Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Technological Destruction

Last week was not so good for me.

As you may recall, the old blog broke. Yes, it came back, but it wasn't an easy battle, exorcising all those demons in there. That, unfortunately, was only the beginning of my woeful travails.

On Monday of last week, my computer at work was infected with spyware. *gasp* Yeah, who knew that surfing around on the internet would lead to such a thing! Not I. I swear! Anyway, I got the one where the wallpaper is replaced with a big black box with red letters that reads "Warning! Do not use this computer. It is infected with spyware. You're a very dirty pervert, and you should be punished. This is only a small way of atoning for your sins, you filthy, filthy man. Buy our product, and we'll completely clean up all this here spyware for you. Convenient, no?"

I may have paraphrased that a tiny bit. However, you get the point.

So, not wanting to pay for their product (which would, undoubtedly, put more Chinese espionage programs spyware on the machine), I decided to run a sweep on my own. The computer already had spybot on it, so I ran that. The program did it's duty and I erased a couple hundred dozen things, and I figured things would be good. Only thing was...the spyware warning wallpaper was still there.

I didn't think much of it. I went home Tuesday night, logging off, hoping that it would be fixed when I logged back on. Maybe it needed that switch in order for the spyware to no longer be there. Except, it was still there Tuesday morning. So, Tuesday when I went home, I shut the whole system down. Maybe that would do the trick.

Wednesday...I couldn't log in to the computer. At all. Well, I take that back. I would log into the computer, and the computer would immediately log me right back out. Uh, not good.

Top that off with a phone that wasn't answering when I would pick up the receiver and would randomly cut off and hang up during the middle of a conversation, and I had one dysfunctional desk. I had to call IT and get them to fix me up, which meant reformatting my computer (but it also came with a memory upgrade--nice!). I was more than happy to hand it over for the day, especially if it meant the computer would run faster.

I had all that going for me last week. Along with getting this site up and running so that I could make the switch as seamlessly as possible (thanks, everyone, for understanding and joining me over here), I was getting a little stressed over the amount of gremlins that were plaguing my life.

But, it doesn't stop there.

Moments after Santa squeezed his fat ass back up my chimney, my dryer, overloaded with Holiday Cheer, up and died. Kaput. This dryer is no more. It was not pining for the fjords.

That, I could deal with. A trip to Lowes and the very next day, one large man and two gremlin apprentices carted off my old dryer (after I, alone, unhooked the broken one and hauled it out onto the deck, by myself!!!) and installed the new one. Runs like a top. Dries clothes. Everything you could possibly want from a dryer.

Not one to be upstaged by dryers or HTML code or computers and telephones, my television has decided to start blinking. At first, it was a short, momentary thing, where the picture would blink down into a tiny, dancing ball of phosphers in the middle of the screen. Now, it's doing it more often, so much so that it's no longer a blink but more like a short nap. Interested in finding out where the picture has gone, the sound is now following it.

This could be the straw on the dromedary's back. On one hand, I have the combined President's Day and Super Bowl deals that I can take advantage of. On the other hand, I really wasn't looking to spend $400-$500 on a new television right now. We were planning on replacing the television later in the year, perhaps as a Christmas present, but now...how can I possibly make it through a day without my daily dose of smug Canadian elitism without viewing Jeopardy? How, dammit, how???

So, I present you this: the cathartic end to a parade of technological wonders kicking me in the nuts and stealing the money out of my wallet--blowing up a computer.

I'm not sure which amuses me more, the epic mullet hanging off the back of the camouflage kid's skull or the dude on the bicycle casually cruising along in the background whilst a bunch of hooligans are detonating the cpu of a computer like it's an everyday occurrence.

Being that the mullet's not nearly greasy enough, I'm going with the dude on the bike.