3.22.2006

It's alive!

ORN: See another post.

OKay, so, on Saturday, after determining that the Bonus Fairy was good to us (well, to my wife) this year, we went computer shopping. And, we "settled" on something a little closer to top of the line than what we had been looking at several months ago. Instead of starting with 1 gig of Ram, I got 2. And a 19" flat panel. And a nice, fast processor.

Due to various and sundry reasons, it sat, unopened, until Monday. (I had gaming on Sat night, which was a legitimate geek activity. Sunday, I did some other random geek things, but hadn't finished clearing off the desk in order to properly enshrine the new machine.) So, Monday night I pull it out, plug it in, and start going through the initial setup routine.

Halfway through, the whole screen kind of shifts, and then blurs out of focus. I can make out vague details, but print is basically not going to happen. So, I pretty much exit out of setup, power down, check all the connections, and start up again. Same problem.

Nuts. OKay, disconnect monitor, repack monitor, back to the store. Whereupon they plug it in, and it looks fine. I shrug, they shrug, I check the in-store machine to ensure that there is only one monitor port, and discuss possible solutions - among them, that the computer might be the problem.

I go back home, set everything up again, watch as the screen futzes out again. Store is closed at this point, so I have to wait until tomorrow. I'm annoyed, and upset - there is a short period (well, 2 weeks) to bring back some defective merchandise - I'd like to run roughshod over the equipment while it is still under that grace period.

I cart everything upstairs, so that it is out of the way of the son when he goes about his daily demolition derby downstairs, and try a couple more things. I test old monitor vs new machine, new monitor vs old machine, etc.

Yesterday, I pack up everything while he is napping, and, once my wife gets home, take the machine and the monitor back. This time, when they power up the monitor, it looks a little blurry from the get-go, which is a huge improvement over what it did Monday night. After a few minutes, in which it gets progressively worse, they send back for another monitor. They hook it up to my machine, and I tell them that I am going to wander around the store for a while before taking monitor #2 home with me.

Some time later, the monitor is still happy, so I go home, and install some software which is supposed to help transfer all the files from the old PC to the new one. Software is installed, but old machine does not recognize the USB cable. At all. Anywhere. After messing around with it for half an hour or so, I say "To hell with this!" and head for the basement. A few minutes of searching rewards me with an old Ethernet cable I had stuck away. A few minutes work allowed me to set up a LAN between both machines, and, once that was done, the software worked pretty darned well. Considering that, given the inability of the old machine to burn CDs anymore, it was money well spent.

That process, however, takes all of last night. (Not shocking, considering that I shoved something like 20 gig of data over that poor little cable. And that the program needed prodding from me, telling it to ignore certain issues.) So, today, I get ready to connect to the 'net on the new machine, and. . . Nothing.

Kinda like the scene from Empire Strikes Back, where they go to escape, and the hyperdrive completely fails. No connection. Nothing. All lights are green on the cable modem, but no one is home.

Doh! It doesn't transfer the drivers. This might be problematic. I disconnect the modem, hook up the old machine, hook up the modem, find the drivers, and, despite the advice of tech support (since I cannot find the install disk - for all I know, it's in Omaha somewhere), manage to finally get the modem working.

So, I am sitting here now, with a new keyboard (which feels strange as all get out), and a huge monitor, and life is gooood.

Now all I have to do is hook up the remote, and figure out how to watch television on this thing.

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