Saturday, January 22, 2011

Happy 2011


Ladies and gentlemen, dignitaries, distinguished guests, and all five regular readers of my illustrious blog....the staff and management of Hotel Waikiki is pleased to announce that we are reopened for business as of today. The power supply unit in my computer, the battleship gray metal box that you see in the photo above, gave out last month. In itself, it was not a world shattering event by any measure. Just a shrug the shoulders, slap the forehead, kind of thing. In fact, being that the computer decided to malfunction during the holiday season, I simply thought, "just buy a new computer." Usually there's a lot of great deals out there for electronic equipment during the holiday season so the timing couldn't have been better in that sense or cents. However, with only about Best Buy and Office Depot remaining in Honolulu, the selection of computers on display was very limited and whatever computers were there, their brick-n-motar prices weren't discounted. I even asked a salesman at Best Buy, "How much is the $700 computer without the monitor and keyboards, etc.?" and the salesman replied back to me rather matter-of-factly, "$700 is the price for just the computer tower alone." Or, didn't you know that? No, I wasn't aware. Then, go hitch up your raindeers to your sled and shop at some other store. That is to say he musta recognized me as Santa Claus without the suit.


Moving on....there is a benefit of not being able to connect online, I don't use my computer for too much more other than that, is that I had a windfall of extra time on my hands during which I accomplished so much more than had I instead spent the 2-hours to 24-hours of the same day immersed on the Internet. I wasn't 100-percent sure that the culprit was the power supply. There are a multitude of internal components that could be causing the computer to go on strike and if you replaced every single part in a hit or miss fashion, eventually somewhere around the year 2020, it'll have cost more than buying a new computer at the conclusion of the project. Still after fiddling around with the computer, I decided it'll be worthwhile to replace the "metal box" and if the replacement did indeed restore life back to the computer, things would be a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a brand new computer, or in the event that the replacement part didn't fix things, I could add another souvenir to my extensive collection. Unfortunately, the manufacturer no longer stocked the specific power supply and from all the wiring and plugs routed out from the power supply box, itself, I had the misimpression that the power supply unit had to be an original equipment manufacturer part that fit to a tee. It wasn't. Since, I had been so productive during the month of not having a working computer at my disposal, the thought did enter my mind that perhaps I should unplug myself from the World Wide Web on a permanent basis. At the very most, reading Email. I don't write diary stuff on my blog, so it's not as if looking back years from now, I'd be depriving myself of reveling in the details in an important chapter of my life or anything of that nature as with a diarist genre. That said, see you again in a few days.




*Btw, my blog's banner is out of focus. Working on that, darn.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmm. Wondering what you DID accomplish during the 5 weeks you were without a computer. Hope you made a pile of money. lol.

RONW said...

gigi- if time is money, then I'd be a millionaire. But no, didn't make money. It wasn't that I was besieged with work that kept me from being online. At any rate, I didn't have to purchase a brand new computer.

Anonymous said...

This all leaves me to wonder how you got a computer part in Hawaii without a computer? Bust Buy? One of the little repair shops?

Alan from Makiki

Ann da Sista said...

YAY, YOU'RE BACK! Happy dance in Connecticut!

RONW said...

Alan- seek and ye shall find. However, the operative word is "eventually."

Ann- I don't have absolutely the slightest idea of what amounts to a "happy dance." You people on the East Coast must have been too housebound for too long a periods this winter. Another thing, I'm getting a bit dissatisfied with Bruddah Obama's political track record to a point that I'm beginning to think that he might not get re-elected. Then the Repubs will retake the White House and sell the country down the river. Like they did before. But the alternative would be Democrats. All is lost. Whoops forgot that was your favorite tv series, "Lost."

Kay said...

Wow! I can't believe you're back with a post. Yae!!! I missed you. My son-in-law upgraded my computer in December with parts he bought from Best Buy on-line. My computer is humming along right now. I sure would hate to see you leave the cyber world, Ron. I know what you mean about getting things done though. Sigh... I have to paint some rusted spots today.

OkiHwn said...

Welcome back!

Bradley Farless said...

I know what you mean about pissing away all your time online. Sometimes I look back and wonder how the whole day went by, and try to figure out what I really accomplished in my 'free' time. There's always something grabbing for attention though. I got caught up with the whole mobile smartphone thing, but lately I'm thinking maybe I should just cut it back to a regular candybar phone and at least cut myself off from the Internet while I'm out and about. What's the sense in going out if you're not going to focus on what's out there anyway?

I was wondering what happened to you though Ron. Glad to see you're doing ok. My mom's computer was just giving her hell. It was running really slow and really hot. I solved it by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling a clean copy of Windows 7. I wonder how much malware / spyware was running on there?

KirkK said...

Welcome back RON!

RONW said...

Kirk- did you get to watch Hawaii Five-0 tonight scheduled after the playoffs? What a soap opera.

RONW said...

Kay- the computer is such a pain-in-the-okolele when it goes kaplonk. However, I truly believe everybody should take a month or more off a year from the Internet.

Nate- there should be an equivalent AA for Internet addicts. But then you would probably have to log onto the Internet to participate in such a program.

Brad- I'm only too sure that a computer technician woulda fixed the same problem in a few minutes. However, the side effect of having "free time" was priceless.

Kay said...

BTW: I'm having trouble with the Blogger header, too. I tried to change my header photo and it ruined everything. All of a sudden my header photo is super small... or if I put the photo above the text, it gets really blurry. Sheesh! I'm giving up. Maybe not for a month, but for a night at least. I'm watching Johnny Mnemonic (Keanu Reeves) and Wow! Is it bad!

RONW said...

Kay- glad to hear that, in a beneficial way of speaking. If Blogger is having an overall problem with banners, than apparently it's not something wrong at my end.

Rowena said...

Well it's about time! I was just thinking of giving McGarrett and Danno a call...you know, to see if you weren't kidnapped or something. When I am able to watch the shows online (that is, when my stupid internet works fast enough), I always try to figure out if you live in one of those buildings shown on the Ala Wai, and if so, are you out there taking pics of food on your lanai railing. Just wondering. Man I love that show!

RONW said...

Rowena- the latest episode of Hawaii Five-0 was the most watched of the series so far being that it was scheduled right after the football playoffs, on a "Sunday". The network is planning a Hawaii Five-O marathon, something like 6 episodes in the next 16-days (2 new). Most islanders like the show. Myself, I think there's too much soap opera intermixed into the script. Whereas the original series dealt strictly with bad guys and good guys.

Rowena said...

I grew up with the original 5-0 and know (along with everybody else back then) that the new show cannot compare with the old one. It can, however, compete for the sole fact that it is aimed toward today's type of audience, you know, a little bit of personal drama, a whole lot of wisecrack remarks, and plenny scenes with Steve without shirt or pulling his pants back on. And let's not forget da pidgin! I crack up over each episode, 'cause over here the cop shows all sport characters that are either yelling or waving their hands in the air. Plus they don't go through beer like McGarrett does.

Cloudia said...

Glad to have you back!!!!





Aloha from Honolulu
Comfort Spiral

><}}(°>


<°)}}><