A screenshot from last evening's CSI:

Came across this very touching piece through Scoble's post. Quite a gripping story about real people. Just made me realize (yet again) how lucky I am to be safe, secure and to be amidst my loved ones. God bless these guys in the video.

First day of work at Shell Canada along with 95 other co-op students from all over Canada was very interesting. It was interesting to note that my University had the second highest representation after, obviously, U of C. Orientation included an introduction to Shell Canada as well as some bits of information about the recent developments at Shell Canada. This was followed by some corporate security policies session and a magic show by an employee. Yes, you read that right. My supervisor met me over lunch and thereafter she introduced me to my team and my cubicle. Oh yes, that wonderful little corner where I would be spending the rest of my summer. However, it seemed to me that work safety and work ergonomics are a huge concern for Shell. So we were informed about all the safety procedures and fire drills right on the first day. Even the office furniture are top-notch and can be adjusted just about in every way to suit our needs. Desk heights can be adjusted and the chairs are very comfortable. Keyboard and mice had pads so that repetitive strain injuries do not occur. I have a cubicle right next to a huge window overlooking the street, which is very relaxing.

A few things I noticed (being a technological freak). Windows 2000 seemed to be the OS of choice on the corporate desktops along with Office 2000. Security is a HUGE issue and a two way authentication is required for logon to desktops. The desktops themselves are locked down in every way. Software installation is only possible if approved by system admins and are available in the corporate IT catalog. Door passes are required for access to washrooms and elevators.

That’s about it for the first day. I really look forward to working for Shell for the next few months.

This comes a bit late, but i wanted to do full justice to this blog post and hence took my sweet time  to write it out. Mind you, I am not complainging about anything, just putting forward my experiences with Dell customer support as an owner of a brand new >$2000 top of the line XPS laptop computer.

My brand new machine shipped with Windows Vista Home premium alongwith all the other useless crapware that comes installed with every new Dell, Toshiba, Sony etc. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to re-format and install Windows Vista Ultimate to have the best flavour of Windows on my machine for bragging rights. The installation of Windows went flawlessly and within half an hour I had my machine up and running with all drivers etc installed. The only missing component was the Dell truemobile 355 bluetooth module. It would not show up under task manager, even with a yellow icon. There are no hardware switches for it on the machine, so it was definitely not turned off. I tried to run the driver setup for the bluetooth module but it would not proceed, saying that I did not have a bluetooth module or its not turned on. Tried every way I could think of to get the bluetooth action going, but no go. Alright, so i decided it was time to use my 1 year Dell XPS completecare warranty support.

I call the support number and get connected in no time to a human. After performing a few basic troubleshooting steps, he decided to remote into my machine. Upon remoting into my machine, the support rep checked the device manager and then launched the services window. He then started to turn on or change the startup type of various random services like RPC, remote registry etc etc to 'automatic'. Curious, I asked him why he was doing that and I was told that something might be dependant on these services. 'Garbage' was what was going on in my mind. After a few minutes, he transferred me to L2 support.

The L2 support rep also tried the same basic steps and then decided to remote into my machine just like the previous rep. same steps again and he had no clue why my bluetooth module would not show up. So he put me on hold and went to ask his supervisor on his next course of action. On returning back, he asked me if my version of Windows was retail or OEM. On hearing that it was a reatil version of Windows Vista, he prompty told me that they do not support any retail version of any OS. Valid point, but what came up next was funny. He suggested to me that returning back to the OEM version of Windows Vista Home Premium which shipped with my machine might help since the drivers in that version might be compatible with the bluetooth module. I felt I was wasting my time here and so I pretended to take his suggestion and politely bid him good-bye. It was 4 am so I decided to go to bed.

Next morning, after a lot of searching, I discovered this issue was common on Dell forums and quite a few users had faced this issue. One of the users suggested extracting the driver setup files and run a forced setup by running a different file in the directory structure. This gets the driver installed and then it is able to switch the bluetooth radio on. The underlying problem was that the bluetooth module is controlled by software and once it gets switched off internally, there is no way to switch it on without the specific dell drivers. On the flip side, the software would not install if the module is switched off internally. There is no hardware switch so this effectively turns this issue into a catch-22 scenario. However, my problem is resolved for now, but Dell should probably publish a KB article about this or many other users will face similar issues. Thats it for now.

Happy Republic Day, India. Jai Hind !!!