D.O.P.-T. (yesterday)

It's been a bad weekend technology-wise. I woke up on Friday night to find my monitor non-functional. Black screen no matter what I did, although I could hear normal noises from my computer (Skype whooshing, etc. Not mysterious beeps and whines.) I managed to get the laptop working in the kitchen and have it claw its way online via dial-up basically just in time to put it away and go to work. On Saturday morning the green light on the monitor had gone to the normal sleepy amber so I moved the mouse and it came to life! Yay! On the other hand, when she got up the housemate found her server was semi-b0rked. We decided - after I'd brought 2 astoundingly dusty old monitors up from the basement and arrayed them artistically in her dog's favorite chewy-chewing spot in the dining room - that she would acquire me a new screen, if only as a backup, and price up bits to build herself a new server. So she headed to Fry's while I went to bed late after some time attempting to make up for lost time by working simultaneously on my laptop in the kitchen and my desktop in my bedroom. I also had her e-mail my go-to computer guy from her cellphone, although I had a feeling this was his week for being up a mountain.

D.O.P.-T.

So on Sunday I avoided falling over the box containing the new monitor as I came into the house; I fed the dogs; I started the sprinkler; I went into my room to see whether I still had a working screen - and the computer was off, too, and the UPS was moaning plaintively. Power cut. Long one, too; I actually have 2 UPSs and one had been drained. So back to the laptop, and a total impasse trying to find out about the cause and projected length of the power outage - "our employee dropped a hammer, we'll have it fixed soon" or "a generating station burned down and we have to build a new one"? No way to find out - the only sites I could find were so loaded with flash and crap, the laptop couldn't load them. Then the housemate got up. I warned her before she entered her office. Power then came back - we both started the process of getting our large machines running - I was in the middle of an edit on Wikipedia - and the power went out again. A howl of anguish from the housemate. I did my best to save my edit - but it crashed too soon. Back to the laptop, try to remember the edit and make it - and the power came back on. Aaaaand - the housemate found she had monitor problems. The second power cut apparently fried the thingie she uses to connect her multiple computers to her monitor. Meanwhile she discovered my computer guru had responded that he was 80 miles into the forest. We had to go grocery shopping. She was moaning about who she'd annoyed, so I recommended she blót Loki. I fell into bed when we got back. The power was still working but I'd turned off my comp when we left to avoid another crash. When I got up, we switched my monitor for the new one. It works, but I will have to get used to having so much screen real estate. The living room is apparently littered with instruction sheets for assembly and packing foam. The switching operation involved contortions, imprecations, and crowding poor Bear on the bed with an old monitor. I was almost late to work. And - she did offer to Loki. There were no further power cuts that afternoon and evening. But her bank immediately denied the credit card charge for the new connector box gizmo.