[Katsunami]

Well, I've started a week's holiday (at home) today. So far so good. Everything breaks.

Two weeks ago, I've taken apart my espresso machine and gave it a full cleaning. It made coffee and espresso for two weeks, until tomorrow; I turned it on, and it just blinks four error lights at me. Manual says: "Contact manufacturer for repair." As the device is three years old, it's out of warranty, and thus not economical to have it repaired.

The Brother labelprinter I ordered (as stated above) arrived broken, four days ago. It has a clicky keyboard, but the G, H, B, N and M don't click. The G actually often hangs when pressed, and the device says "GGGGGGGGG". Sometimes it even activates when pressing keys near it. I've been calling the store, who wanted me to call the manufacturer first to confirm a defect, so I called Brother, who (after half an hour on hold because of 'contacting second line support') confirmed the keyboard was in fact broken, after which I've contacted the store who wanted an e-mail with the call reference to Brother so they can arrange a swap of the device, so I've send that to them and have been waiting for 2 days for an answer, which is not in yet, and that's why I'm not going to get one before (at least) Wednesday next week due to Carnival in the Netherlands. Capice? And if they (the store) wants to, they can even get bitchy and start telling me that I have had the device for more than 8 days after arrival, so they can't swap it. If they do, then all hell breaks loose.

And to top it of, I have been working on the raaaaiilllroad.... oh. No, I've been working on fixing my Calibre library, and I'm almost done. All 818 books are now perfect, after slogging 30 books a day for the last 2,5 weeks, and I only need to consolidate the tags, which I was doing, and Windows 10 decided to BSOD on me. Even though I've disliked many things about Windows, I haven't seen it BSOD in at least 15 years, if hardware and drivers are OK.

The laptop, a brand-new, 1 month old workstation class DELL 7510, didn't even reboot.

But then it did. To make sure everything is fine, I run "sfc /scannow", which reports errors in the Windows files. OK... "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" it is. Can't find sources. OK then. Provide source to intallation media. Still doesn't work. WTF...

*breaks out full hard disk image*

Fails to install.

OK... maybe the program used to create the image has problems with the latest BIOS, installed a week ago. I'll do a full re-install.

This also fails halfway through. Tried again: Can't even see an SSD anymore. Reboot to BIOS:

"PCIe SSD-0: (NONE)".

WTF, where is my SSD?

Reboot:

"PCIe SSD-0: <long serial number here>".

Fine. Try to reinstall again. Fail. SSD gone again.

So the SSD is blinking in and out of BIOS/UEFI recognition. This will probably be the source of that BSOD. Thinking that this might be a BIOS/UEFI problem (which is hardly likely, because this BIOS/UEFI was installed a week ago and working since then), I download the previous version and try to install it using the flash utility.

"BIOS Flash not possible. Downgrade not supported."

So I can't do anything, basically, and have to assume it's the SSD that is broken. This notebook has next business day warranty, which can, obviously, only be carried out on next Wednesday due to Carnival. Even if the SSD is replaced, it's not sure to resolve the problem, as it could be the mainboard/M.2 slot that is defective.

As I didn't yet create a new backup from the Calibre work I did yesterday and today (fixed almost 100 books), I opened the laptop, removed the hard disk, and copied the library off of it on my desktop. There you have an example of why I refuse to buy computers that prevent me from getting at the hard disks/SSD's. (And also, why I never use third party backup tools, so I can read the files back on any computer; even a Live Linux CD if need be.)

Broken Espresso machine.
Broken label printer.
Broken laptop SSD.

No way to fix or replace anything for 5 days. Have a nice holiday.

Sometimes I'm so fed up with technology.