Sunday, November 22, 2009

This Can't Be Good



I tried to turn my computer on this morning and it wouldn't.

The monitor would. All the little fans inside the CPU and the DVD drive would, and I could hear the hard drive spinning, but the computer wouldn't.

Sweating bullets, of course. At first I thought, well, maybe I did something wrong, because despite enjoying computers and technology avidly, I have a luddite streak that occasionally prompts me to leave the broken-down vehicle on the side of the road and go purchase a horse and cart (which I would also have to abandon on the side of the road because horses and I don't get along). I also did the standard Guy Repair technique, which was to pull the side panel off the CPU to see if I could spot any parts holding and waving little "HELP ME" signs. Nothing but a bunch of dust bunnies, which I dutifully blew out. Thankfully, in my infirmity, I was able to go to the other computer, still happily churring away and connected to the Internet to "diagnose" the trouble. Nothing but horror stories about blown motherboards and melted video cards and other various computer parts hexed and bedemoned, so I abandoned any appeals to the Internet for help.

Then a few minutes ago, my wife came to me in a quandary. She wanted to use our ancient laser printer which was networked through my computer (since mine is the only one with a serial port; who makes computers without serial ports?) So I thought, well, I'll try it one more time. Pushed the button. Five minutes later I was working on this blog entry. Go figure.

Possibilities:

1) Dust bunny in the on-switch area fell out.
2) Demon left to go inhabit the Christmas lights outside.
3) Computer was in fear of my wife needing to print.
4) ?

I'll stick with No. 4. That's the only one that makes sense.

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