Bad JuJu

Well, it's been a week. I think I mentioned before that we finally got a piece of furniture to house the computer and eliminate the kitten-engulfing rats' nest of wires surrounding the desk. Looked nice, too. I have learned from hard past experience to label both ends of each wire before disconnecting things, and though I still had a big pile of wires inside one section of the case (need shorter cables) reassembly was relatively straight-forward.

Unfortunately, even with all cables apparently connected correctly I had lost Internet access. Cable, modem, router, oh my. I felt fortunate when IE7's self-healing capability got the main computer back on the 'net. Alas, nothing worked to re-establish the connection for DH's laptop. Very annoying. Both computers use a wireless connection to the router, both read a strong wireless signal and claimed to be connected, but the little 'puter just couldn't see the web. We even went to great lengths to upgrade IE to v7 (he usually uses FireFox), quite a feat without an Internet connection, but self-healing was not achieved.

Oh well, he was leaving on a business trip, and we set the problem aside until his return. Then he called to tell me little 'puter was belly up with a BSOD. Lousy timing, and he was scrambling to get his presentations together without it.

But it gets worse. On Thursday I was writing my blog post for the day when I smelled a faint odor of electrical burning. It seemed to be coming from the general direction of the bathroom (AKA The Nursery), where the newly-installed fan had been running non-stop for a few days (a definite boon when the kittens have diarrhea). I thought a few choice words about shoddy manufacturing, turned it off, and the smell of burning abated somewhat. I felt around the ceiling, and nothing was hot, so put it on the list of things to discuss with the contractor.

An hour later, the main computer abruptly shut down. Apparently the odor was being pulled across the room by the fan, and the decrease just meant the smell wasn't reaching my nose. So now I get a start-up screen and the computer immediately shuts down. This does not look good.

I was amazed at how much I got done last week without e-mail and blogs to distract me. I briefly entertained the possibility of not replacing the computer, and while I quickly came to my senses I really need to take a hard look at how I'm spending (wasting) my time.

While traveling this weekend it took about an hour on a WIN98 box to re-set Blogger to directly publish my posts via e-mail. (Is it my imagination, or is dial-up getting slower and slower?) Anything you read for the next while will be from my (so far) trusty Treo.

That reminds me... I can post from the Treo, and read comments because they are forwarded by e-mail, but I can't access or enter comments on Blogger. Please don't think I am ignoring your comments. I have greatly enjoyed those entered this week, but lack the ability to respond. And I apologize in advance for the numerous misspellings you are sure to see, between the tiny type and lack of spell-check..

I'm not sure what state my cable Internet connection will be in when I next try, so all networking hints will be gratefully accepted. In the meantime, I guess I'll go shopping...