area 51

No, not the secret Air Force base in Nevada that everyone knows about. This is the model name of the computer I bought 6+ years ago. The motherboard died towards the end of April, leaving me without my workhorse. I have a laptop but it's horribly under-powered for what I do. I do have plans to get an über laptop but there's no sense in it since I won't be leaving until next year. The same goes double for my defunct PC. The next best thing was to replace the motherboard since I only need it for another year. Easy! Well, that's what I thought at the time and never expected what was to come next.

After shopping around I managed to find the exact same motherboard for $40 (including shipping) on an Amazon storefront. I ordered it on the 5-8 day shipping cycle and it arrived with a day to spare. I cracked it open only to be sorely disappointed because it clearly was used. I emailed him requesting that it be replaced with a new one or I wanted a refund. I even included my phone number so he could call me to work it out. The reply he sent was a poorly worded manic bluster where he threatened to sue me for libel and slander. This was hysterical to say the least. I contacted Amazon about it and they instructed me to open a case and also report him to their fraud department. I did both. Over the following week I received a barrage of more blustering emails from him. The thng that worked in my favor was that all emails are routed through Amazon. You get to avoid the he said/she said bullshit because neither party shares email address' directly with each other and they have a copy of every communication. In the end Amazon sided with and granted me a full refund. I had plans to ship it back (at my own cost) until a good samaritan phoned and informed me of what he did next. The clown had setup a blog raging about how both I, Amazon, and some other customer he pissed off had swindled him. Normally I wouldn't care but this jack ass posted my home address and phone number in it and all but asked people to either pay me a visit or mail me something. I contacted Amazon via phone and quickly got this escalated to their legal department to deal with. I also contacted the blog provider and got them to remove his blog for a TOS violation. Both parties dealt with him swiftly and got all my personal info removed from the public eye. Oddly enough, like Area 51 itself the (tin foil hat wearing) seller is based in Nevada as well. 

Skip ahead a month, I finally got over my gun shyness and bought another motherboard. It costed me about $60 with shipping but was worth it after what I just went through. A coworker swapped the motherboards for me on Friday. I got it home around 7pm and after a few setbacks had it in full running order. I didn't realize how much time had passed until I looked at the time and realized it was 5am. Needless to say the following morning was a late one for me. I pretty much geeked out the entire weekend on it but not before finishing the last Stargate SG1 episode that night. 

Nobody puts baby in a corner!

It feels damned good to put all of this behind me!