The Plainclothes Clown

Okay, here's the bad news so far.

After the system crashed totally back home, I found myself with an Internet connection and nothing to use it on. Basically, I have no computer at the moment. I'm using the public terminals in the library, and getting in two hours a day until I can sort myself out with repairs / upgrades / whatever I can afford.

I haven't been able to get around to doing any repairs / upgrades / whatever, because I have recently been suffering from incredibly painful ear problems. Basically, I had to have them syringed today: a procedure which has only produced partial success. I go back again Friday to complete this procedure, or to arrange for my referral to the local ENT department. Until then, I really can't hear a bloody thing, and that is of far greater importance to me than getting back online at home.

Finally, while I do have a desperate plan to fix up my system, and get something back up and running, I won't be going back online back at my folks' for at least three good reasons.

1. They are in the process of disconnecting my Tiscali ISP account, and I don't blame them: they've got nothing to connect to online at all, and I'm getting sick of my father, who's really starting to get on my last nerve with his constant sniping and bitching - but that's enough about him, I'm saving up a good and solid riposte for him to spoil his day, just you wait and see, ranting about phone bills of £7 a month being "too fucking much" (yeah, right!), so no more connecting is going to be possible from home;

2. I wouldn't connect online to Tiscali now if they paid me my weight's worth in heroin to do so, because that ISP has given me no end of grief, since it's been nothing but viruses, viruses, viruses sent directly down the phone line to my computer, every single bastard minute I've been online with them;

3. If and when I do get an upgraded system going and running, it won't be at my folks' place any more. It'll be at my flat, on my phone line (which hopefully nobody will find out about, because I'm going ex directory and telling nobody about it). It'll be expensive to run, but at least I'll be able to go online on my own time, and be beholden to no bastard.

However, until I do manage to come back online from a domestic computer ... no more evening chats with anybody. I'll blog on occasion, and if you need me, you can contact me on my Yahoo Mail account, but it looks as if I'm off the IM circuit more or less for the long haul, everyone.

Gaah. I was supposed to have been working on my assignment for this Friday's class, but I've been too ill with my ears still ringing from the syringing, and the fact that the library's put its air conditioning on cold directly overhead. It is fucking freezing.

Another week has gone by, without a chat with nyghtshayde, and I am seriously suffering withdrawal symptoms. The problem is, the hard disk went down as well as the motherboard, leaving me completely bereft of a means to get back online from my home.

I blame the pisspoor anti-virus protection provided by the ISP, myself. They are a company bereft of clue. I suspect that, in spite of firewall software and at least two anti-virus software packages on my system, Something Got Through over the broadband connection and completely burned out my computer, causing the boot disk to fail catastrophically, just when I had the motherboard problems sorted out.

I've got some backed up data, but not all of it: I was in the process of performing the backup of my most critical recent files when all of this crap happened. And since this included the latest incarnation of my novel, well ...

I guess that, when I get my system back up and running (which will involve a rebuild from scratch - since I have acquired pretty much enough spare parts now to build one afresh from the ground up - I might want to do something else with it other than keep it running over broadband and risk losing all of my data once again some time down the line.

So, when I do get the new system running, it's probably going to be best if I take that system and keep it permanently offline, use it solely to write with, and use the public library facilities to post new stuff online (I might avail myself of a memory stick to carry all of the stuff I'll need to upload).

Thing is, if there are enough spare parts left over, I can get a new hard drive, probably more memory, some other parts somewhere down the line, and get myself a second, smaller, unit - and that's the one I'll be connecting online for chats.

But this does mean, T, that it may now be some considerable time before you start seeing my cheerful little icon apoear in your Yahoo Messenger on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. I'm so sorry, hon. :(

Anyone who knows me also knows that recently I've been waiting for the money to come in so I can get a replacement power unit for the old system, which went tits up towards the end of last month.

Well, I got a power unit last night, fitted it into the computer, easy peasy. But then I turned it on.

The power unit wasn't the only thing wrong with the computer. The motherboard's fried. It's taken until last night for me to discover this.

The computer is well and truly dead. I have to speak to someone I know, see if I can get either a new motherboard, memory etc. - in effect, rebuild the system from scratch - or whether I can slave the hard drive to another unit and do a disk capture onto a DVD - ROM, then transfer the relevant documentation onto the only surviving computer I have.

But I no longer have access to the internet from the folks' place, at least until they get broadband - which won't be until October 25th.

So until then, I'm stuck with public access online via my local library.

Yes, it sucks.

No, there's no quick way out of this, because I'm flat broke.

Anyway, there you have it.

2013 Edit: This was caused by my brother Sean, in the kitchen, turning on an old deep fat fryer which Mum had retired due to electrical problems. This fried the fuses across the house and blew the old computer's motherboard and power unit.

I have long since forgiven Sean this.