Dude. *Dude*.

In addition to the aforementioned difficulties getting online, I've been having a few issues lately with my computer which were looking distressingly motherboardish. It froze, frequently and without warning, especially if it were being moved, or if I were typing a great deal. Sometimes it would unfreeze again after a few heart-stopping seconds, and sometimes it wouldn't, and I'd have to reboot. I'm sure you can imagine that this wasn't the ideal computing scenario, and I've been dreading the day when I would have to fork over more cash for a replacement.

So last night, I was sitting around playing a game of solitaire, and it froze up on me for about the third time in one night, and I said fuck this, man, jumped up to get my teeny-screwdriver set, and started taking the whole thing apart. I figured it couldn't possibly be any worse even if it never started again; and besides, I had this little hope in the back of my mind. Maybe you have it too? That when you start a repair it will somehow miraculously manage to be much easier than you're thinking it will be? I always do, anyway, even though it almost never actually does turn out to be easier than I'd planned.

Except that when I had the whole thing apart, there was this inexplicable U-shaped rod rattling around loose in there, and when I shook it out and put my laptop back together, everything was working again, including my wireless connection. And so I'm up and running, with no effort expended beyond unscrewing the 240 or so tiny screws on the underside of the laptop. And I'm holding on to the little rod just in case everything goes to hell again, but so far, everything is going swimmingly. *knocks on desktop*

I mean to say. :O