In our last episode, the hero, (meaning me) after being dived bombed by a previously unknown alien life form that had been dwelling within the unclean recesses of a dead PC, had just lowered his cardboard shield and fishing net in preparation for his first peek into the guts of his wife’s computer. We pick up the story from there.
As I’m sure anyone who’s ever opened up the chassis of a personal computer that hadn’t been cleaned in the better part of a decade would know, it’s not often a pretty sight. And the one I was timidly peering into was no exception.
Instead of finding this:
I found this:
I knew then that without a doubt I had my job cut out for me. On that thought I went off to the kitchen to fetch myself a sharp knife. I knew I’d need it just to cut through the initial layer.
After cutting through the first layer of semi-organic gauze consisting of dust, cobwebs, cat hair and any other sort of material that usually wafts it’s way across any normal household floor and into the front intakes of a mid-tower PC, I could finally make out the various pieces/parts that one would normally find inside a box like this. This achievement still didn’t make things look any prettier than they did before though. And attempting to remove the rest of the dirt, dust and what-have-you’s that normally don’t belong in a PC such as this would only waste precious man-hours and possibly put lives at risk—meaning mine. This left me with only one option left.
I strode across the basement floor and after turning my face away to avoid any possible flying shrapnel, drove the power handle to the old 2 cylinder air compressor into the “Closed” position. After several reluctant turns of the drive motor, a protesting screech from the belt and a shower of electrical sparks the old compressor was chugging along quite nicely. And as it takes awhile these days for the old contraption to hit 150 lbs of air pressure I retired to the kitchen once again to make myself a nice cup of tea.
I figured a cup of tea, a buttered scone and a couple of good blasts of air would easily eliminate half of my cleaning time.
Stay tuned for Part III (don’t you just hate this?)
Oh NO. You certainly have learned that cleaning anything means it won’t work as well. Big mistake Hero. You are Indiana Jones of computer archeology?
.-= GoingLikeSixty´s last blog ..Cash for Clunker Crybabies =-.
Sixty – Considering that 6 PC years equates to about a thousand or so in human years, “archeology’ would probably be the correct term for it. Of course you have to take in the fact that the computer quit working in the first place so there was no choice in the matter?