Curse is over?
August 16, 2008
Maybe it’s a bit early to announce this but I think my curse is over.
I mentioned a few days ago that my camera is being fixed. That’s one good piece of news as of late.
On Monday, wifey and I hauled the dead laptop, dead camera, and a bunch of Haagen Dazs gift certificates out to Yodobashi Camera. I recently noticed a repair center in the basement and thought I’d give it a try. What would I have to lose with a dead camera and computer already?
For one thing, I would lose my life savings. To fix the camera, the dude gave an estimate of 18,000 yen. No way guy! Again, reading some forums online, Fuji is repairing this problem for free. Hence we made our way to the Service Center.
Next, we went to the computer repair center – it’s in the same place but they have an individual counter for computers. The guy did a quick looksee. He plugged in the AC, tried turning it on, and then turned it off. What the heck? Just from that he said it was probably a motherboard problem. Oh yeah, he estimated that it would cost about 60 to 70,000 yen. I can buy a new laptop for that.
Actually he didn’t say “motherboard” exactly, he said, and I translate, “It’s a foundation problem”. OK. A computer’s foundation can mean anything. For me, the fundamental component is the motherboard but to my lovely, hardware-illiterate wife, it just might well be the nice shiny plastic box or case. Unfortunately I also thought the same but I made my guess by opening up the laptop and testing stuff out piece by piece.
The vast quantities of ice cream consumed after helped sooth my frayed nerves. I was hauling my very heavy laptop in the hottest time of the year, oh and with a big sunburn on my back. Ice cream saves all. Whenever I feel my temper flaring, I will think, “What would Ice Cream do?”
Wifey tried to console me on the loss of my laptop. I, however, would not give up so easily. Coming home, I opened up the laptop and examined each component down to the dust particles. I noticed a couple of things: a screw holder thingy had become very loose – it was hanging on by millimeters of metal. It came off completely as well. Since the issue was power, I guessed that maybe this little metal thingy was somehow shorting out the board. Out it went. Then I noticed some melted paint near some transistors near the video card. The video card gets really hot and probably melted it a long time ago. I wasn’t sure how the melted paint might affect things but I scraped it off.
Slapping everything back together and plugging in the AC… hmm… no amber light! Power on… Yup. It booted up. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the motherboard. I had won. I wanted to go back and spit on the guy who didn’t even bother looking at my computer.
I just hope it stays alive this time. I’m writing this update on the laptop watching some George Carlin as I speak. I hope that only George rests in piece and my laptop continues to work, albeit very slowly, for another few years.
A bright flash
August 12, 2008
When all’s said and done, nothing beats watching the Yodogawa fireworks (August 9 annually) from my very own apartment. I open the window and get a very good view. The view can’t come close to my mother in-law’s place but I’m most relaxed in my own domain.
Since my camera is down I played around with the webcamera to capture a few shots. They all turned out terribly but this shot looked interesting. It looked like a nuclear blast or the Ultima spell in Final Fantasy. This was the closing salvo of fireworks and was supposed to many many bright white sparkles in the sky.
On a side note, the awesome Fuji Service Center in Hommachi is currently repairing my camera! Looking around online, Fuji apparently installed a faulty CCD and will replace it for free. Also I’ve asked for a replacement internal battery so I don’t have to keep changing the damn date each time I take out and replace the regular batteries. The old gentleman working at this very quiet office was one of the nicest working people I’ve met in a long time. What a champ.
Weird elbow dude
August 09, 2008
While biking back from Namba today, I had to stop at a crosswalk to wait for the light to change. I see an older man beside me in a pink shirt on a bike. I couldn’t quite pin it but something was weird about the guy. Then I noticed his left arm. His elbow was bent the wrong way!
While holding onto the handlebar, my elbows point downwards, ie. my arms bend upwards towards my head. His right arm was no different but his left elbow pointed upwards! No way, I thought, maybe he just has his arm turned in a weird contorted sort of way. Nope, looking at his hand, he was holding onto the handlebar normally. He wasn’t bending his arm around as his shoulder looked quite relaxed. He was a backward-armed man!
It was rather surprising.
Cursed
August 08, 2008
I have been having the worst of luck recently when it comes to electronics I own.
The giant storm that squished Kansai a week ago destroyed my laptop. I actually opened it up and cleaned out its innards and it worked that night. I thought it was the luckiest thing to have it working again. Then, I shut it down and it wouldn’t restart again. I believe something on the motherboard is fried, perhaps maybe even the CMOS battery. I took the battery around town searching for a replacement but because Dell is such a bitch company, they did not use standard CMOS batteries and concocted something of their own design. I can’t even test out this theory and my laptop is a big ugly decoration right now.
The storm also took out my IP phone. It turns on but will begin to start ringing on its own accord almost immediately. There’s no tone neither. Yet another thing to buy/fix.
The remote control for our fan is also dead. No big deal. I never found a remote control for a fan to be a big necessity – I can still get my fat ass up and walk over there to turn it on or off. Surprisingly, the television remote works fine even though it was sitting in the same pond of water as the fan remote.
Then, two days ago, as the third storm of the month was just about to set Osaka awash, I wanted to take some pictures of the beautiful rain clouds forming outside and perhaps even get lucky and catch a lightning strike. I turn on my trusty digital camera only to be greeted by a white screen on the LCD. No matter what I did, the LCD remained white. Apparently Fujifilm installed a faulty light sensor on it as I wasn’t the only one with this problem. What I’m wondering though is why after five years of perfect operation did the stupid camera malfunction now?
I am so glad I don’t have a pacemaker because with this luck it would start pumping blood out of my ass. Anyway now I have a queue of things to repair and replace. Thanks karma, you vengeful bitch.
The Performing Arts
August 04, 2008
I love visiting Tempozan every now and then. It’s always bustling with activity and seeing the harbor always reminds me of home. The big mall is filled with strange and interesting stores. This time You-san and I visited a ninja store and I was half tempted to try out the ninja house, where you try to sneak about undetected. It’s for kids so we decided not to embarrass ourselves too much. He did however, embarrass himself by freaking out at a samurai dummy that sits up and down every few seconds. Never have I seen a grown man jump and scream like that.
There’s always some sort of performance going on in the area. Today we caught some strange spectacles. A man dressed in aluminum sucks on a lemon and lipsynchs to Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You. Then as we were cooling off at the juicebar in the center of the mall we see a trio of Japanese performers with hair that makes Marge Simpson cringe.
