Is It Supposed To Sound Like That?

First off, I had another great weekend in Blacksburg, and I can mark down another Midwinters dance. I'm sure Gina will have the pictures up at some time or another, if you want to see us be dancin' fools. Our group also met Steve the Pirate, who works at Kabuki's in Christiansburg. His mother was half-pirate, making Steve 0.25 pirate. Honest!

My computer has been sick for a long, long time. The culprit is no virus, however, nor does it have worms. The best analogy I can give you is that it is showing many signs of old age. You might recall me grumbling about the barking seal noises as far back as when I moved up here in August. After that, I played a cat-'n'-mouse game of trying to find out which component was actually making the noises, which led to a months-long power supply replacement scheme. With the barking noises absent since my parents were here, I thought I had finally given the ol' girl a new lease on life, but now I believe the hard drive is starting to croak. At the very least, it's not spinning up like normal, which leads me to believe either the power supply is faulty, or the primary hard drive is going bad (again - or rather, it's having a relapse from last spring).

So, I've just about had it. I could keep replacing parts, but now the only original components on this thing are the motherboard, CPU, the sound card, the floppy drive, and some of the input jacks. At some point, you have to say "Enough!" and take the plunge in getting a new machine.

Now begins the task of figuring out how to go about getting a new computer. I like the appeal of the do-it-yourself approach, where I order a bunch of parts and sling them all together myself, making a custom-built powerhouse. However, I lack the time and energy to do that correctly. That leaves going with a big company, which I'll probably end up doing, even though computer purists think they all suck.

I never said I was a computer purist. :)

Another downside that just came to mind: I don't really have the money to buy anything right now. Blast. Back to dreaming, back to square one, and back to pleading daily with my hard drive to not blow up before I can find another easy solution.