Thursday, September 16, 2010

on computers and geeky kids

Bow your head.
Dear God, watch over my poor pathetic piece-of-crap Compaq as it makes it's way to the great computer heaven in ... um ... India??! Amen.

You ever have one of those weeks? It started out with finding out my 15 yr. old needs his wisdom teeth out - $2700, of which my share is $1600. Then I had my cleaning & it turns out I need dental surgery $1500, my share $900. Closed the pool - new cover because the mice in the shed ate through the (year old) cover we had - $200. Oh, and new pump & filter - somewhere around $500. Old long pants/shirts don't fit growing kid $300. And the final killer....

....on Tuesday night my computer wouldn't start. It's been acting wonky for a couple of weeks, but this time, it showed the Compaq opening logo then went to a fast-flashing curser. It sounded like something was crunching inside. (Maybe there are little computer bugs in there eating the metal?!) The fourth time I attempted to turn it on, the motherboard began to scream and scream and scream. My son (a true giftedcomputer genius - seriously, the kid is building his own operating system from scratch) took it away from me & managed to get it to start. Then he backed up everything on his portable hard drive....documents, photos, folders, favorites, etc. before he let me have it back. I used it for a few hours without incident & shut down.

Wednesday morning, I turned it on and got the same Compaq screen followed by a black screen with flashing curser. On the third try I got ....the blue screen of death! Followed by a message about the bios having a corrupted something or other. The computer then attempted to fix itself. I watched and waited for about 15 minutes as it clicked and groaned. Then...the motherboard started screaming and screaming and screaming. I shut it off & attempted to turn it back on -- nothing except the screaming. It died a spectacular & from the sound of it, a very painful death.

My son came home from school, turned it on (no screaming this time) & got it to the bios screen. He analyzed data for about 5 minutes and declared it dead officially. Then he got in the car with me and made the drive to Best Buy (because I was in serious internet withdrawal) where I purchased a brand new Toshiba Satellite. When we got home, he opened it, cleaned out all the "junkware", loaded all of my software, virus protection, antispam, etc., configured all my settings, downloaded everything he had saved & turned it over to me. So I'm now sporting a brand new kick-ass computer with everything EXACTLY the way I like it and nothing missing --with no mental breakdown in between.

Can I say my son is the most awesome kid EVER?!!!

Oh, computer $500 (on sale) for a grand total of unexpected expenses in one week of....$4000. Egads. Thank you MasterCard.

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