The last 72 hours has been a costly pile-up of bills for me and for the next few days my beloved computer room, my blogging space, my physical my-space, will not be my favourite place.
Taking inventory
Yesterday morning, before work, I downloaded a few pics to clear my camera memory. My computer is falling apart (can’t remember exactly, but its about 3 years old), but with the decent amount of RAM that it has, it still serves diligently, and I can even edit video on it.
The CPU battery has croaked, but that’s not a problem unless the power goes out, which then requires a time reset. The power goes out frequently. The fan is also on it’s way out, and sometimes needs a manual kick-start (sometimes just a normal kick also works) to get it going – which is also not a problem as I leave the casing open for better ventilation anyway, and it’s easy enough to reach in and give it a flick (or kick, depending).
However, my flat panel LCD is only slightly older than a year though. I had to get it separately as the CPU was given to me without a screen. Last night when I got home, I switched on the computer and went into the other room. I have a dual boot with Windows XP and Sabayon Linux (which I never use really, but Linux is the default boot menu selection). By the time I got back to the room, Sabayon had loaded and the familiar orange log-in screen was waiting for me, but with a very weird graphic to the right of the screen. I looked at it briefly, but not long, as I was anxious to reboot to get into XP and start working.
WTF man
When Win XP had loaded, the same odd graphic was sitting there, but in different colours. I did a double take. Upon closer inspection I saw that the graphic was in fact shattered liquid crystal, which ran behind the mesh of what was now my broken LCD. Even closer scrutiny revealed what looked like two points of impact. But there’s honestly nothing to explain what caused it.
I live alone, I left it in one piece this morning, came back and this had happened. Perhaps one of those little lizards had a fight with a cockroach and they had a kung-fu fight ala Matrix on the screen and Agent Cockroach Smith smashed at Lizard Neo, who ducked and Agent Smith smashed right through the mesh of the screen.
Updated, much much later: Of course there was another explanation for this. My gf at the time was staying over at my house every now and then. I didn’t mention it originally, because I was embroiled in (yet another) xyf saga, plus I think she was in limbo with her ex bf, and I didn’t want to give anyone any ammo. She had been at home that day, and would sometimes use my computer.
But she denied, tooth and nail, that she had anything to do with it. I don’t remember if it was pre or post this incident, but she once told me that if anyone ever accuses you of anything, deny, deny, deny, and the truth will never be proven, even if heavily suspected. With that comment as context, I have often pondered things she had denied in and after our relationship…
Electronics, as broken as my spirit
My mood slumped, and thumped audibly on the floor.
Then, over the weekend, I got a quote for what I thought was minor damage to my car, but the minor impact fractured the headlight’s support arm, and much like the LCD, to fix it, would cost as much as replacing it. Even if they used non-OEM parts, and replaced the headlights, the exercise will still set me back a good RM700 to repair.
Add to that the fact that the LCD screen will cost me at least another RM650 to replace and there goes the Christmas kitty. I snapped a few pictures of the broken screen to uploaded in my time before work this morning, but when I plugged in my Blue Tooth dongle that didn’t work either.
At first Windows recognised it, but it didn’t want to identify my phone. I then I unplugged it and replugged it in, only for Windows to pretend not to even know what it was. “Please,” it said politely, “remove that foreign object that you stuck in my hole”. This toy luckily is only around RM20.
So anyway, I had an active weekend with loads of pictures, but I just couldn’t blog last night. My LCD sitting there with it’s broken black eye, multi-coloured puss dripping from the wound.
What to do but sulk?