a New paint job

It's the end of the year and the habits are performing their familiar, high-arching return. Lately, the act of Living has felt like a perpetual battle to break free from the rip-tides of habit. As the road signs of my twenties slowly dissolve into the horizon of my rearview mirror, I am struggling to keep my eyes on the Road. Manic depression has begun to swing me further and further onto the gravely shoulders of the road. The Fear grows that one bad winter could send me into the ditch or wrapped around cement-anchored, telephone pole in the median. It's apparent that preemptive action Must be taken.

Last week, a new gym membership was secured with plastic promises to my debtors. The next step is the purchase of another Thing to add to my collection - a laptop. The dream of a quiet office space will have to be saved for the next Move, either from the Big City or to another tier of wealth alien to my existence. It is time to recognize that my cave is no kind of place to write and the only Hope lies in cafes and bars of Manhattan.

So, after scouring the pages of lenovo.com, toshiba.com, fujitsu.com, dell.com, mobilityguru.com, apple.com, notebookreview.com, laptoplogic.com and numerous forums, I've come the the conclusion that everything is Too Expensive and Utterly Baffling. Whoever is in charge of the numbering scheme for Intel laptop processors should be shot. Years ago, a laptop purchase was made from Dell by yours truly and from that Incident I have learned the two things that I MUST have in this new machine: 1) A decently-sized keyboard, 2) a weight that will NOT render the idea of Portability to a joking quip.

It appears that a Lenovo Thinkpad will be the way to go. A Z60T or T42, perhaps. It certainly isn't the cheapest model on the market today, but it looks like a workhorse. I'm praying that there are some New Year deals to be had in the next week so I don't have to make too many more promises I can't keep.

Then, let the Magic begin...

murder by BIOS

My computer died yesterday, and I killed it. I've spent a lot of time in front of a computer monitor and I've read more than a fair number of hardware and software guides. I took BASIC and Pascal programming classes in high school, taught myself SQL 4 years ago, but I always feel like I don't know enough. Murder always feels a step outside my tunnel vision of knowledge- there's always something that I could miss. I killed partially out of ignorance. I was playing with a gun I didn't know I was loaded called a system BIOS. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of my motherboard neglected to tell me that they were handing me a loaded firearm.

I built my computer three years ago. I'm very proud of it. I had never built a computer before. I did the researh. I studied a number of techie websites, including the fantastic Tom's Hardware Guide and My Super PC. I picked out the components and, for less than a thousand bucks, built a smokin'-yet-affordable system:

Intel P4 - 2.4GHz Processor
ASUS P4PE motherboard
Corsair 512MB memory
Western Digital 120MB 7200RPM hard drive
Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200

Looks great and technical, doesn't it? I went from a crap-ass Dell 'laptop' with a failed battery and floppy drive to an unbelievably fast and stable system completely of my own creation. I could cruise through Battlefield 1942 or Medal of Honor smooth as silk... not counting the occassional dirty look from Kat.

The Achilles heel of the system, however, was the O.S.. Eight months ago, Windows 2000 started giving me error messages. It had developed a glitch wherein Explorer would crash after closing file folders. I lived with it for a while, tried Googling the problem, performed a few tweeks, then endured a little more. Finally, I decided that it was time to start anew. I had a new, 160 GB hard drive to hold my new media files and now was a good time to format the new drive and re-install my system software.

The last 2 weeks have been spent on backup. On Saturday, I unplugged the Beast, hauled it out from under my desk, wrangled the dust bunnies from its innards, then carefully installed the new drive. I'd been dreading the whole process of formatting and re-installing Windows, but by that evening, I had a renewed system with a new, formatted hard drive, and an internet connection. Life was good. It was the easiest installation I'd ever done... then I made the foolish mistake of speaking out loud and telling Kat.

Sunday morning, I was up early and eager to go. I was convinced that I could have my Adobe Creative Suite and iTunes fully installed before Kat even knew the bed was getting cold. I peformed the Dance with Windows Updater and re-booted the system a few times, without incident. I went to ASUS's website to find the newest drivers for my motherboard. As I clicked through, I noticed that there was this convenient, new utility that proudly told me that it could perform a BIOS update without the aid of flash disks.

'Fantastic,' I thought, ' I can update the BIOS, reboot then install Adobe. I ran the utility, chose the newest BIOS, then started the update. The meters filled, telling me that my old BIOS was removed, that the new BIOS was being entered then the install was confirmed- no, wait a sec.

Error.

Did I want to RETRY the installation or EXIT and cancel the installation?

I clicked RETRY, watched the meters do their thing then... another error.

'Ah well,' I thought, fuck it. Best not get too greedy. I'll do the BIOS update some other time.

I EXIT from the utility, then Restart Windows to... a blank screen.

Huh.

I hold down the RESET button on my PC case.

Blank screen. The machine is running, the fans are turning, but nothing is loading. Nothing. Blank.

RESTART.

Nothing.

Oh shit.

RESTART.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh-

Nothing.

I scrambled into the bedroom where my Flintstone-era laptop lies. It was slow, but I had a simple ethernet connection going and right then, it was all the technology I had in the world. I went to ASUS's website. Troubleshooting. I swore. Forums. More swearing. I'm Googling.

Kat peered over the rim of the covers at the tall, sweaty boyfriend who's swearing like a sailor under his breath.

"Are you all right, sweetie," she asked from somewhere between a dream and the adrenaline-fueled reality where I was living.

I dragged my computer out from under my desk. With the motherboard instructions in my hand, I'm threading my hand through the maze of wires, carefully extracting the pin jumper from one set of pegs, and sliding them onto another. Supposedly, I am clearing the CMOS from my drive, but I felt like I was about to turn into one of the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and start hopping around hysterically around the Monolith.

I plug the monitor and keyboard back in and turn on the power.

Nothing.

I take it apart. Try it again. I plug it in, turn it on.

Nothing.

I try removing the motherboard battery - the power supply that keeps the BIOS alive in the motherboard. I plug it back in.

Nothing.

I have a boot disk. I install a floppy drive, enter the boot disk. I plug it back in.

Nothing.

CD-ROM boot disk.

Nothing.

I'm pleading, negotiating, offering my first born for the return of functionality.

Nothing.

I'm telling Kat all about the CMOS. I show her the directions and explain what I'm doing and ask her to read the directions and tell me I'm doing it right. She even holds the flashlight as I try to reset the CMOS for the upteenth time.

Nothing.

Kat Googles. Can't find anything new.

Finally, I had to Admit that... I did it. I had killed my computer with a poisonous BIOS.

Well, what's a credit line if you can't use it, right? I haven't ordered from Newegg in so long... maybe it's time to catch up on old times.