I plead insanity

Okay, so my computer. It's dead.

Similar to my 360 fiasco, for those of you that remember when it became possessed by Linda Blaire and tried to kill me - my computer exploded. Again, while I was in another room - it never fails, I leave electronics alone for a few seconds and they blow up. What is the deal here?

So after checking my email, I decide to update my ipod, which of course is nowhere near me, but in the depths of my briefcase in another room. As I'm fishing my nano out, I hear a loud pop.... Or maybe crack would be a better word. I thought for a moment maybe someone had thrown a rock at my window, but it bounced off instead of breaking it. I ran to the back room, everything appears normal at first glance, then I notice my screen is blank.

I mused for a moment that my screensaver was probably on... but I had a feeling that was just not going to be the case....... Especially after I realized I turned my screensaver off earlier because it kept coming on while I was trying to read through various articles.

I moved the mouse.... Nothing.

I hit a few keys on the keyboard..... Nothing.

I danced naked in the streets to Clay Aiken..... I got a few restraining orders... but alas, my computer remained..... 'dead in the water'. This phrase bears foreshadowing. Re read with lightening in the background and more slowly for the intended dramatic effect.

I cracked open the case, nothing seemed to be out of order, I noticed the inside base looked darker than usual, but I assumed it was a healthy covering of dust since it's been literally 3 years since I opened the thing up. I then proceeded to check all the cables pushing at everything with my screwdriver, tried pushing at the cards to make sure they were secure, etc. - all this in various combinations and trying to get the screen to come up. I still got nothing. Bad video card, that has to be it!

No.

I pulled out an old card that I KNEW worked fine, plugged everything in and ........ nothing.

"**** you!" I say aloud to my computer, knowing full well it's messing with my head.

At that point I decided to just let it sit there and think about what it did, while I go amuse myself watching TV.

Two random made-for-TV movies later, I returned to the room to see if it has learned its lesson. Naturally it hadn't, but I was too tired to care, I had Tuesday off because my company was shutting down due to "inclement weather." Plenty of time to fix it tomorrow.

So I lay down, and in the silence, I hear dripping. Like those old cartoons where the leaky faucet drives the character to ridiculous measures to stop it, and ultimately to insanity. I got up, thinking the air conditioning was leaking - no. It was fine... I checked the bathroom, and even the kitchen, which I can't hear the sink if it's on full blast from my room, why I'd check is beyond me... the only reason I can come up with is desperation.

The same for the upstairs bathroom and my reason for wandering around outside looking at drain pipes and hoses.

I returned to my room, listening to the dripping. I could feel my eyes pulsing in sync with my heart beat and that incessant drip drip drip dripping. "Where the HELL is that coming from!?"

Then my eyes fell on the PC.

No. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I turned on all the lights, grabbed my flash light and shined as much into the case as I could. It was the reservoir for my liquid cooling system, the intake hose had come loose, Worse, I followed the trail of coolant, and found it had been using the IDE cables as it's own personal autobahn straight to my motherboard... it had apparently been leaking for a day or two judging by the saturation, and the small, green puddle accumulating at the bottom of the case. How did I miss it earlier you might ask... I didn't. It was the "darker than usual color" I had originally chalked up to a bunch of dust.

I pulled everything out, cleaned it all off, and drained the cooling system. Upon further inspection of the motherboard, it turns out that the crack I had heard was it splitting from behind the IDE plugs where most of the liquid had accumulated, and there were several burn marks leading up the right side of it towards the RAM slots, either from extreme heat or there had been a tiny fire in like 4 places. :roll:

So now I am torn between building a new system - or going ahead with my desire for a top of the line laptop. On the one hand I save a lot of money, and I have the flexibility to upgrade over time, but I'm once again stuck with a desktop, which I really don't want anymore. On the other hand, I spend a LOT more money, but I get pretty much what I've been wanting for a few years now, and I'll be able to carry it with me whenever I leave town, which is a HUGE plus for me. Decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, I may have to slap together a cheap computer anyways to try and salvage my media hard drive... it's the one with all my music and pictures on it, that'd I'd really hate to lose. Unless any of you know a way to get an internal HDD to hook up to a laptop temporarily for a quick data transfer??


:cry: