Computers

Can't live with them, can't live without them. I got a jolting reminder of this very early this morning.

Our little New Years Eve tradition consists of my wife making her signature dish -- lasagna. She's not Italian (she's Austrian, actually), but her lasagna recipe is to die for. Anyway, some family members got together last evening and we ended up playing Trivial Pursuit. After a spirited contest (my son and I won), I opened a bottle of champagne and we watched as Chicago ushered in the new year. We then watched Van Helsing on DVD which ended around 2:30 AM. After cleaning up, I was looking forward to going on the computer for a few relaxing moments before retiring for the night. I went into the den and turned the computer and the monitor on.

Nothing.

The computer is working, but the monitor remains dark. I turned it on and off a couple more times and decide to fight this battle in the morning.

I got up around 8:00 AM and turned the monitor on.

Nothing.

I start unplugging the power cord and plugging it in again to see if that does something.

Still nothing.

Not being overly technical, my wife and I decided to drive over to Best Buy to purchase a replacement. We bought our current Sony monitor just over four years ago. It's an 19-inch CRT monitor that's big and heavy. When we first bought the monitor, flat panel displays were just coming out and were very expensive. To make a long story short, we found a 19-inch flat panel display monitor that's big and bright. Judging from my unscientific sample, flat panel monitors were everywhere and only a few of the "old" CRTs were available for sale. There were several nice CRT models available at very reasonable prices, but none were over 17 inches in size.

I brought it home and hooked it up. Now my desk seems larger because the new display takes up so little space. This particular model can even hang on the wall if I desired!

While at Best Buy, I checked out the laptops and I can't believe how nice they are getting. Maybe someday...