I was ecstatic when I finally realized I managed to scrimp enough to pay at least a quarter of my drawing course. I gleefully calculated I would probably need two to three months to save enough to pay for the whole course.
Unfortunately, I guess I counted my chickens before they hatch, too soon.
My PC broke. The power supply unit started to emit smoke and burned my Motherboard. Thankfully it did not affect my Harddrive.
It was embarrassing at first, since I was from the IT industry and did not anticipate my five year old PC is going to go kah-blooie. But the embarrassment turned to frustration and then anger as it would mean I would have to spend the limited free time I had and my hard-earned savings to fix it.
I was hoping I would have enough savings to buy the coming Motorola ‘Xoom’. It’s kind of an iPad. But its launch is going to be in the middle of this year. And I could use it to test my publishing development
As I contemplated my next move, I then decided to purchase a laptop. It was meant to be a stop-gap measure, so I was looking for something affordable but yet meet my minimal needs. As I pored over the adverts and any flyers I could get my hands on, I finally chanced on a ‘Sale’ at the local Electronic store near where I worked as the Dishwasher. So I bought the Samsung NP-440L for under SGD900 and got a free RAM upgrade thrown in to boot. It came with Microsoft’s Office Started Pack (basically Words and Excel with an annoying advertisement) and a fifteen month Anti-Virus subscription.
I use Hal’s iconic ‘eye’ from Space Odyssey as my wallpaper, as an ode to Arthur C. Clarke, and how we have allowed technology to rule our lives sometimes.
The next few sleepless nights were spent, installing the softwares that I needed. Some frivolous, like iTunes; others important, like GIMP, Inkscape and Openoffice.
After that was done, I spent a couple of more dollars to get a SATA to USB converter, hoping I could retrieve the data from my PC harddrive.
I held my breath as I saw the lights blinked. Then my eyes widen as the Laptop was able to detect the drive. And I sighed a huge relief as the system was able to read and transfer the data over.
The final step was to retrieve and setup my email. As Windows 7 don’t come with email, I proceeded to use Mozilla’s Thunderbird.
It was only last night that I managed to get the laptop running the way I wanted to with the applications and softwares I needed.
As I finally lay in my bed with a huge relief, I come to realise it was probably a blessing in disguise.
I have been using my PC to write, communicate, design, and develop softwares/websites and so on.
Far too long I have been delaying or work too slowly on developing my online website for fear it would corrupt my PC. But now that it broke and I have a laptop, I can fix the PC up and focus on using it purely for developing my online publishing website. I think for the first time in many months, I slept soundly with a smile on my face.
But today………..
My Printer broke!!!!
Aaarrrrggggh!!!!
if you want to convert DVD movies for Motorola Xoom, just try Handbrake or Free Xoom converter