Nothing Was Ever Lost

My old pc hadn't died, the screen is just... goes black at the highest brightness setting. For a time, I used it, poking through lost files that I had been working on or pulled from the net and forgot the source... or even if I know the source, like FA I'm not going to remember everything that was in the submissions list after I clear it.

I had this idea I might use the new pc, with its obnoxious odor, for gaming and videos, and the old pc that doesn't bother me not matter how many hours go by, for writing and texting. But it was not to be.

I Come to Bury Her

The dying screen was... -tolerable- at medium brightness settings. It has grown darker and yellower at each setting than it would normally be but that was something like the original minimal brightness she would operate at when unplugged and running on battery. Ok for high contrast activities like writing.

But the screen is dying rapidly. Almost every day I have to take the brightness down another notch or two in order to keep it from "crashing" to a dark screen.

So while a week ago, one setting below maximum brightness was stable, now it's only the very minimum brightness. And it's really extra dark and yellowed like fading parchment that can only be seen well at night. It's worse than I'm willing to deal with. (A "craptop" with breaking keys, flapping panels and other quirks I'd be willing to put up with, but a "craptop" with everything still good but screen darker than the light of a single candle... no.)

I could plug in a monitor, but the whole arrangement would be clunky - it's either the old monitor from the dead gaming pc that's suspect because everything ever attached to the dying power supply is suspect now - or an even older crt monitor, and I don't relish the idea of going back to a faceful of radiation while looking at a wierdly curved screen. I tried it - my brain has lost the ability to take-in that perspective anymore. And I don't relish the idea of dumping $100+ dollars in a monitor just to nurse this thing along because...

the old lappytop is... really annoying once I got used to normal speeds. Click. Wait. Click. Wait. Click... Wait... Wait for it... Nah, it's frozen. A couple hours later and she's got "ghost" programs that are open but the window won't appear and other odd errors. I was about ready to smash something!

...and I think that contributed to my long winter's hibernation. By slowly bringing me down to her slow tempo of life, countless hours in total spent waiting for the computer to finish what it's doing.

But now, (after a -gentle- washing with hand soap) the new pc is... ok. It's not making me so sick anymore.

So it's over. Now that I can -barely- use this new lappytop, I emailed myself the lost links from the old lappytop and backed up its files, probably for one last time. This was good overall, everything I thought lost was saved, and a chance for me to actually start to want to stop using the old gal instead of being forced to.

Hello new world.