Randy, your computer's on fire!

Not exactly the most wonderful way to wake up in the morning. Yet several days ago, that is exactly what came bellowing from the kitchen as I was still trying to fully awaken - a process that normally takes me about a half an hour, but that morning only took seconds. I rushed to my computer (which is not in the kitchen, but adjacent to it) and heard several loud pops and smelled the telltale smoke of frying electronics. I've been down this road before with poor quality power supplies, and I simultaneously cringed both on the inside and outwardly.

I quickly yanked the power cord, disconnected the signal cable, powered down my computer, and unplugged it too, just for good measure. I've been running dual monitors for nearly 8 years now, and I don't know how I'd keep my sanity without them. I can have music players, browsers, email, and photos all open at the same time without interfering with each other. I loooove it. The last couple of days have been rough. Today, I had finally had enough of the lonely, blank screen on the right side of my desk. It was toast, out of warranty, and doing nothing helpful. I had three options.

1. I could simply toss it and accept that I would have to shell out a couple hundred dollars for a new monitor that wouldn't match the existing one - naaaa!
2. I could buy two new monitors that matched for closer to $500 - Hell no.
3. I could tinker

Oh yes, let the tinkering begin! Now I do have experience with electricity, electronics, and mechanics in general, so it wasn't just a shot in the dark, but I didn't have high expectations. Usually, when sensitive electronics go south, they do so in style by frying the tiny transistors that you cannot see or possibly hope to repair. I was hoping for a blown capacitor. That, with a little work, I could probably fix. What I found was a traditional Hawaiian electrical short-circuit.

A gecko.

Fried.

On the circuit board.

After removing said charred reptile (he was tiny, at about 1 inch long), and cleaning the traces the best I could, I reassembled the monitor and crossed my fingers. Success! Dual 19 inch LCD web-browsing bliss!

This goes to prove that when you have little to lose, it doesn't hurt to try to repair stuff, and that Geico will be recieving a strongly-worded letter from me about the practices of their spokesanimals.

I wish I had taken pictures. Sorry. I say this is common because in Hawaii, these little bastards get into everything. I love them. They're cute, and they eat insects, but they have the two undesireable traits of getting into everything and pooping all over the place. I find gecko bodies in the bussing of old electrical panels all the time. "Oooh, this is nice and warm. and. tingly..." 240 Volts across the bussing does them in every time.

Time to detox my computer

I came home today to find that my wife had been perusing the web on my rig. No big deal. She has her own computer, but mine is usually running or more convenient. What I found was very disturbing though. Many, many searches for "pink beanbags." Apparently, she has some decoration ideas for our (~18 month old) daughter's room. Ugh. Pink already? Yet again I will be condemned to the "pink" isle at the toy store? *shiver!* I feel the need to go burn something, or beat something with a wrench. Maybe I'll pour motor oil on something, light it on fire, and beat out the flames with my Craftsman toolbox.

Pink.

This is how I feel right now:
The scene in Monsters Inc. where Boo sneezes on Mike Wazowski, and he sprays his eye with disinfectant.

(I tried hard to get a picture or clip of that scene, and then gave up)

I told you so

Anyone who works with computers long enough knows that you have to make backups. Backups of everything. Backups of backups. I was up until about 3AM the other night trying to get my gallery running right again. My control panel, like most computers or programs I come into contact with, was having issues and although I tried, it would not properly back up my albums. So, when I lost my patience and said, "To hell with it!" and reinstalled my gallery, I knew I was going to have to re-upload all of my pictures (Yes, I have learned a little. I have all of the originals on my machine, with redundant backups on hard drive and DVD).

What spoiled any hopes of joy was that my brand-new installation of Gallery had the exact same issues with resizing images that the old installation did. This means the issue was related to my web host provider (who I am now convinced I need to change after 7 faithful years and continually degrading service - screw you Aplus.net!!) and that I am back to square -30. I now have to recustomize my gallery and upload all the photos and organize them again, assuming they can find and fix the problem (ImageMagick?) with the graphics toolkits and/or PHP. Maybe they could finally fix it so it doesn't take 60 seconds to load (it used to only take 4)! As long as I'm starting over, I might as well jump to a new host provider. I just hate the idea of spending several hours reading reviews on hosting providers and trying to figure out which ones (reviews) aren't fake. It's easier to just lick my wounds and whine about it. Waaah.

Sigh

Messing with the website. And by messing with it I do mean probably screwing it up.....

She turned me into a newt! ....It got better...

For those who may have missed my subliminal message of comedy lurking within my political strife;