How UPS became OOPS

It all began simple enough. I was cruising through the 'net one day when my new computer ran out of hard drive space. To be honest, I was expecting it to happen. Back years ago (when memory was measured in "K" and DOS came on a 5.25" floppy) I was well-known for devouring all available memory. But I hadn't counted on a concept that has invaded the computer-operating community - WINDOWS 95! Seems Windows has made a career of using storage at an astronomical rate, even when the machine is just sitting there blinking a cursor at you. Makes you wonder how much Bill Gates has invested in hard drive stock, doesn't it?

But that's not the story. Since I was obviously low on storage resources, and since my machine wouldn't work very good without enough resources, I decided to get a hard drive, the bigger the better! Well, with my new computer came a huge list of advice (free, of course!) most of which was actuall helpful. I learned about on-line auctions. New or slightly used computer accesories at rock-bottom prices! Now that's for me! So off I go (after rebooting to save the last precious Kbytes of storage available) to e-bay to find me a new hard drive.

After arriving there, in answer to my dreams, there was a new 12-Gig Quantum Drive available! Eureka! And not a bad price, either. So I made my mental note to check back a few hours before the auction ended and get it. Of course, my memory is not quite as good as my computer's. I missed the end of the auction. But I noticed that the same guy had a bunch more hard drives that didn't sell (of course, I missed that auction, too), so I e-mailed him and asked if he still wanted to sell them.

He said yes, we agreed on a price, and I sent off the check. A few days later, he recieved the check and sent out my new 12-Gig drive. Everything was going smoothly. That should have worried me.

Well, since I now have Internet access, I figured I would watch its progress. The first major stop was in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was scanned in, and a few hours later, it was scanned out. Great, at this rate, it'll be here in no time.

I don't know exactly how packages leave the Salt Lake City UPS office, but nothing else was reported on it for 35 hours. To say the least, I was getting anxious! I was crashing twice a day without fail, and wanted my drive. To further tempt me, a member of my family was going to be visiting from out of town in a few days, and I knew she was a whiz at computers. "Sure would be nice", I told myself, "if it could get here before she does!" So I call UPS.

A real nice lady answered the phone (after pushing a bunch of menu buttons) and I told her my problem, that I really needed it by Friday. She said she couldn't guarantee it, so I had the funny idea that they could rush it if I paid the difference in shipping costs. That didn't work. So I thanked her politely and told her to have a nice day, and I went back to hoping.

Next update: the train broke down. I kid you not! So I called UPS again. This time I got to talk to a "supervisor" because the girl who answered the phone didn't know about train breakdowns. I didn't either, except that at the moment I didn't like them. I gave the supervisor my tracking number, my address, and my mother's maiden name, so she could verify that I wasn't trying to steal a hard drive from myself, and she looked up the information. Seems that the train had broken down. I knew that. What I didn't know was how they were gonna get my package to me before Friday. She said there was still a slim possibility, but it would definitely be here by Monday. I said I was still hoping for Friday.

31 more hours without an update. Suddenly there it is! My package is now sitting in White's Creek Hub in Tennessee! I looked up White's Creek, TN. It's a suburb of Nashville, only about 3 1/2 hours from me! Now I'm excited! So I wait, patiently, for the next update. I fully expected it to be going to Fort Payne, AL, my local UPS hub. I checked the calendar - if it goes out in so many hours, it'll get to Ft. Payne about that time, the drivers will probably get it on the truck that morning - YES! It's still possible.

Next update. Apparently, my hard drive was homesick for the train, so it was shipped back to Illinois (where the train broke down). Now I call UPS. Again, I give them the tracking number and the address, and they pull up the information. "Apparently, somebody put it on the wrong conveyor" was the reason. I suggested they label their conveyors. I even offered to send them some Post-its if they needed them.

The hard drive is now going back to White's Creek Hub. It's Thursday afternoon. I'm starting to doubt a Friday delivery. Sure enough, at last check on Friday noon, it's still sitting in White's Creek Hub, gathering dust instead of data. The weekend came and went, without my new hard drive.

Monday morning. I check the UPS page. By now, I know the address (including the cgi variables) to my tracking page by heart. At least I can access the page that tells me about my hard drive faster. Still in White's Creek Hub. But later that day, it moves again. It departed the dreaded White's Creek Hub, bound for another destination (I'm hoping it's not Illinois), and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. My hard drive is on its way home! By now, it seems almost like a prodigal son.

Tuesday morning. The hard drive is in Alabama, but not Fort Payne. Instead it is in Decatur. Well, maybe I was wrong about Fort Payne being our hub. It doesn't matter to me if they change routes, I just want my hard drive. Later that day, it hit me - the address on the check was in Decatur! It was to a house I used to own! Surely he wouldn't use the address on the check? Surely, he would. Sure enough, my hard drive is about to be delivered to a perfect stranger. I just hope they appreciate it! Now I'm on the phone with friends in Decatur, can they run by and see if the nice people have my hard drive (and if they'll give it back!)? I've got good friends. they all rushed to my rescue, bless 'em, but UPS was way ahead of them.

New update. Undeliverable - consignee has moved. No duh! I call UPS (again) and try to find out where my package is. They say they will deliver it to the correct address tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm curious why nobody bothered to mention that the address I gave them before wasn't the same as the one on the package. Of course, she didn't know. Anyway, they promised to have it here by Wednesday (the next day).

Tuesday night. My hard drive leaves Decatur (1 1/2 hours away) for Montgomery (3 1/2 hours away). This seems a little self-defeating to me, but it's too late to call UPS, and I really don't want to anyway. Maybe they know something about geography I don't?

Wednesday morning. Eureka (again)! My hard drive is in Fort Payne. The adventures of my hard drive are almost over - assuming the truck doesn't break down, or somebody doesn't put it on the conveyor to Timbuktu. Maybe I should play it safe and send those Post-It notes...

Nope! No Post-It notes needed - I have my hard drive. It's packed in foam rubber, too, surrounded by "peanuts" (the enviromentally-friendly kind, I presume), so I figure it probably handled its adventures OK. The ordeal is over - I thought. Now on to the installation.

Luckily, a friend had given me a book on making modifications to my computer. Well, I'm not entirely illiterate on technology (I even used to program in assembly and Fortran), so I set about my new task. I removed the case. I looked. I studied. After about an hour, I had identified the major components. The video card was what amazed me; it was a LOT smaller than I thought it would be. Maybe I DO need that Matrox Millenium II ... but that's another page.

OK, first I check for a power connection. Nope, need a "Y" cable. Then I check for a data cable tap. Yep, just need a cable. Empty bay. Well, it seems that 12 Gigs of space won't fit in a 3 1/2" package, so I'm gonna need a 5 1/4" bay. Got one. Only problem: there are no rails to atach the drive to it. No problem, I need two rails too. I go to town. The cables are easy to find, but there are no rails to be found. I checked all three computer stores within 40 miles of me. No rails anywhere.

I return with the cables and begin setting jumpers. I had dreaded this part but it turned out to be simple. I got around the rail problem by managing to attach the drive directly to the case. A temporary fix, but it'll hold until I get some rails. I reattach the case and began the software setup.

That's when I realized why the hardware worked so good. It was to give you that false sense of security so you would try the software setup! Bill Gates must also own stock in mental institutions, cause he's sure trying to drive people there. The big mystery was the BIOS. Now, I don't like the thought of crashing my whole system to where it won't re-boot. I tried that once with my sound card, and decided I didn't like it pretty fast. So here I am faced with all these choices, most in computer-ese (which I no longer speak fluently), and all these warnings about what Windows will do if I press the wrong button. So I call a relative of mine who DOES speak computer-ese. Together, via the phone, we set about installing my software.

Now, Quantum has a beautiful web site. So she surfed for information while I argued with my BIOS. She finally found a driver program I could download. Great! I download it and begin to run the installation.

I swear, I honestly didn't know that you had to set the bios first. I had looked at it, but I didn't know what an "LZ" or "sec" was so I didn't touch anything. I guess I really wouldn't have done good in medical school, after all. So she begins feeding me information from the web site to input. I finish and re-boot - or at least I tried. Seems that Bill Gates, in his infinite wisdom, decided that 2 Gigs was enough for anyone. Anyway, that's all Windows can understand. So now I have to reset my BIOS and run the disk manager program. OK. Now I have to re-boot. OK. Now I have to re-boot again. OK. Now I have to re-boot again. Wait a minute, didn't I just re-boot from that same screen? Oh well, re-boot anyway. Now I have to re-boot again. This is getting tiring. Finally, after countless re-boots, the disk manager has done it's thing, and the re-booting is over.

The only problem is, Windows can't seem to understand that I should now have six 2-Gig drives, letters "D" through "I". DOS tried to make up for it, though, by giving me 11 2-Gig drives, letters "D" through "N". I thought that was pretty nice of it. I'm not going to gripe about an extra 10 Gigs. I even saved a few notes to drive "N" and retrieved them. The only problem was that I couldn't browse past drive "D" in Windows. I finally try one last-ditch effort. I did a cold re-boot. This time DOS decided it had given me enough free storage, so I lost drives "J" through "N". It was nice enough to let me keep my test notes, though. It moved them to drive "I".

Thursday morning. I call the tech support line at Quantum. After winding my way through the obligatory maze of menu choices, I get to talk to a really nice guy who walks me through everything I did the night before. Seems I downloaded the wrong disk manager. OK, I download another one. Now he walks me through making a "boot disk" and gives me a list of things to do when it re-boots. He also invites me to call back if I have any trouble.

Trouble starts real quick. My computer is trying to re-boot from my 5 1/4" floppy, not the 3 1/2" one. OK, I go into BIOS again to tell my computer that it's booting from the wrong floppy drive. Apparently this has never happened before, because there was no way to make it boot from the "B" drive (which was the "A" Drive a few minutes ago). I have no 5 1/4" floppy disks available to use, either. So I finally call one of the computer stores to see if they still sell them.

Nope. 5 1/4" floppy disks are gone the way of the dinosaurs. But he DID tell me how to get my computer to use my 3 1/2" Drive. I have to change a setting in my BIOS. Easy enough. Now I re-boot. That's when I discovered why the tech at Quantum didn't just stay on the line while I ran the disk manager. A little something called "zero-fill". You fill the hard drive up with zeros before you partition it. Well, I used to program a little in assembly, so I know that writing a zero is about the fastest thing you can do. This shouldn't take long, right? Wrong.

I did the math. There are 12 billion bytes of data on my hard drive. Each byte has 8 bits. That comes out to more than 96 billion zeros! Suddenly 166 MHz doesn't sound so fast after all. So I start it, watch the little spinner on the screen until my eyes cross, and decide to take a shower. A L-O-N-G shower. I finally return, expecting to see something like "task completed". Instead I see "48% done". Oh, well. Looks like I'll be off-line a little while longer.

Finally it reaches the 90's. then at 95%, it happens. I happened to be glancing at the screen when the little spinner stopped. Just stopped. No motion. I tried wiggling the mouse (which was dis-abled) - no result. I patted the computer on the side - no result. I talked sweet to it - no result. I talked mean to it - no result. Finally, it popped up a message I did NOT want to see - write error to drive. My hard drive, which I had waited so long for, had a bad sector. Did I want to continue? Why not, I had come this far. A few minutes later it happened again. The spinner is spinning slowly now, stopping every few seconds to taunt me. I call Quantum.

Again, the tech was real nice. He went over everything I had done, and hinted that I might have a bad drive. I knew that. What I didn't know was that they would replace it! About that time, we got disconnected (batteries died in the cordless), so I franticly found a piece of a telephone that I could use to call them back. Of course, they had all gone to lunch.

Not knowing what else to do, I ran scandisk on the last drive Drive "I". Now I run scandisk all the time, but this time there was something different. Beginning on cluster 5 of 60,000 or so, it hung - just sat there churning away, not moving, while the hard drive hummed for all its worth. Finally, lunch is over and I call Quantum back.

OK, they're convinced that the drive is bad. They're gonna send me another one. Would they send it out before I shipped the other one back? After all, I had already gone through so much to get it, and I could still use part of it. Sure, no problem. Just pay for the new (re-furbished) one, and they'll be nice enough to not charge my account if I send the old one in. I told the nice lady I didn't have any money in the account - I spent it all on the first hard drive. Suddenly, that's a problem - I bet they didn't gripe when I bought the first one!

Disgusted, I hang the phone up. Despite trying to keep a sense of humor throughout all this, I was becoming depressed. There was only one other place I could turn - the guy who sold it to me in the first place. Now, I didn't expect him to accomodate me. He's been a saint throughout all of this. But he returned my call within just a few minutes and agreed to ship me another one out the next day. He asked for my credit card number, which I was happy to give since he didn't plan on holding funds!

I'm not going to give his name here, simply because he can't do for everyone what he did for me, and people are funny about that. He will remain anonymous, but you can be sure that I will be ordering more from him. he has earned all of my business! So now I wait - I have a few Gigs to use until my new drive arrives, probably by UPS. Here we go again!

Friday morning. I just downloaded some stuff onto drive "D" when I realized that I would need Explorer to see all my drive letters to change my data over when the new drive came in. OK, it's a new day, let's see what we can do with Windows 95. First I bravely go into BIOS. OK, now my computer won't re-boot. What to do? Call Quantum back - after all, all this started with their hard drive.

I speak to another real nice tech (I think they're all nice - I haven't got a surly one yet) who patiently walked me through getting my computer back up. Now we go into Windows to find out why I can't see all my drives. He finally tells me that it must be a bad driver in Windows. OK, time to call the dreaded Microsoft.

I have to tell you that I had never spoken to Microsoft before. I had heard rumors, though. Tremendously long waits, engineers who either didn't know or didn't care, wrong answers that made things worse, this was what I expected. It's not what I got. I first got a receptionist who checked my numbers against their records. Seems that the guy who sold me the computer had already used up his tech support. I told the guy I was talking to, "I just need to get a driver for a new hard drive!" He said he would give me a free courtesy call. I recoiled in shock. Microsoft is giving me a free call that they don't have to? I stuttered the words "Thank you" through my disbelief, and was transferred to an engineer.

Andy was real nice (he let me use his first name), he asked me a few questions, and left to check his data. I figured now was the long waiting period, so I decided to send a quick e-mail while he was gone. I wasn't quick enough. This guy was back in a flash with a procedure to try. We gave it a shot, he talking me through every step. We finished, the system re-booted, and there, in all their living glory, was all seven drives and my CD-ROM (which I hadn't seen for days! I take it all back! All of the jokes about Bill Gates! Microsoft fixed my problem in 30 minutes flat!Now let's see how UPS/OOPS handles the new hard drive...

Apparently UPS didn't like this page. I had sent them the address (I thought they would find it as funny as I did!) but they e-mailed me back and apologized! Oh, well, some folks just don't have a sense of humor, I guess! Anyway, my new hard drive is on its way! It didn't take the same train as before. Before, it went from Salt Lake City straight to the train breakdown station in Illinois. This time, it's coming in short hops. First to Salt Lake City, UT, then on to Denver, CO (isn't that close to Wyoming?), then on to Salina KS (wherever that is). Who knows, now that UPS knows I'm writing this page, maybe they're not going to give me any more to write about.

Wednesday. The package arrived in and left Earth City, MO. If UPS keeps this up, this is going to get boring!

Well, I think I messed up the story. I sent an e-mail to UPS including the address to this page. I guess they decided to clean up their act. Whatever the reason, the adventures of a hard drive are over. The new one is here and installed, the old one is on it's way back. I'd like to publicly thank UPS for making this page possible before I close this story:

THANKS, GUYS!

So thanks too to all you who've read this. I'll leave it up for awhile so send your friends over and feel free to browse around in the rest of this site!

Bye, all!

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