Crap

I have a really nice monitor.

It was kind of a gift from one of my best friends - I mean, I paid for it but he did all the work.  No, wait, I think he paid and then I paid him back later.  The year was 2006.  Or maybe 2007.  No, wait, I'm sure it was 2006.  Anyway, it was a few years ago, back when I was working for another company in a role that brought me equal parts grief and money.  Let me put this in perspective: when this happened, I could go to the movies with my wife AND get popcorn AND a drink for just $32.50.

I, of course, was having what you could call an incredibly bad day at work.  Not like my normal regular bad days at work, but one of those epic ones where you sit there and wonder how the world got so stupid as to put you in a situation where everyone seems to be actively trying to make things worse.  A real "hey, we ran out of diesel to run the back up generator, so we just poured gasoline that we siphoned out of the cars in the parking lot. Also, we hired blind schoolchildren to do the siphoning. Well, they weren't blind before, it was mostly after they got gas in their eyes, but they're young enough to learn a trade like panhandling" kind of day.

That's when my awesome friend came to my spiritual rescue.

In a move that has gone down in history as one of the most awesome moves ever, my buddy found a website that was having a sale on 22" LCD's for $300.  I know, that doesn't sound like such a great deal now, but trust me, it was.  This was back in the day when 22" LCD's would be going for $400+.  Plasma TV's were going for $3000.  It was a crazy time.  So finding a deal like this was just... stupid.

The following is a re-enactment of what that scene probably looked like.

HIM: Dude, look what I found.
ME:  That's crazy. Nobody sells 22" LCD's for that price.
HIM: It's happening.  You are getting one of these.
ME: I can't.
HIM: You need this monitor.
ME: I need this monitor.
HIM: Damn right Skippy.  The sale starts at noon, so you need to sign in and be ready to hit submit.
ME: I can't do it.  I am in meetings all morning with crazy people.
HIM: You are getting this monitor.  I am getting you this monitor.

True to his word, he knocked on my door later and gave me the good news.  He'd waited all morning, doing nothing but making sure that the network was clear, that his browser was refreshed and that the order details were ready.

Doesn't end there.

I have to go on a business trip.  When I get back, not only has the monitor arrived, but he came over and set it up for me.  I walked in and there was a brand new awesome monitor sitting on the desk, ready to go.  Yeah, normally, we always put that stuff together on our own, but it was frigging awesome to just see it there.  Made my day.

And really, every day since.  Because when I sit at my computer, at some point I always sit back and go "damn, that's a nice monitor".  I really, really love my monitor.

And that's why I am so very sad right now.

I was watching TV and caught a flash of light out of the corner of my eye.  I looked over, and the monitor was on a black screen.  Nothing odd there, I thought.  It's just running the screen saver.  Then I caught another flash about 10 seconds later.  Strange, I thought, the screen saver isn't on.  I went over to the computer and touched the mouse to get back to the desktop.  Time to see what's going on with my screen saver.

Giant. White. Screen.

The entire screen went totally white and totally unresponsive.  I couldn't even get the menu buttons on the monitor to do anything.

It's almost worse than when I was suffering complete and utter computer failure earlier this year (which turned out to be cat related).  Okay, maybe not that bad.  I at least have all my files.  I've got the wife's monitor hooked up to it right now, and I need to put this in perspective.

I ran programs in windows that were larger than this monitor.

If I turned this monitor on its side, it would not be as tall as my old monitor.

For Pete's sake, I'm running in 1024 x 768.

You may not understand my pain, so I'm just going to put that in bold.

1024 x 768 
 
I just looked at this post in preview and my blog is wider than this monitor.

I feel like I'm going to throw up.

Anyway, it turns out that I may have blown capacitors.  According to everyone, blown capacitors are the new smoking handgun of technology.  I opened up my monitor, which I felt bad about but only until I got it open and saw how cool it was inside, and to be honest I can't really tell whether the capacitors are bad.  They look fine, but it turns out that everyone who has taken a picture of one of these tiny things has never used a camera before.  Imagine that you were taking a picture of your mother standing in front of, Stonehenge, and managed to somehow get every erect stone (heh heh) in such perfect focus it borders on 3D, but your mother is a blurry blob that only somewhat resembles a person but also resembles one of those whacky inflatable waving arm things. 

I'm going to call the shop in town that handles all the warranty work and see if they can help me out.  The monitor is way out of warranty, but I need to know if the cost to fix outweighs the cost to buy a brand new one... I mean, yeah, I love my monitor, but I'm not crazy.