Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Okay, well, I guess there’s an explanation that needs going here. So let’s bring us all up to date. In extended bullet point form! The most festive of all bullet point forms. They will be numbered, and you have to read them in that order otherwise they’ll make no sense.

1. The cause of this absense, the reason behind my lack of blogging and general disappearance from the internet, can easily be explained by a small large computer fire. My PSU has (had..) been making odd noises for many weeks. Like, months. Some of you may recall seeing me give the case some percussive correction to stop the fan noise. Well, the other day, while Ian and I were watching Buffy, the power went dead and the picture disappeared. At first, I suspected a power failure, but the lights were still on. I got down and looked at the PC, and then I saw smoke coming out of the vents. I consider myself pretty computer savvy, but it takes an entirely different type of knowledge to fix a computer which has become an electrical fire in the waiting. I turned off the power and removed the case, and the room was filled with an unholy stink, which dissipated along with any chance of getting the PC running that day. I filled the remainder of the evening alternately expressing my disbelief that the PSU had actually blown up and wondering what the hell I was going to do without my main source of TV, music, communication, work and general entertainment.

2. So first opportunity at work, I set off in search of a new PSU. It was a lunchtime in the middle of the week, which was not all that far from when I last went into central London, on saturday, but there’s been some serious changes since then. For a start, I was stuck underground waiting for a Northern line train which never came, losing 20 minutes of a journey to that, and then running around the bakerloo and central lines like a hyperactive rodent trying to get to TCR tube stop and find a computer component shop. Once I got to TCR I had to wait for the police and sniffer dogs to finish inspecting people, and then, shock, horror, I actually made it outside. I started up TCR and it occurred to me I had chosen the coldest day of the year at the stupidest point of the year to be running up and down central london. The kind of cold that burns your nostrils, it was, on the kind of day when it makes far more sense just to walk in the road rather than attempt the payments. I found a shop selling PSUs and forked over £30, and started back. By the time I made it back to work, I was half an hour over my lunch break time and sweating like a pig. I learnt that thermal coat and jumper and t-shirt is far too much attire, even on the coldest of days, when you’re underground and running about.

3. With the PSU bought, I installed it, and discovered that my sound card to be the first casualty of my computer explosion. It later came back to life, but for a while it was a really unrewarding experience trying to play a game or listen to music. Not that I had much time, because I had to stay late in order to complete my 7 and a half hours of work after the lunch break debacle. Luckily, it resurrected itself a few days later, but I guess I’ll press ahead with replacing it. It’s one of the oldest components in the PC, because I had it in the P75, which was years ago. Only my ISA network card can boast similar longetivity. When I opened it to check it wasn’t covered in scorch marks, I noticed a sticker from APS, the computer supplier my friends and I used before they went bust (because they were all crooks or something. The boss got caught with a load of RAM stolen from the company stored under his loft insulation.) This pegs the card at about 7 years old, which is pretty damn long for any computer part.

4. By Thursday, I was well and truly back on the way to having a working PC again, but work stood in the way of testing that theory to any extent. Luckily, it turned out to be a day of winding down. I hate to think what it was like on Friday, really, given how it was on Thursday. I did 3.5 hours of work in the morning, then the backoffice went down, so I decided to see if I couldn’t get to a comic shop and back in under an hour for my lunch break. I succeeded quite well, though the northern line was shut down and in my infinite “wisdom” I mixed up leicester square and picadilly circus, meaning I arrived in the centre of the shopping rush again, totally unsure of which direction to head. I chose one because it mentioned Shaftesbury avenue, which I knew was the right direction. I had luckily chose the right direction, and just as I was going to turn back I saw that I’d found Leicester Square station, and thus I was able to go visit the nosebreathers at Comic Showcase and get the new X-Men comics. The way back was much faster, and even though I didn’t take my sweater this time, I was still way too hot and must’ve looked incredibly odd to the other shoppers walking around in the cold carrying my coat and wearing only a t-shirt. When I got back, the backoffice was still down, so I just read the comics for another free hour of break until it came back up. Of course, Lyndon had been running around the PCs all afternoon installing Quake 3 on them ready for the afternoon, so after about another hour’s work, we stopped for the day and I played Quake 3 for the first time since I downloaded the pre-release Alpha. I wasn’t great at it, but I did win the last game.

5. Friday. I tidied up the house, arranged everything to make it look like there was nothing around worth nicking in case we get robbed this christmas again and came home, had dinner and went to Nikki’s, picked my parents up from midnight mass, and then I was wrapping christmas presents at 2am. Like last year. What a week. Soon the festive season will be over, which is lucky because I’m not sure how much more cheer I can take. Being at work has really brought home the hecticness of the christmas season for the first time ever, so please excuse the preceeding typos. I am running on empty. Time for bed.