Something strange is afoot at the Circle K...

Well, we had some computer problems. Like bigtime. The pc laptop we had was overheating constantly (sometimes to the point of shutting itself off) and we could hear the computer (fans, probably?) working harder than ever. We worried about losing everything. One day Nat unplugged the power cord from the back and took a look at the connection: voila! There was definitely meltage.

Meltage!!

The plastic around the end of the power cord had begun to burn, and the metal looked weirdly corroded. Upon close inspection, the receiving end of the laptop looked scorched as well. This was not good. Internet searches didn't offer up any concrete answers, but what little we could find seemed to suggest that it was time to back up the ol' hard drive in case things didn't work out for the laptop. Was this the end of days?

Hoping that it was merely a problem (shorted wires?) with the cord itself, we embarked on a long, strange quest to find a replacement that would work with our laptop. Did you know that every computer has its own power cord?

Motherf**ker.

Radio Shack eventually helped us by having one shipped from northern Cali. Guess what? It got extremely hot, within seconds. Because we wanted to be able to return it for our money back (as it now seemed to be a problem with the actual computer, right?), we stopped using the cord immediately and were unable to really delve any deeper into the mystery. The main issue with all of this is that our pc only runs on battery power for about 30 minutes (if you're lucky), which is not really enough time to back anything up, or fully investigate why these problems are occurring.

Computer repair?, we thought? Nope. Apparently Compaq has some sort of moratorium on independent places doing repairs on their precious hardware, so no one was able to help us with that. The student computer tech help desk only fixes dells and Macs, or something, so another no-go there. To have HP itself take a look at it (and only maybe be able to tell us what the problem was) was going to take weeks and cost "anywhere from $300 to $1000". Um, no thanks?

So finally, we shelled out for a new laptop. Did as much research (online tech forums, consumer reviews, people we know) as we could handle, then settled on an answer to our main question: Mac or PC?

Initially i was worried about changing (back) to a Mac because we were so used to the PC way of life. Also, i felt that Macs were pretty much just for graphic design ;). Certainly, most of the damn computer games that we plague ourselves with wouldn't run as well on one, but i almost feel like that is a good thing, now. The screen is quite a bit smaller, which is definitely taking some getting used to (apparently the screen is one of the most expensive parts of a computer, which i never would have guessed but it seems obvious to me now), but otherwise everything is fine.

When i re-opened this blog after all of these shenanigans, on the new Mac screen it looks pretty awful. Incredibly hard to read! I need to change some colors around. Not that anyone reads this anyway....... but if you're out there, i'm working hard for you. Okay? Promise.

So now we need to figure out how to get all of our old information off of the PC and put it onto the Mac. ::sigh:: This is gonna be lots of fun, i can just tell.

In other news: Had a blast watching the Olympics this summer. Never needed the laptop anyway ;) Will probably write about that soon (i know what you're thinking: "yay!") :P

okay, enough emoticons. And enough of this long, boring post about nothing in particular. Who the hell want to read about someone else's computer problems, anyway?!

::in Napoleon voice:: "Gosh."