Had my first experience with Dell Customer Support this morning. Now, being an IT guy and having dealt with all manner of experienced and non-experienced types all over the globe, I had a low bar and lower expectations. I have a laptop that I purchased last January for my business. I wanted something portable that i wouldn’t have to mess with very much, easy to use, because my wife would also need it for her things. I have had good experiences with Dell at work so I went with that. Ive had my fill of building stuff at home and I’m at a point in my life where I know what I want from a number of technological perspectives. I didn’t just fall off the truck – I’ve dealt with all manner of computers and programs. I want something that can be wireless and wired, can be used for graphics programs, for manipulating photographs, create websites, program, do email, run all standard Microsoft software, run all Adobe software, run a myriad of VM’s if I should need it, and play games. In other words, “a jack of all trades”. I want a large hard drive, I want it fast, and I want horsepower. Now, all of those things together are really a hardware juggling act. So the PC that I got, is a laptop, has a SSD – which is kind of small in the grand scheme – only 200Gb. So I bought a second SSD that is 1.8Tb which requires a bit of juggling data. I have a RAID 5 NAS that’s somewhere on the order of 12Tb if I should want or need it. Hey, some day I may try recording. 🙂 A Core i7/10th Gen with 4 Cores, 8 Logical processors later.. Sorry, I went off into the weeds. Anyway, I called the Tech Support number, and was walked through a bunch of well thought out troubleshooting steps. Problem was eventually solved. What I found out was that my Bluetooth is integrated to the motherboard but has hooks into the network adapter. So I had to reinstall some drivers, restart and hard-restart the laptop. Problem solved. I think Nino, who is from the Philippines is very knowledgeable and patient. I had to kind of chuckle. I could hear a rooster crowing in the background every once in a while (he may be working from home in Hawaii). I would definitely buy Dell again. Thanks Nino and thanks Dell!
My watercolor class with John is over for this period, so its time to figure out what I want to do next from an art class perspective. Supposedly Beth Leahy was teaching a “master the method” class which focuses on artists, their lives, motivations, techniques, and history. You then mimic their technique to see what you will come up with. Sometimes, its eye-opening the hoops they (the artist) jumped through. Anyhow, I still have a ways to go on this watercolor. The color harmony is much better than my usual. I am still learning. My drawing is decent, my composition skills need some work, my color skills are lacking, my color mixing skills are decent, my color identifying skills are decent, I just need time.
-Rat
