And Another...

This week's been pretty laid back. On Monday we had FHE at Dan's and Ryan's and Trevor's. They're moving really soon, so we thought we'd have one more party there. We ended up eating burgers, playing Trivial Pursuit (which Sharolyn and I lost because everybody else kept cheating) and watching "Holes" at the same time. Holes was pretty good actually. I thought it would be lame and kind of cheesy, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Tuesday was pretty typical. Wednesday, just after I mailed my deposit check to Georgetown, I got a call from Dean Hernandez at BYU, wondering if I'd made up my mind yet. I told him I was pretty much resolved on Georgetown, and he said a few things to try to change my mind. Like he upped my scholarship offer to ½ tuition. And he pointed out that when I get done with BYU I will have the freedom to practice any type of law I want, whereas after Georgetown I'll probably be way in debt. I thanked him for his time, still pretty sure I'd go to Georgetown, but then I started to think about it. By Friday I decided that maybe BYU wouldn't be so bad after all—and besides it would be pretty easy to transfer after the first year if I decided I needed to (apparently the first year of law school is pretty transferable anywhere, as long as you're in the top 10% of your class). Hey, you could even look at it as I'm going to Georgetown, but doing my first year with BYU to save $30K in tuition. Plus it'd be nice to have some flexibility. So I emailed Dean Hernandez and asked if it would be alright for me to submit deposits to both BYU and Georgetown and then decide later. I figure I can decide as late as August for BYU, and Georgetown I have until June before I have to submit additional deposits. So I'm out $250 for the luxury of having more flexibility for a month or two. I think it's worth it.

Also, on Wednesday my laptop screen started wigging out. Well, actually it had started a little earlier, but by Thursday it became obvious that it was more than just a simple glitch that could work itself out. It seems like one of the wires is loose, so unless you position the screen just right, it turns all white. I tried to fix it myself, but I couldn't figure out how to get the screen apart without making it obvious that I had tried to get the screen apart and thus voiding my warranty. That's when I called Dell tech support. First of all, I tried to upgrade my warranty to on-site, but they wouldn't let me because I accidentally told them I had a problem before I tried to upgrade the warranty. They said I could upgrade after they fixed the problem, but for now I'd have to work under my return-to-depot warranty. Which sounds just stupid to me, because right now I'm willing to pay a premium to not have to send my computer to Dell, but after they fix the problem there really is no reason to worry about it. Anyway, after a little while of talking to them, I found a guy who I could convince I was smart enough to be able to replace the LCD assembly myself, so he overnighted the assembly. Thursday, I traded out the assembly, only it wouldn't work at all—the BIOS wouldn't even detected it. It seems to be the same part number, but it just isn't being recognized. After spending another few hours talking with Dell (I finally got to talk with a pretty reasonable guy—he was from Texas and gave me his direct phone extension so I wouldn't have to work the system anymore), they agreed to send another assembly. Friday, I got the second assembly (isn't it great that Dell overnight's things?) and it still wouldn't work. So I called up the guy from yesterday, left a message on my machine, and an hour later he called me back—not instantaneous, but better than waiting on hold and transferring forever. He had me take apart the assemblies and try interchanging pieces to see if between the 3 parts I could get one working one. I thought that was pretty cool—that's the kind of support I like. But alas, I stripped a screw and couldn't get my old assembly open. Sigh. So now I have to mail my whole laptop to Dell. He said I'll probably be without it for a week at most. So they'll send the mailer to me and it'll be here by Monday. So the lesson of this story? On-site support is probably worth it when it comes to laptops. I really didn't use it with my Inspiron 8000, except for in the end when I bled my warranty dry for new parts so the system would seem all shiny and new for Becky. But even then, Return-to-depot would have been fine. But for my current system, it really would have come in handy. I think the odds are against it coming in handy again, though.

Today a bunch of people in the ward were going over to Sharolyn's to use power tools to dig up the concrete in her backyard. Apparently, there used to be a parking lot back there, but whoever bought the house ten years ago or so just dumped six inches of dirt on it and tried to grow grass over it. Sharolyn discovered this as she tried to put in a sprinkler system a few weeks ago—they were hoping a sprinkler system would help them grow something besides weeds. But it looks like they now have a clearer picture of why nothing would grow back there. Sharolyn was pretty ticked off and wondering if she could sue someone for not telling her. Anyway, she rented a lot of heavy equipment and of course all the guys in the ward wanted to come over and help her use the equipment, but sadly I couldn't go. I had to play ultimate—I know, it's sad :). Actually, had it been anything other than a tournament, I wouldn't have gone, but today was the Daweena tournament, up ways of Ogden. We left around 9 or so (had a first round bye), and I met Neal and Kenny at the fields, but no one else met us for the carpool. After a bunch of calling, we finally got Vance to come—he'd had a late night and was sure everyone else had left already. We had both guys and girls teams going. Our team wasn't all that good; we're already missing a few people for the summer (Zach) and we couldn't get any of the non-BYU guys to go like Brady or Clint. But there were a lot of people that met us up there, and I still thought we had a decent team. Apparently, nobody at the tournament thought we had a decent team, though. We were seeded last in our pool. Our first game started out pretty well (I had a beautiful half-field inside-out to Neal that he dropped in the endzone for the first play of the game). Then we lost it. It wasn't a blow-out, but it wasn't really close either. We should have won, though. We just had a bad streak where they scored a lot in a row, and after that we kept with them. The second game was a little better—we were kind of ugly, but we pulled out a decent win. They were the fourth seed, so that wasn't too surprising. The next game was horrible. We played against Johnny Bravo, who apparently consistently place high in the nation. We actually scored the first point, and I remember thinking "that was too easy." Well, it was. They only had a couple of subs, but they barely broke a sweat, cremating us in the long run. I think our biggest problem was just a ton of drops and bad passes. It could have been a lot tighter had we not kept dropping the disc all over the place. I think everyone just freaked out. I was having a pretty decent game myself, and I wanted to scream to everyone to just give me the disc, but oh well. The team we played next was actually watching us this game and consequently thought we were a pretty bad team. So when our last game came up, they were quite shocked to watch us jump out to a pretty secure lead. They were cussing all over the place and accusing us of sandbagging (well, we're not the ones who assigned ourselves the seed). Anyways, I think we sort of lightened up and it was close in the long run. But we won. It was a pretty fun game. I thought I did pretty well throughout the day, though my defense sucked and I wasn't getting the disc as much as I would have liked. On the other hand, this was the first tournament in a long time that I participated fully in where I didn't collapse at the end due to charley horses or some sort of injury. The girls meanwhile lost every game, which is disappointing, but they say they still had fun. Afterwards, a bunch of the girls and Vance and Kenny and I (Neal went back with Don because he needed to get on the road to Philmont for the summer immediately—he had just arrived in Provo last night and had his backpack with everything he was going to live with for the summer in my trunk) went to go get Pizza at the Pie in Ogden (I've been to the one in Salt lake, but I had no idea they had franchises elsewhere). That was some good pizza. We got two large ones for about 11 people, and we still had plenty to spare. Man that felt good in my stomach after such a long day on the Frisbee field. After that I came home, showered, and just sort of collapsed for the rest of the night.

Posted May 01, 2004 (11:33 PM) | Comments (1)