It's been a lazy day today... not a lot of work I can do when I can't access my work. If you haven't seen my laments elsewhere, I shall just be brief and say: my laptop has died. For most people that's an inconvenience, but my laptop was my whole business, not a side thing I used for traveling. It seems that it's the motherboard that's dead, and in theory, the hard drive should be fine. So I bought a thingie that I can put the hard drive into to use it as an external drive on a new computer I also bought (it's been an expensive week!). But it turns out the enclosure was for ATA drives, and my drive is a SATA drive. So I got to use Amazon's One-Day Shipping for the first time ever when ordering one that works with SATA. Hopefully it'll be here tomorrow, if their claims hold true.
So when that finally shows up, I'll be busily trying to rebuild my life/business. But you know, I'll never get it back just how I like it. Half the programs I won't be able to get installed and working, some of the data I won't be able to wring out of there without the installed program that created it, and who knows what other surprises. But, I'm taking the long view on that. Five years from now, my entire computing experience will be totally different than it is now (I'm not predicting holographic transmissions or anything, just that I'm going to be 'always' using a completely different set of programs than I use now). It's always changing. You just adapt, and enjoy the clean new computer that runs nicely! I won't install everything I used to have, a lot of things will just be new and different. That's how we roll!
It does have a pretty weak video card, though - that's what you get when you grab something off the shelf at Best Buy as an emergency purchase. So I think I'm gonna buy a new video card, and a new monitor since this one flickers and snarfles at random (ironically, it's a Gateway monitor from a computer I had maaaaany years ago, and now it is once again serving a Gateway! I'm sure it's glad to see family again as it sits on its deathbed). But we'll spread those purchases out a bit, perhaps. This has been enough for a while!
Oh, and I bought an iPod Touch - for
business purposes mind you. Not just a giant waste of money. I hope. It's cute though. I think when a block of aluminum 1/4" thick and hardly bigger than a credit card is playing you a video it's inhaling from the air, you are truly in the realm of technology indistinguishable from magic.
But for now, until I feel very rich again, I am laptopless. I will greatly miss Library Club, and Living Room Club. I guess I could go to the library and surf on my ipod, but that's... limitied. I might try getting HP to repair my laptop, but I'm pretty sure it's
long past warranty, and from what I heard, it's a repair that would literally cost more than the new computer. Caution: do not buy an HP dv-series laptop (dv9000, etc). The guy at the computer repair place had no less than 3 of them in store
at that moment (not counting mine!), all with burned out motherboards. And those clearly weren't the first three he'd seen.
