Blogs and Bloggers: December 2011 Archives

As you dozen or so regular readers know, the LCD monitor on the new Official Weekend Pundit Main Computer went on the blink 14 days ago. According to the fine folks at HP, I was supposed to receive the replacement monitor by yesterday. (I even have the e-mails with the expected delivery date stating the December 28.) Last night around 8PM I received an e-mail from HP stating my monitor was shipping today. That means it won't get here until January 5^th at the earliest.

Almost three weeks to ship a replacement monitor under warranty? I can order a new one from them and get it here in less a week by ground! HP has to do more work on its customer service, particularly in regards to warranties on new equipment.

Here it is, I thought I was past the effects of the stomach bug that hit on Christmas night, but early this morning I was up again paying a visit to the bathroom about every 15 to 20 minutes. This precluded me from joining Deb and BeezleBub for a trip down to the WP In-Laws.

This being sick shtick is gettin' old real fast.

UPDATE: Deb and BeezleBub got home from the In Laws around 8PM. Apparently BeezleBub got sick just a couple of miles from home and has been vomiting and suffering from diarrhea ever since.

Poor kid. I know exactly what he'll be going through for the next 24 hours or so.

UPDATE 2: We ended up having to take BeezleBub to the ER at the local hospital at just past midnight. We couldn't keep him hydrated and the cramps were excruciating. (As bad as I was during my bout with this, he was far worse. I got alarmed when his lower back started aching, a symptom that he was so dehydrated that his kidneys were shutting down.) After 2 liters of saline, dilaudid, anti-nausea/vomiting meds, and 3 hours on a bed in the ER, he was feeling much better. We got him home about 3:30AM.

I guess it was one of those days today.

I got home from work after a busy day and a treacherous trip home (quite a few of the roads were quite slick). BeezleBub rolled in from school just after 6PM.

About an hour after that we were both asleep on our respective chairs in the living room.

I just woke up a short while ago, allowing me to clean the dinner dishes and stoke the woodstove for the night.

And now I'm going to bed. I'm beat despite the nap and don't have the gumption to post anything more profound than this mea culpa. I guess I'll have to post twice tomorrow to make up for it.

It isn't that I have had nothing to blog about or haven't wanted to do so. On the contrary, I have wanted to but have had to deal with computer related problems since yesterday afternoon.

First, there was a UPS failure that caused problems because of issues with bypassing it. I had the choice of running the cable modem and router or my computer. The modem and router won that one.

Then, after replacing the defective UPS, I found that my monitor would no longer work.It would turn on, the menu showing the which input was active would display (and it did detect the computer and show the DVI input was active), and then it would go to sleep because as far as it was concerned there was no reason to remain on. I cannot even call up the monitor's menu to force a reset to factory defaults, nor have I been able to find any information on the 'net about how to do that. (Unless HP decided to forego that option, almost every piece of equipment containing a microcontroller has a means of forcing a reset to its default setiings in case it unminds itself and gets stuck in a configuration that makes it useless.)

I had this problem with the monitor once before but I can't for the life of me recall what it is I did to restore it to a useful state. Until I do blogging might be light as I have to share the remaining operational computer with Deb and BeezleBub.