We're back! ( I Think....)

If anyone has been waiting for a new blog from us, sorry. This is our first blog since June 2005. I have been trying to get to the editor page for over a month. Apparently, we had more than one user name (which I didn't remember and was news to me!) So like an old injury, re-injured, that just got well, we're back!
I know the excitement has been building -- what happened with our Gateway? Well, being a blockhead and sometimes fearless computer user, I replaced our fan and while reconnecting the power supply, plugged a power connection into the motherboard instead of the FLOPPY DRIVE! Yes! I fried the motherboard. After taking it to a local repair shop whom said it could best be used as an anchor, we replaced the motherboard, pentium chip, and put it back together (correctly this time!) No, we didn't lose all the programs and documents as the repair shop said! Ha! Yardman fixed what he screwed up. It's not as good as being able to sale art on the internet (and making a living of it,) but at least it wasn't a bad ending to a dreaded mistake.

Another Racket

They can't get into our pockets enough, can they? Mr. President wants us to switch to private accounts because he knows that most of us will spend it on something else (probably something we didn't really need.) And our savings will never make it into an account, while his corporate buddies will no longer have match our withholdings and they'll get to contribute that money to their already humongous bonuses and salaries.
Oops! What I had wanted to write about is that everything seems like a racket. Computers, for example.
If you own a Gateway, a Dell, or an HP/Compaq, and you work on them yourself, then you already know what am I talking about. Our Gateway 300s was a nice machine at a good price (purchased toward the end of 2003.) The first sign of possible malcontent was the seemingly fruitless video card search.
Hey, found one! Wrong! Doesn't fit? Let's try again. Found one? We opened up the computer and guess what, does't fit! Look, all I want is a video card for a TV-Out.
We paid a visit to Gateway Sales online chat. No, I don't want to buy it from you (I wanna think about it. Yes, I lied. But, I knew they would want an arm and a leg, and possibly a foot.) It arrived, I was delighted. Guess what? Right, it fits in the socket but won't fit inside the computer case! Okay, it was time to operate. Get out the Dremel, the Mouse, and yes, the Angle Grinder! Ta da! We have TV-Out (plus two extra video cards which maybe we can sell on eBay. Sure!)
The latest racket that has come our way (and by the way, if you have a proprietary parts computer like we do, we feel your pain) is that our little 300s' power supply fan can only be sold from Gateway! AND you have to buy the entire power supply! AND they don't keep it in stock! AND they can't email you to let you know when they will have it in stock! And you will have to do an online chat EVERYTIME to find out!
If you are in those shoes, don't fret. Find out your fan's serial number and go to www.mouser.com. Our's arrived in two days. We haven't installed it yet, hopefully that will happen today. Finally, we hope that will take care of our computer surgery for a long time.