So…I’m sure you’re wondering where the heck we’ve been, and why, when we come back to life, we’re spewing out stories about aptly named dumbasses and…gross individuals. Were we gone for an awesome vacation? Were we in a coma and don’t even realize we’ve missed almost a month? Well, if all else fails you can blame it on me.
Ah hell I like that song anyway.
The thing is I haven’t been feeling well, and I’ve had to work from home. And when that happens, the place where the one functioning computer is becomes taken over by laptop and stuff. And then on the weekends, I don’t mean to but I tend to hog the computer. So with me not feeling well, and poor Steve not getting much computer access, it’s hard to post.
I wish this whatever it is had a name aside from the curse words I call it. All I know is it’s making life pretty miserable and limited and the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I can’t find a pattern either. The only thing I can surmise is either my body doesn’t like being gallbladderless, or it has a hate on for multiple blood pressure medications. Either way, it’s messing with me something awful.
The strange thing about this mystery illness is that every day is a different ballgame. Some days I question my sanity and wonder why i’m working from home and seeing doctors and turning into an honest to god pincushion. Others, oh god am I glad I haven’t left the house. Every day I spin the roulette wheel and see what it lands on. And sometimes I get a bonus spin through the day that changes the day’s course completely. So yeah. It’s weird. And it sucks. And it’s nameless. And it may not have a name for the foreseeable future.
By some miracle, for which we have May to thank for helping us discover, Steve’s dead computer has come back to some form of life. In fact, it has lived since about Monday night without incident. I don’t know how long that will hold, since computer fixit geek types looked at his computer and went “gaa? get a new one?” But we’ll take it until he gets a mac, which he was waiting to do until the fall in case, while they were rolling out dumb watches and strangely-named phones, they might throw a surprise mac mini at everyone. But until then, woohoo, we have a 2-computer household again. Some posting is possible!
So yeah, that’s where we’ve been. And man, are there a lot of stories we’ve seen that are stuff we’d want to post. But things may still be kinda all over the place because Frankenputer might re-die, and who knows what road I have to travel with this mystery illness thing. So, wish us luck.
Yes, this really does suck, in every possible way. It sucks for you going through it, it sucks for me watching you go through it and other than helping you remember things and doing stuff for you feeling pretty well helpless, it sucks that there’s no name, no patterns and no timeline for its departure, it just…sucks!
But it’s super cool that the old dead computer came back to life. It means that the $350 or $400 or whatever it was I spent trying to revive the stupid thing long enough to get the rest of my files off of it won’t go to waste after all. At least something decent has come out of all this garbage.
There were no surprise Mac Minis unless I missed something, but with everything going on right now getting a new computer is a little ways down the ‘ol priority list.
So… When do we find out exactly what went screwy with Steve’s comp, and how in creation yall fixed it? Curious geeks are curious.
When it originally went bye bye and I called the dude in to fix it, it needed a power supply, a video card and various dickitry that might could make the failing USB ports work again so as I could get everything onto the external drive I had sitting here, waiting for stuff to be put on it. It also had a battery issue that had been going on for a little while, as in if the power ever went out, the machine would decide upon reboot that it was New Year’s Day, 2002. I wasn’t so worried about that since it was bond for the bin anyway just as soon as I could run it juuuuust long enough to transfer stuff.
When guy brought it back, he said it was a bitch and a half to get going, but he did it. So of course, wen I pay him and he leaves, I fire it up again and it does…nothing. At all. Not even a friendly beeping message from the bios saying that something done fucked up. But after a few rounds of turn it on, wait, turn it off, wait, turn it back on, repeat, it boots up. Oh, thank Christ. Let us celebrate this joyous da…fuck! Why’d it just stop responding to keystrokes? Oh, because it died. Hard. A few more tries over the next day saw it stay up a little longer, but not long enough to do anything of much value like, say, finish a file transfer of any great size. I had a few of those, so naturally I was not the happiest fellow you ever did see. But I was comforted by the fact that if nothing else I knew the drive was good, so everything could sit there without incident until I was in a position to do something about it.
But for one reason or another Christmas, scheduling issues, much of 2014 being cordially invited to suck my cock, that position isn’t one in which I’ve found myself yet.
But the other day when May was talking about needing a book for a class, it hit me that hey, I have one of those books marooned on what we started calling The Asshole. I thought shit, what have I got to lose, let’s see if it’ll fire up. And after F2ing past the friendly beeping message from the bios saying that something done fucked up, it started without further protest. I got the book to Carin, who got it to her and everyone was happy.
Meanwhile, I thought to myself hey, Asshole hasn’t died yet. Wonder how long it’ll stay up. So I started transferring files. It let me, so I did more. By the end of the night, I had everything where I wanted it and it hadn’t died. So of course I thought hey, wonder what I can put this thing through before I kill it for good. So I started patching and updating the living hell out of all the software because XP box, and now I’m using it. It’s only crashed on me once, and it was one of those that it had been known to do from time to time. Everything I’ve put it through it’s pretty much taken like a champ with the notable exception of Twitter. It does not enjoy being subjected to any of the 3 blind dude clients to which I have subjected it. But I can live with that.
So yeah, that’s the story. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened had I tried turning it on again sooner. But at least I have it now until it dies again for good. And hell, at this point it owes me nothing, so when it goes I’ll be sad but largely ok.
And with that, so ends what may be the longest comment in VC history.
Hey there, stranger. Been wondering what was happening.
So sorry you’ve been suffering through an unknown misery (I know what that’s like) and hope getting back to your fan club will help. Meanhile, I’ll be thinking about you.
Hi, Steve – thanks. What do you think about last night’s Giants game? I am still in shock.
Boy, did they ever get thumped. Not the kind of thing you ever expect to see. I’ve seen some bad games, but getting shut out 17-0 isn’t something that happens every day. the father son manager pitcher thing was kind of neat in a historical sense, though. Shame the kid didn’t do so well.
Yep