The Shallow End of the Pool

My computer crashed earlier this week. I came home from work one night to find the power light on and the fan running, but the computer itself not actually operating. I turned on the monitor and found a blank screen. Nothing was working. I tried every button to no avail. Finally, I just pulled the plug on the damn thing. A few minutes later I tried plugging it back in...and the power light instantly popped on and the fan started running again.

Now, I'm not an expert but I'm not a dummy, either. I've successfully repaired my computer before; hell, I even changed the hard drive a few years ago. But I knew instantly that I was out of my depth. Begrudgingly, I bought the beast into a PC repair shop by me. Turned out that the power supply blew and fried the motherboard along with it. It was going to cost me a couple of hundred bucks, which was a bummer at first. I soon realized, however, that the money wasn't the real price I was going to pay. No, the real price was not having the internet for four days. By the time I got my machine back, I felt like a junkie going through detox. Ever see "Trainspotting?" You know the scene where Ewan McGregor is locked in his bedroom for a week with no drugs and he starts seeing dead babies crawling on the ceiling? It was kind of like that.

I'm all better now, though. The computer is back and up and running now. The first thing I did was check my e-mail. After four days, I had approximately 97 messages waiting to tell me how to enlarge my penis. God, I love the internet.