On June 19, I bought a pink Samsung NC10 in the States. The unit had a manufacturer's sticker stating that it came with a 1 year international warranty. This is a big deal to me since I'm not usually in the States. If the unit hadn't come with the international warranty, I would not have bought it. (I would have bought a Toshiba netbook since Toshiba has a worldwide warranty, and I've used its service before.)

On October 6, the unit booted, but had a problem with the monitor. It'd sometimes go blank white during boot-up, so that I couldn't see the BIOS or Samsung logo. (This is a very bright white screen, not just going blank.) Also when I adjusted the angle of the monitor, the blank white screen would flicker. At some angles, the monitor remained completely white.

I researched the matter by googling and going to a couple of netbook forums, including sammynetbook.com, and saw that there were many other Samsung NC10 users with similar monitor issues. I decided that it was probably a hardware problem.

So on October 7 at 12:41 p.m. I called Samsung in America. I spoke with two different agents. We've checked VGA driver and firmware. I have the latest version, so we ruled out updated driver/firmware problem. The agent thought it was a hardware issue. He gave me a claim number, but told me that I cannot get my unit fixed until I returned to the States as the warranty is only good in the States.

I explained my situation (the manufacturer sticker promising international warranty, etc.), but the agent said he couldn't help me. He transferred me to another division. The new agent told me I needed to send her a picture of the sticker as a proof. I emailed one to her.

On October 8 at 9:20 a.m. Eastern Time, I called Samsung again as I hadn't heard any status update and I wanted to make sure the picture was delivered. I managed to get the same agent, who told me she'd received my picture and was able to see that the sticker indeed said 1 Year International Warranty. She told me she'd talk with her supervisor and let me know. I never heard back.

On October 9, I sent an email to the agent requesting a status update. She didn't respond.

On October 12 at 10:44 a.m. @SamsungService contacted me. I sent him a detailed email explaining the situation. He responded that NC10 comes with an international warranty and that I should contact Samsung Japan.

So on October 13 (now all date & time in JP), Hero Material called Samsung Japan for me since they do not speak English. They told him to call another number. The new number is for Samsung International Warranty Japan, and I called since they have three language options: English, Korean and Japanese. I chose English, and the service center automated menu said they were too busy to take my call. So I left my number as instructed. No call back. I was very very unhappy — ready to start #SamsungFail on Twitter because I was that upset. (It would've been satisfying, but I'd still be without a working netbook.)

Today I called again. I tried both the Korean and English lines, but they were all busy, so I left my number with both. An hour later, a Korean rep from Samsung HQ called. He was very pleasant, very professional and apologetic. He explained that their system can accept up to twelve digits for phone numbers. Mine is thirteen. So he was missing the last digit. So he tried to fill it in from 0 to 9. Unfortunately the last digit of my phone number is…yes, you guessed it: NINE.

He asked me what was wrong. I told him about the problems, and he said it was probably a defective cable. He said Samsung doesn't have a repair center in Japan, but they'll fix it at the Samsung Repair Center in Korea. He assured me that Samsung will arrange for pickup and delivery and that I don't need to pay for anything. Furthermore, he told me I don't even need to pack it myself. He said FedEx will take care of everything once I hand over my netbook. After taking my address and contact info, he said FedEx will call within two days.

Two hours later, FedEx Japan called to schedule pickup. I asked them to come after lunch, and they said they'll be pick my NC10 up between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m.

W00t!

Lesson learned: Bypass American call centers as much as possible if I need a defective unit serviced while overseas.

Things Samsung can improve on:

• Making sure that their American service reps know what kind of warranties their products have.
• Ensuring that their reps respond to customer requests on status updates.

Things Samsung did well:

• Contacting dissatisfied customers on Twitter to resolve the issue.
• Having great service reps in Korea. (If it weren't for the rep who went above and beyond the call of duty, I'd be launching an FUQ campaign against the company. As it is, I think I may use NINE as the title for a book at some point.)

Based on my experience, will I buy Samsung products again? Yes, as long as they're covered under international warranty.

I'll post an update to this once I get my netbook back from the Samsung Repair Center in Korea.

My left ankle has been bugging me ever since July. The pain kept fading in and out, and it's worst when I wear flats rather than high heels! (Talk about weird, huh?)

On Wednesday I felt the most horrible pain shooting from from my left foot and ankle. It's gotten progressively worse even though I haven't been using it much. I limped my way to the rehab clinic today, which is only two blocks away from my apartment (thank God!). My divine therapist asked me if I'd ever injured my left ankle, to which I answered negative. Guess he thought maybe I didn't rehab it correctly or something. He seemed confused since I don't do any special exercises or anything that could've hurt my foot and ankle. He examine them then massaged and tape them. When I mentioned it to Hero Material, he told me that maybe I have a slight stress fracture.

The only problem is I have no idea what I could've done to cause it. Remember how I said it started in July? Well, the only thing I did a lot in July was shopping. How can shopping cause stress fracture? (Okay, I did walk around for six hours one day at an outlet mall…) Since returning to Japan, I haven't walked much or anything. How can the pain get worse?

If it doesn't get any better soon, I need to see the doctor. I'm kind of dreading it. Not because he's not a nice person; he's fantastic. It's just that every time I see him, I get bad news. Oi.

Confidence is the weirdest thing ever. When I was in my early twenties, I was a size 4 but could never wear a bikini because I was too embarrassed at how “huge” I looked. (Because I was not a size 2…I know, I know…misguided youth!) I'm bigger now, but got myself a bikini anyway in a color I like. Figured life is too short to worry about a little bulge here and there so long as my bloodwork looks good (and it does; the doc joked that maybe I should eat more junk food or something). Besides, if anyone mocks the way I look in my new bikini, I can always feature him/her as a villain and/or a weasel in one of my stories.

Interestingly, not giving a damn about what other people think gives me more confidence and a sense of liberation. I'm not sure why I wasted so much of my youth worrying about fitting in. Guess it was just part of the growing up process.

On the writing front, I started the first draft of my new WIP. Much to May's surprise, I'm pantsing this draft. I've never really pantsed. Everything I've written had a clear outline, but I figured why not? Maybe I'll do better this way. I'll never know unless I try.

Oh BTW — Amazon is selling Altec Lansing UHP336 earphones for less than $40 which I think is a great price. I love the clarity and the beautiful sound. I can hear everything, every little base note, the cellos, etc. (I'm a very aural person, and I love listening to music when I write, etc.) The only bad thing is that it highlighted how inadequate iPods are for playing music. The earphone is very sensitive so it picks up every hiss, etc. from your audio unit (should you have a crappy one), and iPods produce the worst static and hiss. (Naturally, you won't notice anything if you use the meh “earbuds” that come with your iPods.) What a disappointment. iPod Touch was the worst even if the wifi off. So if I want to listen to music on it, I'm stuck with earbuds.

P.S. I googled the problem, thinking that maybe it was just my earphones, but actually a lot of audiophiles have noticed the same issue. *sigh*

Last night, my site got hacked, and my hosting service suspended my account. It turned out that some @#$% got in and installed a phishing script on my server. Thankfully, my host didn't delete my account, and they gave me some tips on how to deal with the security issues. Unfortunately I had to delete my newsletter script from my nadialee.net site, but that's really minor since it could've been WordPress, which powers my entire website & blog. (FYI — I upgrade WordPress religiously.)

So in order to prevent the @#$% that had happened to me from happening to you, I suggest that you upgrade your scripts & applications you have on your server. I'm talking about things like WordPress (the core), plug-ins, Joomla, forums, etc.

And all you hackers & phishing scammers out there — there's a special place in hell just for you. :evil:

Pre-Historic Era

Doubled RAM. Worked great for one week. Everything's fast. Holy cow.

Fateful Day 1

I get the blue screen of death (BSOD). It tells me a bunch of numbers. Advises me to update my drivers. I do that and run the virus scan, just in case. Virus scan comes back clean. Everything looks fixed. I feel happy. Go to bed at around 3:00 a.m. after the win.

Fateful Day 2

Another BSOD. A slightly different combination of numbers that make no sense. Win refuses to stay operational. Everything shuts down. Force OS to not shut down. Run a ton of diagnostics, which takes about five hours. Finally decided to do a clean install on everything. Still fails. Finally it turned out that I needed some update installed first before installing a different update. This wasn't anywhere in the online manual. Feeling angry. But do another clean reinstall.

The day ended at 5:00 a.m. with another BSOD.

Fateful Day 3

Get up at 9:00 a.m. Hero Material almost becomes collateral damage. Another clean reinstall. Google every error message I get. MS Update won't update. I'm ready to go Kill Bill on IT.

Do a ton of regsvr32 commands for a ton of *.dll files. It turns out that the RAM upgrade is the one that went bad. In exactly one week after the upgrade. Take out the new RAM, put the old RAM. Hardware diagnostic says everything looks great.

Redo install. I'm getting very good at this now. I re-customize everything, esp. the default Outlook profile.

The day ends at 4:30 a.m. with MS Update downloading everything, but refusing to install highly critical security patches. Give up after trying about ten different fixes and workarounds. My eyes refuse to stay open. The war appears hopeless.

Fateful Day 4

Get up and test the final fix for MS Update. Downloads very slowly, but finally installs everything. Run a complete virus scan. The system's clean.

Casualties

• Four days of productivity.
• My sanity.
• Sleep.
• Rambo I — was going to watch it with Hero Material, but I couldn't pay attention and Hero Material got annoyed.
• All the King's Women Ch. 1 — dead; not recoverable.
• The Last Slayer notes update — dead, not recoverable.
• The Lat Slayer master file — managed to salvage. Must make another copy, just in case. (This was backed up via gmail, but gmail told me that the backup was corrupted. I almost died on the spot. Hero Material had to valiantly stop me from bashing my own head in.)
• All my customizations for Office & Win — not recoverable; must recreate everything.

If you sent me an email and never received a response, it probably means I never got your email in the first place since Outlook went a bit wonky during this period. Resend please.

I got a new MacBook. Installed XP on it. Worked fine.

Now it won't work fine anymore. It's been exactly one week.

I've run like seven different diagnostics on it. I'd be so mad if all my important files get lost — all my project files, etc. Well, not ALL, but many of them will be lost.

Am valiantly trying to boot. Because Win XP won't boot normally, and it says my SLAYER file is corrupted! Argh!