A disappointing night
And maybe a disastrous one.
For the last several years I would make a point of meeting Gerry and his team of Belgian draft horses. When I went to MFF, I'd miss one of those times, but there was always another, until last year. Last year, for other reason, I did not go to MFF, but I did meet Gerry and the team that Friday night - and found he would not be back in a couple week as he had in other years.
This year I didn't go anywhere either, but I did not see Gerry. Last night would have been the second chance of this season as there was a holiday shopping event downtown. The news article mentioned a hayride, which was not what Gerry did, but he had a friend who did that sort of thing with another team. But I did not have my hope very high, which was just as well.
It was snowing last night and forecast to drop quite a bit. The forecast was wrong for Fairmont (which is a good thing, to me) but i didn't know that at the time. I saw the hayride setup. A few bales on a flatbed trailer, pulled by a tractor. For the belgian team and Gerry, I'd have stayed. For that? No. I came back home.
If that's all the problems of the night, it would have disappointing but not too bad. But it wasn't. I am glad I have the laptop and have it mostly working (I still haven't gotten the microphone to work under Linux, though I haven't found an external mic. to check everything, either.) and some significant stuff (though hardly all...) transfered to it. The main desktop machine froze up solid last night. And then... nothing. I cycled power and it won't come back up. The fans and drives spin, but it doesn't even make the POST beep. Any of the beeps.
I've pulled the all the cards, the RAM, and disconnected the drives so it's just the motherboard with CPU, power supply, and fans. Still nothing. That's pretty much, "It's dead, Jim." What I don't know is if it's the (just recently installed replacement) power supply, the motherboard itself, or the CPU. I have ordered a replacement CPU as it was only $10.99 and if that's it, it's a cheap fix. If not, I'm not out much.
I am of course hoping for the cheap fix. I expected to replace that machine, but have been hoping to put that off several more months at least. I'd like to have the laptop paid off first. I shouldn't be too surprised if it does come down to replacement. It's rather impressive that I've been using the same machine, pretty much, in nearly continuous service for nearly 8 years. But after the last couple nights, the conking out is yet another annoyance I don't need.