Thursday, January 24, 2008

Techincal Difficulties

Two posts in one night? Insanity! Actually I mainly wanted to comment on how writing the posts on my PC does keep all of the crazy layout and size glitches from occurring, but then I remembered what I went through today to actually use my PC.

The story starts simply enough: I had just gotten back to my room after class and decided that I wanted to check online to see what my homework for tomorrow was. I walk up to my desk, turn on my computer and then turn on my monitor, except my monitor doesn't turn on. Mind you, last semester my monitor pulled this trick, which turned out to be a ribbon cable that had fallen out. So, knowing what the problem most likely is, I pull my monitor off my desk and start prying it apart. It's at this point that I run into my first problem, I can't remember how to get the display to disconnect from the surrounding frame.

After a quick call to my dad I'm able to get the frame (which has the port that the ribbon cable connects to on it) off the monitor. Now I hit problem number 2, how do I get the ribbon cable (which has enough slack for my to be able to pick it up if I'm lucky) into the port that it slides out of far too easily (thus why I keep having problems with it). The frame gets in the way of my vision, and my fingers are too big to squeeze in between the frame and the monitor to insert the ribbon cable. After another call to my dad (my godsend in situations like these) I take my monitor entirely apart, tape the backside of the ribbon cable so that it has more slack and then put the frame on first when I put it back together. Finally I take the time and make for sure that the ribbon cable won't fall out again and put it all back together.

Thus it took me two hours to check my e-mail, and to top it all off, in my rage I forgot to take pictures of the whole event. Moral of the story, When you buy a nice monitor, don't try to save money and get it refurbished from a sketchy second-hand site.

-Cory Ragsdale

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