Unlucky After All
I was thinking today about how this whole Friday the 13th stuff is so absurd. The day had been sunny, there was a 3 day weekend coming up, and of course it was Friday. But I was completely wrong. I came home, and noticed that my computer had totally frozen. At first, this didn’t mean too much to me since my computer had been acting up all this year and last. Upon reboot, however, it became apparent that this was no ordinary Microsoft problem. I blue-screened every single time and could not successfully load Windows XP once. I had just replaced the hard drive a few months ago, and I began to think that the problem lay in my ancient Dell computer. Dell may have gotten high marks for service in the past, but lately I have begun to think that perhaps their products are not good values. I question the corners that they cut. The exact same problems had plagued Bunky’s last Dell as well. It seems that after 2-3 years, the unit becomes extremely bloodthirsty and can only be satisfied by feasting on the blood of virgin hard drives. This was the third hard drive I had gone through with this PC, and I had replaced the IDE cables a few times as well. WTF! I considered the quick fix of yet another hard drive, and instead decided it was time to get a new computer. I guess maybe that is the silver lining, although I don’t exactly have large amounts of money. I got a value unit from ABS, which I had read good things about. I had originally planned on saving up to get an uber computer, but now I think it’s not worth it. They are always outdated so quickly, and now I hear they are phasing out AGP ports in favor of PCI Express (which are going to be backward compatible). Just when I had finally gotten out of PCI limbo to embrace AGP 8x, they decide that they’re going back =(.
I figured I would buy a just good enough computer to last me until they make games that I can no longer run (again). In fact, I totally cheaped out and got an Athlon 2800+ with 333 FSB, Radeon 9600 128 Mb Video Card, 80 Gb Hard Drive, 512 Mb DDR333 RAM. My CD drive doesn’t even play DVDs. I’m not even sure how fast the Athlon is, and quite frankly I no longer care. I am guessing it’s about the equivalent of a P4 2.25 MHz, but there is a very good chance I am wrong. I didn’t want to have to deal with my cruddy Dell that had almost no upgrade ability anymore. When a computer fries your hard drives like they were burgers, it’s time to let go. I’m especially mad it died on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend, as opposed to a Monday morning. That’s just spiteful. I’m using Bunky’s laptop, and probably won’t be updating Sea Slugs! (which has just gone live, ARGH!) as much for the next week. That is a real shame, since I had been looking forward to making fun of the latest episode of Chrno Crusade and Jubei 2. ABS doesn’t fill orders over the weekend, so this PC probably won’t even ship until Friday, maybe even next next Monday. Until then, maybe I will spend some more time at the gym. Or I will just watch more TV (caught the Rookie-Sophomore NBA All-Star game… they don’t even pretend to play defense!).
The experience did congeal several ideas that had been sloshing about in my head for some time. One, don’t buy a Dell. Their laptops have had shoddy performance and reliability according to Bunky, whose 1L classmates mostly own Dells. Their desktops prey on hard drives. Secondly, the pain in the ass process of making backups is worth it, especially if you suspect something is wrong. Yeah, I lost my hard drive, but I have the most recent version of all my art and my KOLAAP site on CD (yeah… I update that rarely…). I only lost a few episodes of anime, and not that many important ones. I had backed up my various other important files a month or so ago. And I was smart enough to print out a copy of that awful randomly generated gibberish that Playonline makes you use for your login, for when I have 4 hours to spare to reinstall FFXI. Man, I had just gotten my subjob, too… My Mog plants are all going to die again =(. Thirdly, and finally, just when you think you’ve made it out of another Friday the 13th, like a bad sequel it will rise again to cause you pain.
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