I sent an e-mail to EPoX Europe, in The Netherlands, asking what to do about my broken motherboard. A friendly support tech by the name of Michael told me that the integrated network adapter is indeed borked, but only in some hardware configurations.

Michael didn't say which "configurations" those are, but judging from other's experiences with the same motherboard, those configurations seem to include virtually any compatible processor, harddisk and graphics card. Any way, Michael told me to ship the board to their technical support and that he'd handle the matter personally. Thanks Michael.

Since I want this motherboard, specifically, and since Michael told me that the newer revisions of the board on which this error has been fixed are still rare, I decided to send it to him, in The Netherlands, as opposed to return it to the retailer, in Sweden, in exchange for a new motherboard of some other make and/or model.

With the murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh very fresh in memory and in my thoughts, as well as the loss in the referendum, I went to the post office to send my package to Michael at EPoX support.

"Post office" is a bit of an overstatement. See, we don't really have "post offices" in Sweden any more. A few years back we did, but nowadays actual post offices are very few and far in between. Instead, you go to a local grocery store, gas station or whatever other local establishment that has taken on the burdain/opportunity of handling packages, to leave or pick up your packages.

This works quite well when you're just picking up consignments, because the personell at the not-a-real-post-office doesn't have to do much anything but to check your ID and hand over the package. When you want to send a package, a motherboard to The Netherlands for instance, though, boy, that's a different deal altogether. Finding out something as simple as the prices for different types of shipping is nearly impossible; I'd still be standing there with the notably confused staff (who checked the weight of my package oh about a million times) if I'd been the cheap type.

It was with these bitter thoughts in my head I headed home again: the murder of Anna Lindh, the rejection of the Euro by the Swedish people and the poor excuses for post offices which plague this country. On my way home I thought to myself that this is fucking ridiculous; here we have a relatively well-off country, socialist nonetheless, which is steadily getting worse. All the while, the vast majority of the population has this crazy idea that everything and anything about Sweden is better than anything to come out of any other country. I have no beef with patriotism, per se, but I have a sizable beef with self-deceit; in my book it's a god damned sin.

Subsequent to the murder of Anna Lindh, a lot of people desperately asked themselves and others around them how such a thing could happen or, rather, how such a thing could happen in Sweden. I for one was considerably moved, riveted and appalled as I absorbed what had happened, but I have no illusions about how or why these things do.

High-profile politicians can be seen walking the streets unprotected on a daily basis. Murders and violent crimes happen all the time.

You do the math.

Permanent link