Unusually, this latest delay in my posting schedule has been due to some rather significant computer problems. Most of the time, my lack of blogging is solely due to a PEBE scenario. (Problem Exists Between Ears, a variation of the PEBKAC difficulty: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.) [Minor Edit: This acronym is now officially in the Urban Dictionary.]
Yet this time...
Facedesk. Serious, undiluted, without hesitation, repeated facedesk.
In mid-August, my hard drive decides to retroactively join the Heaven's Gate cult and commits suicide. Great, huge gngngnaaaarch-ch-ch-ch sounds as it gives up the ghost, magic smoke, flames, sparks, the ghost of Harry Caray singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"... While my computer never exactly stopped on a dime and gave me a nickel change, it at least could plod along with the better of them. Yet without that magical operating system, it suddenly became a paperweight bigger than my dog.
Okay. Fine. Not that big. But definitely bigger than my cat.
So. Fast forward 1 week until I have my paycheck in hand so I can buy a new hard drive. Install hard drive, install XP, install frequently-used programs, start installing infrequently-used programs...
pop
Huh?
And now magic smoke comes from my CPU. Friendly happy magic smoke. We all love that magic smoke, don't we? (No. Not that magic smoke, you drug-addled freaks.) Closer examination also reveals a deep-fried mobo as well as a dead power supply.
*headWALL* and repeat ad infinitum.
No computer. At all. Period.
By the fourth hour, I'm starting to go into significant withdrawal symptoms. Shaking hands, nervous glances over my shoulder, constantly muttering at my dead box, saying things like "Just one more website, man! That's all I need!", extreme paranoia, a tendency to try to click on top of people's faces to try to get them to expand on whatever they had just told me... It was pure misery. Suffering. Frustrated, Incorporated. Yet instead of getting murdered in my sleep for my insanity, we came up with a much better plan.
Between myself and my roommate, we gather about $700 over the next 6 weeks in order to buy a whole new computer. For us, that's a fairly significant chunk of change, and not one that can be taken lightly. So I started sniffing around and found the very nice folks at Micro Center, who then, after hearing my tale of woe, decided not to laugh at my pitiful existence.
Instead, they sold me this.
Don't tell my roommate how little I paid for it. I used the spare cash to get a new monitor, a better keyboard and trackball, a few stacks of DVD-R, some Flash keys... Well, you get the hint.
And after everything was done, then I went for a beer or few. I needed them.
And now, to eat something besides meatless and sauceless spaghetti for the first time in a month.
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