My monitor finally pissed me off enough to force a purchase of a new one. It started cooking some of the dust that had collected on top of it and what I thought was smoke turned out to just be burning dust. Hell, I’ve had this monitor for almost four years, now, back since 1998, when my other monitor died one afternoon. I’ve had my eye on a nice flat panel LCD display for a while, and since I’ve come into a little bit of money, I went over to Fry’s and picked up the ViewSonic 19 inch TFT screen. I also picked up a monitor stand/swingarm, as I’ve never really liked or been satisfied with the height of my other monitor, forcing my neck to be at a constant down angle instead of it being level with my head. On top of the new monitor and stand, my new Belkin KVM switch came in the mail on Monday, do with all the new stuff sitting on my desk.
About a year ago, I picked up a Belkin OmniCube 4-port switch on eBay for about 40 bucks. Now, for those of us who’re aware of how much these things cost, at 40 bucks it was a fucking steal. The 4-port switches tend to be around $125+, so naturally I just took the risk. Caveat emptor and all that. Anyway, I’ve been really happy with it, and even though I abuse the living shit out of it, it’s held up pretty well. Unfortunately, in the recent weeks, the ps/2 mouse port on the front of it started to go. It would work on one computer, but not the other. In troubleshooting it a little bit, I decided that maybe I abused it a little too much and I went online and priced brand new Belkin switches. The model that was comparable but their latest and greatest, retailed for roughly $129. But, this switch did not offer much in the way of USB connection. The top-of-the-line model Belkin switch (for home users like me) was actually closer to $200. Since both my boxes have USB ports, I wanted to take advantage of that, thinking that that was the problem. Heh, much to my dismay, it turns out the it was something about the way the switch sends the mouse signal to the computer, so the one machine that wouldn’t recognize the mouse was just being a little bitch. I spent $200 to diagnose that problem, but since I now had two switches, I donated the old one to the apartment’s little tech pile, and ended up trading it out to Todd’s little brother Jody for some spare parts.
Anyway, barring the switch madness, this week has been pretty much a burnfest. I have so many doramas to burn that I had to go out and buy two more spindles of CDs, plus a couple of clear thin cases, so I can use them to send out Beautiful Life and Majou no Jouken to
Wednesday morning, though, I get to go to my sister’s house to pick up my couch and kitchen dining table. It would be nice to actually have some furniture in the apartment, besides the bed and desk in my room, that is.
