And then the computer died…

Apparently one of the golden rules of blogging is that you should never apologise for the infrequency of posting. So what follows is not so much an apology as an explanation.

The computer died.

Not a short sharp death, but a slow crumbling deterioration and wasting away, until in the end I had to do the right thing and put it out of its misery.

Aside from the regular blue screen that one gets accustomed to with Windows XP the first sign that something was wrong was about 2 weeks ago when I opened up the laptop lid and the screen didn’t come on. Fiddling around with the hinges revealed that there was obviously a loose connection. After that I couldn’t help myself. I was like the child with the fridge door opening and shutting to see if the light would come on. Often it didn’t. Sally (my wife) came up with the obvious soloution – ‘just leave the lid open’.

The next failure was to more the result of direct assault. Me and Ethan (the 5 yr old) found a really cool online game that required you to hammer the arrow keys. After this the right arrow key was stuck fully on. This meant random programs would keep opening. The final failure was due to the 7 month old grabbing a cup of water and pouring it over the keyboard. Now several keys wouldn’t work including Backspace. Result – computer has died. So after fruitless days touring Cebu trying to find someone, anyone who could repair the laptops keyboard and screen – a relatively simple job in the UK – impossible in Cebu. I bit the bullet and bought a new laptop. The cheapest I could get. I looked at Apple’s – very nice – very expensive and you can’t use Messenger. I looked at Sony’s very nice. I looked at obscure Chinese models – pirated software optional, and in the end went with tried and trusted Toshiba. It came with Vista – and so far I’m very impressed. Love the Sidebar!

So now after a week without a computer we are back online, and a couple of hundred pounds the poorer.