The Pilgrimage

I think this is the most apt title for my frequent visits to Nehru Place. Look at it this way…Nehru Place is a place where many people go, with their own little problems, praying to an unknown cybergod, praying for their problems to be solved.

So do I.

As usual, it’s time for me to take little bits and pieces there, to the clergy of technology, for them to breathe new life into my motherboard and graphics card. It’s nothing new, especially to people like Ankur, who I pester each and every time my PC goes fop!

I know the place almost like the back of my hand. But not well enough it seems (*…ref later in the post)…I went on Saturday, with Dad, with my entire system. Spent about half an hour at home hunting for the bill. This is because, if you need to get an Asus motherboard repaired under warranty, you need to furnish the original bill, otherwise they do nothing.

No big, Dad had stashed away the bill somewhere safe. Thing is, somewhere safe, but he couldn’t exactly recall where. Slight problem there. Spent a good part of the last week trying to find that piece of paper. It didn’t exactly help that it was almost 3 years old…crap…must be still buried somewhere. Eventually we didn’t find it, even after the last ditched effort just before leaving for Nehru Place…:|

Now, first, Dad had to interview someone at the Intercontinental Eros, so I was sitting in the car, in the car park, for about 45 minutes, whiling my time away listening to radio, and trying to write a mobile post. The reason why you guys haven’t already read it is that, there’s one problem about typing out mobile posts. Sometimes, while deleting the last character, you can accidentally hit the ‘End’ key, which just closes the browser, and exits to standby mode, which sorta sucks, so now I’ve decided to write out the posts as a note in my mobile and copy and paste that in the broswer. Think that will work.

Anyway, back to Nehru Place. Now began the task of lugging it to SMC International, where we’d try to argue with them to give the mobo a challan, coz we were regular customers. I had the bill for a hard disk I bought recently as evidence. When we got there, panting (me, coz I would not let Dad carry that heavy cabinet…which alone weighs 8.5 kg, minus other components) There, we got to know that the old get-the-bill-and-we’ll-give-you-the-challan system was no longer existent. I just had to lug the PC to the RPTech Service Centre. Simple. Oh and by the way, while walking out of the shop, this guy walks up to me and simply says ‘Best cabinet’…wasn’t I smug about my CoolerMaster after that!

Anyway, fast forward to RPTech…where…we got to know something…it was Saturday…and they didn’t work on Saturdays (*)…it was one of the most saddening moments of my life. I had lugged that entire PC around Nehru Place for nothing. Well, the visit wasn’t completely useless, at least I got to know that the bill was not needed anymore. A fair amount of lugging later, I was at home.

At home, I decided to do the inevitable…dismantling the entire PC. The guy who was there at RPTech, told me that they don’t take entire systems, in any case, and that I’d have to come back on Monday with just the mobo and graphics card. Taking out the graphics card is a piece of cake, but the mobo is a different story altogether! I had to take out each and every wire, and only then could I take it out. And then I had to remove the RAM and processor. For the first time in my life, I saw the little chip that was toiling away like a little workhorse, at the heart of my computer. Although it was covered in thermal grease, which I had to remove. Most of it had been caked into powder, since I use the PC so much. I then decided to clean each and every component, and put it into it’s original box till the mobo and card arrived.

When I go on Monday, I’ll also have to buy some thermal grease. I’m planning on buying some Arctic Silver or CoolerMaster stuff, for about 300-400 bucks. Hopefully, I should be able to get it there. I was browsing some forums, and found a post about it being available at SMC International.

Will not be at home tomorrow as mom and dad are both going away for a couple of days. Will be at my second Aunt’s, but may post from there, not that many care… Will go to Nehru Place before that. Wish me luck on my pilgrimage.