A New Look

I've been away for most of the month, minding other people's pets and sleeping in comfortable beds, and I returned home here to a few welcoming gestures.

My dog, of course, attacked me as if I was wearing a suit of ham bones, and my computer welcomed me back with a dying video card. I've been restricted to laptops while I was away, and while I certainly am grateful for having them, they've never been my computing medium of choice. I like big screens that I can read without my glasses and that have enough real estate to display all the things I've usually got going on at once, but the biggest advantage of desktop computers is how easy they are to upgrade or repair.

Maybe that's just because I'm used to them. Whatever, given a choice I always jump to my desktop computer and leave the laptop for offline writing.

So, after a moment's cursing and gnashing of teeth, I bit the bullet and bought a new video card. As a reminder of my state, I shied away from upgrading to the best and brightest and just got one slightly better than the one that died. I never used to do that, but I never used to worry about money all that much, either.

Because I'm so well-practiced at it, swapping out the video card took far less time than crawling under the desk and disconnecting all the cables connecting the box to everything under the sun. Then it just took another few minutes to see how all the various operating systems would respond to the new hardware.

That part is always good for excitement. It didn't hurt that my heart was pumping blood that held as much sugar as corpuscles, either, thanks to a generous house sitting gift.

I guess I should feel honored or something that my computer waited until I came back to get sick. Maybe it missed me as much as I did him.