"O.K. Computer"

This (Saturday) afternoon did not go as I planned.

See, I figured it'd be a nice, leisurely afternoon spent finishing up my laundry (only got half of it done...though it was the important half), maybe watch a little anime, maybe take a walk to continue my assault on my weight (hey, lost five pounds this week).

But all of my plans changed when I came back from grabbing my laundry from the dryers. As I entered the apartment, I noticed a strange smell of burnt wiring. "Strange," I thought to myself, "that smells like burnt wiring." As I made my way back to the computer room, the smell only got stronger. I'm not yet worried, but I think you could say I was mildly concerned. I reach the computer, and notice that, while I had left the machine running while I was out, it was no longer running. "Odd," I think to myself, entering the state of mind known as "mildly panicked." I reach down and hit the power button. Nothing. Nada. Enter stage "freaking out." I hit the button again. Again, nothing. Again I hit the button, as if the previous two tries were mere aberations and hitting the button a third time would magically make the computer go, "Oh, wait, I'm supposed to turn on now, aren't I?"

So I'm freaked completely out. I call up my parents' house, trying to reach my father, but he's not there. I call his office. He's not there, either, but the woman who does tech stuff there happens to answer the phone, so we make a plan--I take a trip to Shawnee, try to drop my hard drive into my old computer (the one I got when I was going to Ozarks back in 1999) and make sure I did't lose any of my files when my computer putzed out.

I get to Shawnee, pick up the computer, and start swapping out hard drives. I get everything switched over, plug in the old Compaq (aka the Comcrap), hit the power button, and get a message which does nothing for my already frazzled and jangled nerves: "Unable to load operating system." "Oh sweet Mother of God," I think, "I've lost everything."

As a last ditch effort, I call up the tech woman again, and she says there's another computer out at the office I can try popping my hard drive into that isn't a Compaq. Thinking that maybe that will make a difference, I rush back out to the office, swap out hard drives again (in like a quarter of the time it took to swap the drive into the Comcrap), and fire the new computer up. Miracle of miracles, the computer booted up, no worries, and I hadn't lost anything.

So I've got a loaner tower with my hard drive dropped in it right now. It's not my computer, really, but it works for the time being. It means I don't go without access to my stuff.

Now, the question remains: what happened to my computer? The only thing we can figure out (and I've talked not only to my dad's tech person, but my uncle and another friend of ours, Tom, who does IT for some big company) is that my power supply got fried. Guess that's what I get for leaving my computer turned on all the time. If it is the power supply, then I'm in luck--my uncle has a spare at his house that I can have. He and I can probably pop a new power supply into the computer easily. It'd definitely be cheaper than paying someone else to take my computer for a week, buy a new power supply, and let them do the work. I mean, free versus potentially hundreds of dollars (I've no idea how much they'd charge or how much a power supply even costs, but I'm sure that, with my luck, it wouldn't be cheap).

Anyway, long story short, my afternoon plans were shot pretty well to hell. All thanks to technology. Stupid damn technology.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Radiohead, "Paranoid Android"