The Cyborg's New Display

[elfs]

Yesterday, after I had gotten home, the screen on my laptop, Kusanagi, started to freak out again. It had been stable, on and off, for the past week, but finally, last night, it died completely. fallenpegasus had long ago offered to give me two dead T23s that he had lying about the house and had never gotten around to doing anything about, so I accepted his offer. He said he left them in the foyer of the house where he lives and I could just stop by and pick them up. Someone would be there.

My problem is that I was taking the buses. It took me no effort at all to get to downtown. Finding where to grab a Bus #10 to take me to the Aloha House was a different story. I ended up walking all over downtown only to discover that I had been dropped off where I was supposed to pick up the bus and had walked to the far end of the downtown route. It took a run and a jump to actually catch the bus I wanted.

Ah, well, the delay gave me time to read the very first Anita Blake novel, by Laurel Hamilton. I wasn't all that impressed with it, sad to say. The universe in which she writes is very cluttered, as if Laura Hamilton just threw everything into a pail and mixed well, and ended up with a vague, beige mess. I wonder if it gets better as it goes on. First novels are hard to get right. I also finished reading the short story Real City, which was interesting in its premise but weak in its execution, and John Updike's The Afterlife which was a real violin piece. Having chewed up most of my lunch hour on the bus, I grabbed a quick sandwich from the bagel shop at Pike Place Market. Mmm, lox.

I sat down with a single screwdriver and in ten minutes had disassembled one of the dead laptops, taking off the monitor and putting the chassis back together. Another ten minutes and I had Kusanagi in pieces. Ten minutes after that, I had Kusanagi re-assembled with the new screen, turned it on and boom, I had video. It must have been the cable, which is one of the few components on a laptop that gets a lot of mechanical torture and carries data. I've done this so often I didn't even need the manual; I can strip a T23 down to its bare metal by memory now. That's kinda scary.

But I have a working laptop again, yay! There's an odd brightness somewhere vaguely in the middle of the monitor, but then there was the same thing on almost all of my Thinkpads. I think there's just something weird about the way the backplane distributes the backlighting across the LCD. There's focal points. It's not really noticeable, unless I worry about it. The last one was down near the bottom; this one cuts right across a display field. That shouldn't interfere with my writing, though, and that's all that really matters. And if it does get really annoying I have another monitor I can try.

Thanks to Mark for getting this damn thing working again.

Comments

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

The Anita Blake series does get somewhat better until Obsidion Butterfly, then everything just goes to shit. Apparently, the latest book is nigh unreadable.

Hooray for functional laptops!

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed reading the Blake series as far as the last one I read, which was Blue Moon.

I'd probably read more, but then I play White Wolf roleplaying games as well!

[blackcoat.livejournal.com]

I sat down with a single screwdriver it took me a second to parse this as a tool, not that you sat down with a liquid addition to your lunch. :)

[blackcoat.livejournal.com]

I still think that Ms. Hamilton needs to just get locked in a basement with a half dozen cops and come to grips with her uniform festish.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not much of a liquor person. Wine is my speed, but one should never drink and geek.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

My problem is that I was taking the buses. It took me no effort at all to get to downtown. Finding where to grab a Bus #10 to take me to the Aloha House was a different story. I ended up walking all over downtown only to discover that I had been dropped off where I was supposed to pick up the bus and had walked to the far end of the downtown route. It took a run and a jump to actually catch the bus I wanted.

So, me being the Bus Goddess around here, I asked Elf why he didn't just call me when he first realized he didn't know where to catch the #10. His response?

"I didn't want to admit that I was lost."

OMG, how so very...male. Sigh. And here I thought my training had succeeded.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I was wondering where one might find a married screwdriver.

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

I think when I read the first one, my reaction was the vampire equivalent of a trashy romance novel. However book two and three are much better.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

Amen. Well-hung cops, since she's such a size queen.

My biggest problem is that she got really repetitive. Her latest books would be half the size if she didn't spend so much time on recaps.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Obsidian butterfly is pretty much the last (and possibly the best) of the 'classic' anita blake books. With Narcissus in Chains, the flavor of them changes a lot, partially due to Plot Device. (namely, anita starts to have an ardeur of her own to feed, so lots of random screwing commences in every following book.) Oddly, i didn't *mind* that book very much, as there was still a lot of action and plot. the next two, cerulean sins, and incubus dreams, were pretty bad, with the latter being the worst of them all. about 120 pages of plot, and 540 pages of fucking, drama, wangst, etc. but there was a good love scene with her and a morphed wereleopard. There was a little novelette after that book, which was reminiscent of the old stories, actually raised some zombies, had a mystery, and solved it, and some interesting plot and character development. The last book was actually better, but only because she abandoned any kind of police procedural which compromised much of the plot for every book until the last few. While still heavy on sex, it wasn't so disjointed. It's my sincere hope that she gets past this, and back to some of the older style, or at least alternates back and forth between the two themes.

[jezel.livejournal.com]

I don't recommend the series, even though I have all of them and buy the new ones in hardback. It's now a low quality addiction - I have to know what happens to 'my' characters, but it's a porn soap opera now.

Why? Why don't her editors send back these manuscripts and say, "You have 100 pages of good story and 700 pages of unnecessary drama and repetitive sex. It's crap, honey, do it over again."?

There are many things that could be good about the series, and false hope springs anew with every book. Don't start - it's a heartache waiting to happen.

[blackcoat.livejournal.com]

As proven by Micah.

Completely off topic....

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

..but the lastest beta release of the newsreader 'Pan (http://pan.rebelbase.com/)' is titled 'Eldarfaroth'?

Re: Completely off topic....

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Really? Well, it's also a Tolkein word... but that's fun!

Re: Completely off topic....

[smurfix.livejournal.com]

His name is spelled "Tolkien", though. ;-)