moment of silence, please...

The great wizard has passed away.

Rest in peace, Gary. Thank you for starting it all.

This is just my type of humor...

Yes, it's a guy. Admit at least that he does it well. The song is originally by Deirdre Flint, who is a very clever and funny woman.

New Toy!

For Christmas, I got a wonderful and very thoughtful gift: a portable iPod speaker dock. It was a great idea. I hook up my iPod to the dock, and now I have a portable radio/stereo that can play all my music for me anywhere in the house. I love music, so it really was a great idea, and I do appreciate the thought behind it. Even though my Creative Zen Touch didn't fit in the dock.

Fortunately the givers of the gift did not take offense when I revealed that, but instead told me they purchased the dock at Best Buy, who is notoriously generous with gift exchanges right after Christmas. They even gave me the receipt, to make the exchange easier.

I took the dock and gift receipt back to Best Buy and exchanged them for a gift card, while I browsed their website for cool gadgets and toys. A couple of days ago, they finally received a shipment of the ultimate toy, that I have craved for almost a year now:




I bought one game with it, for now, and I have ordered a screen protector online, since the stylus might hurt it if I play too hard. Now all I need to do is drop broad hints that cool accessories or a DS Top Toy would make for a great birthday gift next week, and I'll be all set.

The Mandatory “If You Don't Give Me a Diamond You Don't Love Me”-Day Blog

(Disclaimer and fair warning: This is a pretty drastic departure from my usual blogs. This is an open and kind of personal letter, and if you don't like reading very emotional and sappy stuff, you probably shouldn't read this. There. You have been warned.)

Lover,

You know I have never liked the whole Valentine's Day hype. All the commercials hint broadly that men who don't spend a fortune on small but very sparkling jewelry are cheapskates who are not fully committed to their wives, and the implied assumption that any wife offered a tiny sparkling rock in white gold will immediately reward the giver with enthusiastic sex, is even more insulting. The entire commercial circus surrounding Valentine's day just makes me tired. I don't like the idea of having to have a special day just to show some appreciation and affection for the love in your life.

But there is also something to be said for taking a day to step back, and look closer at our relationship, and focus on what it is we have that is so special, and what makes it worth all the negative things that are inevitable when you live as close to a person as a married couple is supposed to be. It irritates me that Hallmark and the discount mall jewelers are taking over a day that was supposed to be about why we are together, and are turning it into a commercial glitz and schmaltz fest of tasteless necklaces and pink cards with lace on the front. Lace...! Lace should never be allowed to be on anything but women's underwear.

So I thought I'd try to take the special day back, by ignoring the lace cards and the mass-produced jewelry, and put the focus back where it belongs: Us. After all, who needs diamonds when I have you?

The only diamond I own has yet to try and cheer me up after a long day of work, when I am exhausted and unhappy, and doubting myself for any bad reason. Not to mention that it doesn't rub my shoulders when they ache, and it certainly doesn't make dinner for me. There is something very soothing and de-stressing about coming home to the smell of cooking and a warm hug.

But I'm getting side-tracked. I was going to tell you why I'm so happy we're together, and are going to do everything in our power to stay together for the rest of our natural lives. And when our lives become super-natural we will be super-together! (And that was the obligatory Hallmark moment... now on with the letter.)

I have decided that I am just going to thank you instead, for some of those good things that we are supposed to focus on. Forgive me for forgetting some of them, because I know I probably will.

Thank you for always being on my side. Thank you for practically forcing me back to college. Thank you for believing in me and encouraging me, and pushing me to try harder, no matter how much I object. Thank you for giving me my confidence back, and for being there for me when it failed.

Thank you for taking the edge off the self-destructive side of my cynicism. Thank you for seeing that all it was, was idealism that had been disappointed far too often, and for bringing some of the faith back. Thank you for being patient with me while I searched for a purpose, and finally found it again.

Thank you for listening when I need someone to talk to, and for actually hearing me. Thank you for trying so hard to cheer me up when I am unhappy, and for succeeding surprisingly often.

Thank you for the laughs, and even for tickling me.

Thank you for not telling anyone what a hopeless romantic I am, and for pretending that you hadn't noticed. Thank you for understanding that what is romantic is a very personal thing, and that the commercials have no idea what I like and what would make me happy.

Thank you for buying me a big water bottle and for the mp3-player. Thank you for unexpected back rubs and for bringing me coffee in the morning when I least expected it.

Will you be my Valentine?

/Me

Impossible Is Nothing

This is the second highest number of points scored by an individual player in the history of the NBA. It is the highest ever seen on TV.

This scoring spree is a great example of why I admire professional athletes and martial artists. They are living proof that if you just want something badly enough, you actually can do it.

I Saw History This Weekend

I was lucky enough that I got a ticket to the main floor, just below the stage, and had a very good view of the Senator as he gave his speech. I was close enough that if I had been idiot enough to lob the camera over the crowd, I could easily have hit him with it. Since I'm not an idiot, I instead focussed on taking pictures. I managed to get several fairly good ones, before my camera ran out of battery, and at that point I settled for listening. It was well worth getting up at 6 AM on a Saturday, to see this.

I think what I saw early on Saturday morning, was the next president of the United States.

Best. Product. Name. EVER.

"We reject the idea, which other companies have advertised for years, that toilet paper is only soft if the roll feels squishy in your hand. The truth is it doesn't matter a bit how soft the roll feels, since it's not the roll you will be wiping with!"

Is this not marketing genius?

Darth Kitty

This is one of the more frightening things I have ever seen. Perhaps not the costume itself, but can you imagine the thought processes that led up this idea...?

Question of the Day

Confused Customer: "What does an 8-digit number look like?"

Idiotic, obtuse, and the rest of the thesaurus...

Sometimes, there are no word for how strangely surprising a situation is. I will do my best to describe this one anyway. It has been quite a while since the events below took place, and I have now mulled over them long enough that I think I want to share them.

It didn't happen to me. I heard the story from the co-worker that experienced it, and I am now passing this one to you. It begins thus:

Where I work we do not earn commission. My individual bonus is determined partly by how well the company as a whole does, but the vast majority of it is based on whether I, as an employee of the company, in my role as Customer Service Representative, do a good job. If you, the customer, feel that I have answered your questions, solved your problem, and contributed to a pleasant experience when you called our customer service, and if I have done it swiftly enough that the wait time in the phone queue is kept to a minimum, without making the call seem rushed in any way, then I will receive a bonus. If I fail in any of the above, then I won't. Therefore, though we are encouraged to promote sales whenever we can, that is not actually the point of what we do, which in turn is what lead to the strangely surprising situation that I am now finally about to tell you.

A certain gentleman, let's call him Mr X, contacts our customer service and wants us to help him determine exactly what kind of memory he needs for his computer. He spoke to one of my co-workers, S, who has been with the company long enough to know our products very well and who therefore is able to be very helpful. He gives Mr X all the information he needs, Mr X thanks him and ends the call to go shop around and see where he can get the best possible deal on his new memory. He finds that deal in a surprising place: A local computer store.

The story is a bit unclear at this point, as we have only Mr X's word on what was happening. Mr X claims that he relayed all the information S gave him to the sales person, including the memory serial number, and that he therefore made his purchase on S's indirect recommendation. That is important, since that means that S, and by extension the company S and I work for, are responsible for why Mr X bought the memory module he did. At least Mr X believes so.

When Mr X came home he proceeded to open his laptop to install the new memory, and that was when he discovered that a regular DIMM that he had purchased, designed for a desktop computer, is far too long for the slot in a laptop. As a matter of fact, it is about twice the length of the memory slot in the laptop. So here Mr X is, with his laptop that he wants to upgrade, and with a memory module that is far too long for the slot in the laptop. But that is a small problem for a mechanically inclined man who owns a dremel, right?

Yes, he did.

He really did.

He cut the DIMM in half, and trimmed it until it would fit in the laptop's memory slot.

I need to mention something important here. A memory module has two main parts to it: the black components, a.k.a the chips, and the multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB). Vastly over-simplified, a PCB is made from lots of thin layers of a non-conductive material, and then there's a conductive layer, usually copper. The circuits are etched into the board, by removing the copper from where there is no need for electricity to go. A multi-layer PCB consists of several very thin separately etched PCBs bonded together. So there are several layers of electronic circuits in the little green "plastic" board the chips are attached to. If you cut through a multi-layer PCB, the cutting will rearrange the circuitry and make the electricity go in directions it was not supposed to, at times when it was not supposed to.

And that is why, when the dremel modified memory module was installed, it short-circuited so badly that it caught fire.

Mr X was quite unhappy with this turn of events, salvaged the parts of the memory module from the mess of charred and melted plastic that used to be an expensive laptop, and then he returned to the computer store to demand a refund, since the memory destroyed his laptop. The store manager informed Mr X that warranty claims are handled by the product manufacturer, and referred him to us.

Mr X contacts our customer service department, the returns division, and finds himself speaking with H. Now, H has been at this job for a couple of years as well, and has enough credibility and credit with management that he gets away with a lot. H informed Mr X that when the part is purchased from one of our resellers we do not guarantee that it will be compatible, and furthermore, if a part is modified in any way it is no longer under warranty. Mr X responded that the part was not modified, it was destroyed by fire, and therefore still under warranty.

No one in the entire customer service department can ever remember seeing H speechless before. However, he recovered swiftly, repeated that the module was no longer under warranty, and the call ended soon thereafter.

Mr X called back, requested a manger, and repeated his demands. The manager repeated H's answer, that the memory has been modified with the help of a dremel and therefore no longer has a warranty. Mr X replies that since nothing in the product documentation states that the memory should not be modified with a dremel, we are obligated to honour the warranty. The manager explains that there is a flaw in Mr X's logic, and that no reimbursement whatsoever will be given for the melted laptop.

Mr X has now filed a case with the Better Business Bureau, stating all of the above, demanding restitution.

I am at a loss for words.