January 5th, 2011
It took me approximately 9 months to get my laptop fixed. Overheating at the drop of a hat, I would prop a box fan off to the side of my laptop when I intended to watch a movie or open more than a couple of applications at once. I risked burning my fingertips on the keyboard night after endless night.
I had originally called to have the laptop fixed in August, but a series of missed phonecalls (and no voice messages) over the Labor Day weekend, when I was trapped in signal-less NH, had squashed any hope of getting a technician out. It took me another 4 months before I built up the courage to call Dell technical support and navigate the endless transfers and dropped calls.
January 5th was the afternoon that my fan finally was replaced. A middle-aged Columbian technician named Luis came to my office at work for on-site service. He discussed how he was an acupuncturist back home, but when he made the move to Boston, he could no longer practice since they require a masters degree and state certification. Thus for the last two years, since a masters degree was financially unattainable as an recent immigrant, he had been working as a hardware technician.
His visit was incredibly pleasant and uplifting. He encouraged me to pursue my own dreams and walked me through each step of the fan replacement - teaching me how to fix it myself in the future. In the end, he left the super-dusty, clogged up old fan for me as opposed to throwing it away. So I snapped a photo to remember his visit!
