It went POP! And died…
…my computer, that is. Tonight.
Mike and I had gone out for the day to do our usual stuph. We got back, I went online, and POP! The screen went black. And smoke came out the back of the machine. Yeah, it stunk.
So Mike took it apart, and yes, the power source kicked the bucket on me. We’re just hoping that it didn’t take anything out with it…such as the hard drives.
The computer-fixer guy at Mike’s work might be able to help. He has a whole Hugh Jass room full o’ computer parts…perhaps we can borrow a power source, if he has one that’ll fit, and we can see if anything on that machine is salvageable. Still, what will probably happen is that I get a new computer. I just want to be able to put all of the stuph from the old hard drives onto it.
So now I’m using Mike’s ancient laptop, on dial-up. This laptop is almost 10 years old, I can’t install the DSL on it. He never uses it anymore, so he said that I could do what I wanted with it. He has a really old version of Juno installed, the free version. I decided to upgrade it to a paid, higher-speed version…not too expensive, and in fact, it would cost me money NOT to have it now. Free Juno only allows you to be online for just 10 hours a month. That is NOT enough time to get all of the work done that I have to do.  And I don’t know how long it will be before I can either get my computer fixed, or buy a new one.
I’d really like a new one, but if we’re going to spend the money, I’d rather wait until next month, when we’ve saved up a little more money, and get something nice that I really want, not the first, cheapest thing I can find. The paid Juno Turbo dialup is really not all that bad, it’s not expensive (I got a cheap trial offer), and it is a good amount faster than the free one. So I can live with it for a few weeks, I suppose. It sure beats the hell out of having NOTHING.
We don’t have time to shop or fix computers right now, anyway. Tomorrow is pretty much taken up by going to see Spamalot, and going out during the week won’t work. Next weekend, we’re going out to western MA for that Hugh Jass Train Show…so no time then, either.
So, this old Dell laptop it is, for the time being.
After I downloaded and installed the newest Juno software, I also downloaded and installed Firefox. I flippin’ HATE Internet Explorer; if I have to use this dial-up laptop thing, at least I should get to use a decent browser! As I said, Mike doesn’t use this computer, he doesn’t care what I do with it or put on it, so I’m making it my own. I’m guessing that it would cost more to upgrade this one (so that I can install the DSL and all) than it would to buy a new computer, given that prices have come way down. But we shall see. This doesn’t have a DVD or CD burner, and I want at least a CD burner. If we buy a new computer, I can have a DVD burner, too.
This all seriously sucks big fat hairy smelly donkey ‘nads, but it could have been a lot worse, I could have been stuck with nothing, not even this crappy laptop. So all I can do is make the best of things for now!
