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.
