Down to One

I have recently activated a stopwatch. This week, I'm going to try to blog each day and each blog entry must be completed within 30 minutes. Let's see how it goes...


Last weekend I installed a faucet!

You may notice in the picture up there, a note hangs suspended above the faucet. The note reads, "sdrawkcaB" which, as we all know is backwards for "Backwards". I connected the water in reverse to represent the... I'm not very good at stuff.

Honestly, I'm just happy the thing hasn't flooded out the bathroom already. I'm actually shocked it hasn't leaked in the last week. Perhaps even more shocking is that Julie hasn't been on me to flip the polarity. I'm a lazy lazy dude.

So, yeah, the faucet thing. We've probably gotten all the mileage out of that we're going to get. That's 10 minutes down and nothing good yet. If you're still reading, that's awesome.

The title of the post refers to my monitor/computer situation. The computing arrangement to which I have become accustomed is:

1. A primary (awesome, fast) computer in the so-called computer room,

2. A secondary computer (older, no monitor) adjacent, and

3. A laptop that runs our TV (netflix, hulu, etc.)

I've been reduced to the laptop. This is hard for me. My only way to cope thus far has been to place myself under a bizarre blog-related geis (noted above, in italics). (Heh, my spell-checker doesn't know "geis." I guess chrome needs to read more sci-fi/fantasy. Though, to be fair, it wants "Heh" to be Hebrew...)

My backup computer is presently filling a noble role. One of my coworkers came to me a little over a week ago with the following tear-jerking story (paraphrased):

I recently purchased Starcraft II, but my computer is too slow to run it! Even with all the graphics at their lowest setting, it still lags and its very unsatisfying to play without all of the death animations and the gore :'(

I'll wait a moment for any fellow gamers reading that last bit to recover...

Well, my heart lept out to him. I immediately offered him my secondary computer (#2 above). Obviously it wouldn't be fast enough to operate at the full graphics settings, but if he were to coax it along and avoid displaying any fur animation (long story), I figured it would at least let him limp along until he was able to buy a proper computer. And thus, I was down to two.

The next to go was my primary machine. It's end was silent and horrifying. The computer itself is still sound, but the monitor is dead. It didn't even have the dignity to explode or smoke during heavy use. After a rousing Friday evening of my own Starcraft II adventures and a stirring bit of midnight PHP development (Julie goes to bed so early!), I carefully turned off my monitor and went to bed. The next morning I got up and pushed the ON button, and... nothing happened.

Operating on the theory that the electronics were feeling rebellious but lacked true conviction, I pressed (ok, mashed) the power button repeatedly -- sending a clear signal that yes, yes I did want something to happen. Anything. Any change would be good. Nothing happened. There followed a rapid sequence of decreasingly scientific diagnostic steps. I won't bore you with the details. I eventually gave up and took a shower.

I'm told that sometimes LCD monitors just die. People throw around fancy words like "inverter" and "electrons". I don't know what they mean, and I took enough electrical engineering courses in college to know that really, in the end, nobody does. It was just dead.

Unwilling to throw my money away on the overpriced junk they sell at our local electronics mega-stores (rhymes with Flaples and Glest Dye), I decided to buy a new monitor online and wait until mid-week to get back up and running. I even resisted the urge to pay an extra $80 to get it here a day sooner. I'm proud of that.

Auk! 35 minutes. Partial fail!