I knew that my computer was having problems, I knew that I'd need to send it out for repairs at some point, but I didn't realize how bad it was until its connection with the power cord went from intermittent to "Doesn't work unless I hold the power cord in an odd position.
This prompted me to take a closer look and discover that the plastic is warped and shows signs of having melted a bit where the power cord plugs in.
I think it's getting worse even as I type this. I can smell the plastic, and that's definitely new. I'm trying to shut down everything even remotely ongoing, tie up every conceivable loose end, and prepare to be without this thing for an extended period of time since it generally takes weeks for repairs to be done even if they're relatively simple.
The good news is that I haven't had it for that long and I'm pretty sure I got a decent warranty.
The secondary good news is that I have secondary computers. As you may recall, I have no desktop. Well, there's a thing in the other room under a pile of junk that I sometimes turn on for brief periods if I'm looking for information that might have been stored on a then-mostly-working computer ten to fifteen years ago, but in general I operate off of a laptop.
The secondary computers are themselves laptops and netbooks. None of them are exactly in proper working order since they tend to be other people's cast offs (or even ones of my own that require arcane rituals to boot up and never last for an extended period.)
The only one that seemed to be a fully functional computer in its own right has recently demonstrated severe problems when it comes to holding a charge or, indeed, not utterly crashing to deadness when not plugged in (also, no disk drives of any kind.) Hopefully this will not worsen, and thus it will continue to function when plugged in. "Hopefully" because that's my best bet for having a non-intermittent connection to the world outside while this thing is being fixed.
This post is actually being written on Sunday night, but I figured I'd let the Alien: Isolation image post have a bit of time so I'm setting it to post Monday morning. On Monday I will try to migrate anything I'll need in the next few weeks to the hopefully least unstable secondary computer, then trudge this thing over to the store so they can send it to the service place.
Right now I'm trying to get everything I might need in the next few weeks for an as-quickly-as-possible dump onto an external hard drive when I'm awake enough to accomplish such a thing (and hoping it'll actually start again on Monday to allow for said thing.)
Also, the moon is beginning to be eaten by the shadow of the earth as I write this.
I know from experience that this will turn the moon red, and I know from SCIENCE! that this is because we have an atmosphere here and thus light scattering and thus incomplete shadow. We do not cast full black shadows, at least not on things as distant as the moon.
On a side note, even as I try to make sure that any and all loose ends are tied up for the next several weeks, I'm also trying to figure out how to take a picture because my camera has settings for sunsets and waterfalls and landscapes and such, but nothing for, "I want to focus on the brightest light source around, but still catch the surface details on said light source, and --because said light source is off in the distance a bit-- would therefore would like to set my focus to be optimal for something 238,900 miles away, give or take."
So I'm fiddling with manual settings that I generally never fiddle with.
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