Timothy Birdnow

Folks, the technical difficulties continue, although I am soldiering on with this blog. Weeks ago I heard something break off inside my laptop and start rolling around. Whatever it was lodged in one of the fans and the fan made a horrible noise. I found that it stopped shrieking when I rebooted, but the computer kept shutting down; clearly it was overheating.

I tried bricking it up on a couple of Kleenex boxes, which helped but it still kept shutting down. I tried putting a tiny fan underneath it. That worked better, but it still meant the fan would kick on, making a horrible racket and eventually the thing still shut down. So I then placed a piece of blue ice under the right side. So now I have to write with this thing bricked up, with a fan going, and with blue ice underneath. It's, um, difficult to put it mildly.

I had bought a new laptop some time back and could never get it online. I went to work on it with all dispatch, but to no avail. I decided I needed a professional to work on it so I took it to a computer shop. The shop had it two weeks and basically did nothing. After a week they sent me an e-mail (I told them to call) saying I had given them the wrong password. I knew this was bull; I use the same one all the time and even double checked it. So they threw it aside for another week, and then they called me, but the call dropped after a few words. I tried calling them back on both my cell phone and landline and no ansswer. (Naturally they claimed the problem was at my end.) I went in and was told "you hadn't yet given us permission to do it". I had to leave it another day, and when I finally got it back was told "we couldn't test it, so it may or may not work. Call us back if it doesn't."

Naturally it didn't work. I spent &65 for what appears to be nothing at all.

Of course they could test it; I use DIALUP and all they had to do was plug the damned thing into a phone jack.

So now after weeks of aggravation and a fair amount of money I am back at square one. I really don['t want to use this outfit again, because I feel they just didn't care about my problem. They certainly didn't hurry to fix it. So I'm going to have to find another place to work on it, and am going to have to continue nursing along this decrepid machine, fans whirring and blue ice melting all over the table.

Gee it's a fun life!

On a more serious note, I will be out in April due to yet another eye surgery. Regular readers may remember that I have serious eye issues, and have had two major surgeries on both eyes as well as numerous laser surgeries and injections (those are fun, let me tell you). The primary cause of my problem is the conjestive heart failure that led to an increase in fluid in my blood, and subsequently has caused swelling in the macula (the center of the retina) and has caused blood vessel leakage. Right now I have a clot in my right eye that has made all vision impossible except for a gray paste. My good eye is leaking a bit too and there is some swelling. I am going to have to have yet another surgery in the right eye to do something to stop the bleeding there. I dread this; it means five weeks of enforced idleness, where I will have to lay down the entire time. If I'm lucky I won't have to lay face down; that is a possible outcome of the surgery and I have been twice lucky thus far. I am just not that lucky of a guy.

So I will be out this spring, and hopefully will have some guest host. Wish me luck; if I don't get a handle on this thing I am going to wind up legally blind, and that wouldn't be fun at all.

At any rate, I will continue this website as long as I humanly am able. Please do come back! I lost a lot of readers when I had legal troubles not so long ago, and would hate to lose anyone else. It has been a large labor of love, and I do hope you will stick around.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:48 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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