Two Steps Fwd 3 steps back

I thought I was making decent progress in writing new songs a fragment here and and phrase there. Learning new editing features and really liking the new Pro Tools 7.4 version. Then with a click and total silence the Digidesign 003R was DOA. The first thing I do is look at my warranty information and called Guitar Center. The Salesman in the Pro Audio Department tells me to bring it on down.

So I pack the 003R up and head down to the Store where I purchased it only to be met with the traffic congestion of South Center Malls Grand Re-Opening. After 20 minutes of look for a parking place I found one a block away and had to hand carry a fairly large box. Once inside of Guitar Center, the salesman in the Pro Audio Department says "We don't do THAT kind of Warranty" and gives me a 1-800 number to call.

My Warranty is an extended one through Guitar Center which is called the Performance Guarantee which it turns out to be handled by a large 3rd Party Corporation that handles Warranty Administration for hundreds of companies. This one happens to ave recently been bought out which has led to some confusion in account numbers and paper work fiascoes.

SO after calling the 1-800 number and three days, I finally get semi correct shipping information that results in 2 days of phone tag with 3 different companies. The big old 003R box finally leaves the shipping company on a 7 days UPS ground Delivery to Boston to a Company contracted to do the repairs just as I'm leaving on vacation.

I get back from vacation and on my first day back to work I have a voice mail not on the primary contact phone that I needed to call. I don't know whether the message was left on the day I left on vacation or 2 weeks later on the day I got back to work. So I call the Operation Mgr and ask what the phone call was about. I then at this point discover that my broken Digidesign 003R has been shipped to Digidesign in California and the Technician is supposed to cal in a few days. I'm still waiting.

In the mean time I'm chewing my fingers off with ideas on songs with no way of getting it done. Then I get this harebrained idea to get my old M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard up and going and I run into Vista Driver issues that mess all the audio routing up. After 6 hours of tweaking and twiddling around I get it kinda working but the new driver interface and audio routing is messed up. It's taking the analog inputs and routing the audio into both the Spdif inputs and then sends both the analog inputs and Spdif to the mixer so I get a doubling about 11 milliseconds apart. Yuck!

Needless to say, the analog to digital converters of the M-audio are not nearly as good as the 003R, so the guitars sounds like junk. I did figure out how to get Fxpansions BFD Lite 1.5 to work with Samplitude 8.2 without having the install disc which was shipped in the 003R box.

But at this point my wife is wondering where I'm at because of all the time spent trying to get my computing problems resolved to have at least some sanity.

I can't do anything right.