Bad Computer ; Sick Wife

Woke up this morning, futzed around in my office for a while, then went downstairs to find Kimberly as sick as hell. She was very cold, but too sick to get herself another blanket from the nearby couch, and as we talked I learned that she'd gotten very sick during the night and fainted. She used to faint a lot, but hasn't for long as I've known her, so I was understandably concerned.

I was ready to head off to Urgent Care, but Kimberly claimed to be doing better and said she was just tired. I ended up showering with the bathroom door open, and later making sure she had a phone with her at all times so that she could get ahold of me (upstairs). At this point she still seems worse than she has been lately, but not terrible.

So much for the theory that she was getting better.

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Meanwhile, the reason I was futzing in my office this morning was that I hoped my work computer had miraculously recesitated itself. I was skimming BoardGameGeek late last night when suddenly the monitor went black. No exciting pop or smoke or anything, just a blank screen. I rebooted it a couple of times, and it'd look fine for a few fractions of a second on bootup, then drop out again.

I've since skimmed the 'net and found many similar descriptions of this problem with other IBM NetVista machines. The general consensus seems to be that it's the inverter on the LCD circuitry, and that if you're out of warranty you're entirely screwed because it's all built-in. We had a three-year extended warranty on these NetVistas, but that's a year and a half expired now.

Chris is going to be by soonish with a replacement. Hopefully we have one of the exact same models which would allow a hard drive swap, and would get me back up very quickly. If I need to reload everything onto a new machine I'm going to waste much of this week.

Day Looking Up

Well, I didn't get a lot done today, but at least things are looking up.

Kimberly is doing better.

Christopher & I were able to switch my hard drive into a new netVista. We had to swap the wireless card too, for some unknowable reason, but I've now got a working Windows machine again, without having to do any reinstalls.

I tried to send a wire today to an artist working for Skotos, and that wasn't successful because the instructions were so convuluted, and that added to the feeling of spinning my wheels, but hopefully I'll be able to get that out tomorrow.

While I was out I did manage to send my two eBay packages, so at least that's something done.

I'm tempted to say I just shouldn't do any writing tomorrow, since I got so little accomplished today, but that's how the problems always start, so I think it's going to be nose to grindstone and we'll see what happens. On my list tomorrow: Miskatonic University expeditions, and maybe some more input into the rules; at least an outline for a Lovecraft Country story that Chris would like to go with the comic; and those darned elves.

At least I'll have EndGame tomorrow evening to destress after a stressful today, provided that Kimberly is feeling well enough for me to head out.