Eh, Steve!
It has just occured to me that my laptop is shocking the fuck out of my legs. As it turns out, there are these little metal bolts and discs cleverly concealed on the bottom--the part that is usually IN CONTACT WITH YOUR LAP--which are releasing minute, yet frequently painful voltages into my exposed skin. So until I decide to put some pants on today, this computer is becoming a floortop.
I just pulled the power supply out of my desktop, a procedure that involved carefully unplugging a lot of cables. My tiny small form factor box is now temporarily gutted as it awaits a newer, stronger power supply and a repaired or replaced graphics card. The whole story basically boils down to the fact that I have been running my box (one I built, mind you) with the power supply it came with: a measly 220W. It specifically says in my graphics card's manual that it needs a minimum of 300W to operate properly. The allure of a tiny, portable desktop has this one drawback...the maximum power supply that will actually fit in the case is only 250W. So screw it, I says. I'ma get me one of them cool glowing 450W power supplies that is designed to fit inside a regular tower case, and through the magic of extension cables, I will be able to hook it up to my PCs motherboard. I figured that the extension cable route would be the best, since I can at least still preserve the illusion of portability via a series of wires that snake out the back of the box and into a relatively painless plugging situation with the new power supply. My older, weaker power supply was responsible, I think, for killing my graphics card...it just all of a sudden started to leave behind all this artifacting and skanky-looking horizontal lines whenever I would attempt to scroll. Sigh. I just got back from the FedEx place, where I shipped off my old (yet still under warranty) card, so in 10 to 12 business weeks I should have a shiny new graphics card which I will love and kiss and promise to never ever ever neglect its power needs again. So for now, I'm back to my laptop. It's like having a newer, better girlfriend for a couple of months, but then she has to go in to the shop for a complete overhaul for a while and you have to start spending even more time with that other chick you were dating before her but forgot to tell that you started dating someone new who has shiny breasts and a 21" monitor that you could bounce a quarter off of.
Tomorrow, I will be off to Big Sky, Montana, to meet my Dad for a few days of eating red meat and marvelling at the grandeur of America's largest cattle farm. I will not have Internet access, but I will have my laptop, so I can proceed with the 28 THOUSAND CHARACTERS (approx. 14 thousand English words worth, for the layman) of translation, all due by the 11th. I get back on the 9th, so we'll see what I can achieve while on vacation and separated from my on-line dictionaries.
Abraham Lincoln once said a really perfect quote that would be great to end this post with. Unfortunately, I don't know what it is, so I'll post the first paragraph of my untitled Civil War novel. Enjoy.
COPYRIGHT STUART ALBERT. This is MINE.
It is on a Sunday morning during the eighth year of the War Between the States that Miss Ann Pidgeon first runs afoul of the Stovepipe Jimmies. Their contraptions are rickety, deadly black, cantankerous, and trail effulgent vapors that sicken churchmice in their nests, fell flocks of gulls from the skies, startle (and yet somewhat excite) frail schoolmarms, and lead young toughs who witness their passing into rapturous thoughts of anarchy and recidivism. To a bystander, the procession of Stovepipe Jimmies presents somewhat of the dread inherent in a murder of enormous crows-the slick suits worn by the Jimmies hang about them like so many of the blackbirds, their protracted limbs perch them high at the controls of their velocipedes, and their elongated top hats seem to stretch up into skies made foreboding by their carriage-smoke. And yet the noise and the smoke only serve to underscore the threat of their trappings: chains, brickbats, shivs, well-scored black iron cutlasses, and the inevitable Blackpowder Dandies concealed in no little numbers on their person. It was on this morning of all mornings that she and the Jimmies had their encounter, and it certainly was not to be the last.