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? - 9/25/99 - 8/21/08

I killed my dog on Thursday. I'd never taken the life of anything bigger than a bug before. The vet mentioned that there can be some sense of guilt over this. But that's by no means the biggest problem. As some background, I'm a single man, who grew up in a family of big-time dog lovers. But to say that we think of our dogs as just part of our family, grossly misrepresents, at least for my sister and I, who each don't have and don't want children. For either of us, our dog is our baby. (Laugh if you like.) I feel like the equivalent of a single parent, who just lost their only child. I had almost 9 years of nurturing and teaching invested in my pooch, and she went from a totally people-aloof, wild child of a dog (she initially thought she was going to have to find food for herself, and would jump up to my kitchen countertops and scavenge at night after I turned the lights off) to a loyal companion who understood love and affection. I should back up a bit: I adopted her as an adult dog, so I don't know her birthdate, just the date that I got her, at which time a couple of vets estimated her at between 4 and 5 years old. She was (talking about her in the past tense is so hard) a Golden Retriever (around a 66 lb dog, most of the time I had her), which breed I'm told has an average life expectancy of around 10 years, so she lived a long life, and a good one with me at least.

Anyways, I come home to an empty house now. I don't go into my backyard, no real reason now. For having a dog was the only reason I wanted some semblance of a (tiny) yard. I don't even open the shades to it. I had planted some nice stuff to look at, but the sun sets on that side and it heats up my place, so I won't even bother opening them until I have to go out and water again. She needed additional care as she got older. Different pills on different schedules, and monitoring, well, input and output issues. But even before that, all the time I had her it was thinking about keeping her entertained and stimulated. Whether I was away at work or up on my computer on a weekend day, come dusk it was "what are we going to do for fun today?". That's when we usually walked, mostly in the park, at least when she could. She was content to just hang out during the heat of the day (and mornings we agreed were for sleeping in!), but early evening was adventure and then food time. So every day for almost 9 years it was thinking up something to make her happy, monitoring her health and daily habits, etc. The hardest part is that I have no one to think of, at least on a daily basis, but me. I have no one to care for daily, but me. It's maybe a bit like the "empty nest syndrome", where suddenly you no longer have that role in your life, in addition to missing them being around every day.

I have no one to come home to who's always happy to see me, and can't wait to do something fun, *with me*. No one to care about but me. No one to talk to but myself (which I'm catching myself doing now!) -- my conscious state is slowly adjusting/desensitizing, over these last few days, but my subconscious, at least from my dreams, is not exactly moving on. No furry critter to hug and play with, who understands me and loves me. This is really my first introduction to death, and the passing of a loved one, close-to-home like this, as people like grandparents have all lived far away and I really didn't know them that well. None of my friends or immediate family have died on me. Our last family dog died years into college while I was away at college, so that lessened the brunt. And our previous dogs were given away or died kinda young, pre- my teen years, so I don't remember the pain from then that long ago. So long, Luce, you were an exceptional dog and you taught me many things and unquestionably extended my life, and it was a pleasure knowing you and having you in my home, and while I'll get another dog some day, they won't be as remarkable as you. My sister's had two Goldens, and while I loved/love them too, when I look into their eyes I don't see the same thoughtful intelligence that you had. They're happy-go-lucky and shallow, and you were dignified and always watching and evaluating. You got lucky finding me when you were given up, as I could tell by how you were then how you had been treated in your early years. But I received the most, in our time together. So long, baby.

Last night I tried a couple of things I wanted to try before buying a new PSU:
1) Unplugging the power button connector and doing the screwdriver test, to rule out a bad front-panel switch. No difference.
2) Followed the MB manual's procedure for clearing the CMOS data. Well, I think. It said to unplug the power, but it wasn't clear if they meant cord and PSU socket, or cable and MB socket. I did both, moved the little bridging dohickey for > 5 sec, moved it back, and voila! PSU stays on!

So I reconnected everything, and everything spun up, but the PC didn't do anything, just sat there. MB manual's troubleshooting section, first item was "if no beep, your cpu and mobo aren't working together". OK, so pull the "cpu+heatsink+fan on a card" contraption out and put it back in. (BTW, I'm doing all this with the 3-prong power cable plugged in and touching the metal case often.) This time it seems to go in farther. The flexing of the mobo and some creaking/cracking sounds make me nervous. Power on again, and I get a single beep! And I see and hear it hit the CD drive and floppy drive, as part of the normal startup procedure. Awesome, except one minor little thing -- I have absolutely no video. And nothing in the manual about that.

And unfortunately this morning before work I tried clearing the CMOS again. Maybe I nudged the CPU card trying to pull the mobo power connector out, because now I'm back to the damn PSU shutting off 2 seconds after starting up!

I'm really just about ready to go Office Space on that machine -- it's effectively giving me the "PC LOAD LETTER" and the finger, and I want to smash it to bits. I don't know how some of you guys do this as part of your jobs. I definitely don't have the temperament for it. Nor the manual dexterity, nor the years of experience to know what to do and what not to be fooled by. I am *so* in way over my head here. For yucks (not really) I went to the Geek Squad web site, to see how much for diagnostic and repair, but it's $200 to bring it in, and then it only talks about OS issues and malware removal. This is for grandma, and her virus-infested Windows 98 machine, not me.

Okay, so before blowing a fuse, any idea how to get the video to display? (The monitor and cable are less than 6 months old.) Assuming the stars magically align once again and I can get it back to staying running again -- I guess I'll try reseating the damn CPU assembly again. The (PCI, and very early, initial GeForce model) video card got put back in the same slot it came out of, for sure. I have an old ATI ISA video card from my 90 MHz Win95 machine that I could try instead, if someone thinks maybe I somehow blew my video card. This mobo does not have any on-board video.

Another busy weekend (my dog's dying), but I made some time to take my PC apart. I unplugged all the drive cables, from both the drives and the mobo, and took them out. I took all the cards out -- video, sound, ethernet, and modem. I took all the RAM out -- PC133, 2 DIMM's of 128MB each that came with the computer, and 2 DIMM's of Corsair 256MB that I later added years ago. I even took the brain out -- the CPU and heatsink and fan is all on a card of its own, that plugs into a slot in the mobo. I unplugged the cables to the case reset button and HDD LED's etc. The only thing I currently have plugged in to the mobo is the ATX power cable from PS to mobo, and the connector between the mobo's power-on pins and the case's power button. I.e. the minimal # of connections to still be able to turn it on. And I unplugged and replugged-in both. I also brushed out with a small and very soft paintbrush any dust on the boards and on any pins and in any part of any of the slots. Same deal, the PS fan spins up, it runs for about two and half seconds and then quietly shuts off. No click sound, like when I do the Windows shutdown and it shuts itself off. Instead, it sounds like it might if it just got unplugged or something. I even tried a different power cord.

To quickly answer the remaining questions from the last JE, I had vacuumed with a plastic attachment, and hopefully plastic's not capable of transferring electrostatic charge. (And it's summertime and humid, so *I'm* not zapping anything, at least as far as I notice.) And it's not running XP, it's the Windows 2000 Professional SP4 system that's been stable for forever. (And I don't use automatic updates from MS, I go to the technet section of MS's site and review them first and apply them manually, and I haven't updated in months (I'm behind).)

So, about all I have left I think are the main board, the power supply, and the CMOS battery -- everything else has been taken out.

And the two events of note, as far as I can think of, that coincided with the thing breaking, are unplugged for several hours, and vacuumed out.

The world wide intertubes seem to think that a failed or failing battery wouldn't prevent a boot. But corrupted CMOS data might. I'll try shorting the pins that reset the CMOS data. I think if the battery is dead it would still boot, and maybe just have to rediscover all the H/W parameters again?

Can a power supply be "dead" when it still starts up? My only (limited) experience with dead PS's is that they don't start up at all. (One even made a loud snapping sound and spat sparks at me, and a really strong smell, before it ceased powering up -- startled the crap outta me at work.)

And I'm hoping that the main board didn't just decide to die, or rather, some part of it -- it still spun up hard drives when connected, and the CPU fan, and LED's, etc.

So, with this narrowed down some more, anyone have any hunches? I figure a battery's pretty cheap, but I don't want to buy a new power supply (if I can still even get one for this thing -- a 230 W for an ATX board with it looks like some 3.3V and some 5V and some 12V lines, circa April of 2000) if it's doubtful that that's it. Any advisement is deeply appreciated -- I'm just a programmer so this stuff is not my area of expertise. :(

I was doing some rearranging of my 2nd bedroom yesterday, and thought I'd vacuum and dust everything while things were moved and taken apart. This included just light vacuuming for a few seconds of the inside of my PC case. I reconnected everything last night, and now when I power it up, the fans start up, the hard disks start whirring up, and it runs for no more than 2 seconds and then it shuts off. It shuts off before I ever get anything on the monitor. It's an old computer, a Pentium 3, 666 MHz, but it's my daily computer and basically all I've got, and has everything I need installed and configured just so. Was it because I had it unplugged for several hours, and maybe the CMOS battery is a 5-year Lithium or something and the board forgot how to start up? In vacuuming a couple of times I brushed lightly the plastic attachment against some sodder lines on some of the installed cards -- should I pull all the cards out and try again? I tried it without any peripherals plugged in, with no difference. I never dropped it or jarred it when I moved it. I checked that all the cables were fully in. The only thing else I did was tighten the screws on the CD-ROM drive, as it had gotten pushed in a bit from use. I didn't blow any dust around in there, just sucked up as much as I could. Any potential explanations? And recommendation(s)?!?

364 days out of the year the Associated Press is busy churning out unabashedly slanted Left-wing tripe. (That runs in every newspaper in the country.) So imagine my surprise when I saw this, and how I was craning my neck and squinting looking up in the sky to see if pigs were actually flying, and wondering if now parkas were needed in Hell. Anyways, the article the AP is running on John Edwards' admission of having an affair is enragingly shameful. The first line is:

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer.

Um, unless there's reason to believe that he had the affair expressly *because* his wife was battling cancer, and just to be mean to her, then that "while..." clause doesn't belong connected to the opening sentence. Because the opening sentence often indicates the crux of the article, and properly the crux is that he admitted to the affair, not that he had an affair while his wife needed his support more than ever. We can draw our own conclusion that Edwards is a cold-hearted bastard, we don't need you to tell us (what to think) up front. The coinciding with his wife's cancer factoid belongs later in the article as the author(s) fill in the surrounding context.

And then there's this:

In 2006, Edwards' political action committee paid $100,000 in a four-month span to a newly formed firm run by Hunter, who directed the production of just four Web videos, one a mere 2 1/2 minutes long.

(Ms. Hunter is the woman John was doing the nasty with.) What's with the "just" and "mere" crap?!? Unless the article writer knows what one typically costs and how long they typically or should run, then the article writer should take his injected value judgments and shove them where he sits. And if he does know all about this, he should tell us what exactly is typical and give us evidence for the angle he's taking. Look, the writer goes on to present the facts that she incorporated a company 5 days before receiving this money, so we know what's going on here, we don't need the writer to imply that Edwards' PAC somehow didn't get its money's worth on the video ads.

And then of course the article goes on quoting him in one of the videos talking about how he and the Dem party need to take the lead on moral issues, thereby pointing out via juxtaposition his hypocrisy. Fine, but then it follows mentioning some song in the video and some lyrics about looking in a mirror and do you like what you see. Geez writer, if you wag your finger any harder it's gonna fall off. We get it already.

The bottom line is that the story is sad and pathetic enough as it is. It doesn't need to be embellished, just stick to the facts, or rather the pertinent ones, and present it neutrally. The subset of facts that are actually relevant are plenty to point out what a douche Edwards is. Trying to play it up and putting on the much holier than thou tone only points out that the writer is one too.

p.s. On a different note, this one-sentence paragraph struck me:

A former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not Edwards.

Dang, what did they do over there at Edwards campaign HQ, pass her around?