Up late talking games & writing? You're...

1> The brand-new HDTV I scored at Christmastime blew a part out and I lost all audio.

Not only is it complete crap that it breaks just about six months after purchase (I've still got an SD set that works great after ten years) the guys at Best Buy totally underestimated the time it'd take for repair.

A week, they said.

It's been two now, and the part needed for repairs still hasn't arrived at their shop facility. I mean, it's not like I can't remember life without a dedicated game TV, but it's just a complete hassle to drop cash on a high-end purchase and have it go kaput like that on top of having my already-limited gametime curtailed by not having a TV.

As of right now I'm still without a working TV, and Best Buy's warranty doesn't allow for service loaners.

2> For whatever bizarre reason, some little part of the internet hates me. I haven't been able to get my PC to connect with GameCritics for the last two days, and I've been bouncing around from customer service rep to customer service rep, each one telling me it's not their problem.

I finally got a good rep from Microsoft (Aboo in Chennai, you're the man) and he figured out that there's a proxy server somewhere not doing its job. After another hour with a guy from Comcast, he pinned the exact trouble spot at a small internet company's server based in New Jersey. I've got no clue why it manifested this way, but I can get to any site on the entire internet except the one that I actually need to get to.

It drove me batty all day, and though I'm glad to know what the deal is, I'd be even happier knowing what to do about it.