Okay, now I'm grouchy.

Last Thursday, the mouse on my laptop inexplicably stopped working. After a few days of trying everything (reboot, restore to an earlier date, buy a new mouse), I called Dell today, only to be told that my one-year warranty expired on the day I ordered my computer last year, and not on the day (about two weeks later) that I actually received a working machine (the first one arrived broken). So, I missed getting warranty support by two days.

It's like something out of a cartoon or a bad joke. The stupid computer worked perfectly until three days before the warranty expired and just because I elected to try and figure out the problem myself before calling the manufacturer, now I won't be able to get it fixed.

The question now, of course, is do I pay Dell $50 for non-warranty tech support so they can tell me the USB ports aren't working and to take it somewhere to get it fixed, or do I just assume that's what they'll say and got ahead and take it somewhere to get it fixed?

I had many amusing topics to blog. The mouse (four-legged variety). Last Tuesday's Christmas party. Buehler and the gang. Now I'm not in the mood.

(I will slay the first person who points out that I should have bought the extended warranty because after the first year is when you're likely to need it. I had an offer to extend my warranty in my e-mail and I was thinking about it but I thought I had another couple of weeks to decide if that was the best use of my money now, while I'm unemployed.) (Possibly, had I opened the e-mail, instead of just thinking about what it probably said, I'd have noticed that there was a two-week gap between when I thought the warranty was going to expire and when they thought it was going to expire.)