Take the good with the bad

As they said once on one of my favourite TV shows, "Every moment of pleasure in life must be paid for with an equal amount of pain." Unless, of course, you're into the whole bondage thing, because then the pleasure is nothing but pain, but I digress.

24 hours ago, I had my moment of pleasure. A half-hour ago, I had the moment of pain.

The pleasure: This is my first blog entry from my nice, new computer. I bought a Dell online. It arrived yesterday afternoon, and I had a delightful day carefully putting it together, making sure everything was just so, and firing it up for the first time.

I had the usual reaction I always do to new computers. The screen is sharper and clearer. It's so much faster. Once I had it all set up and all my accessories working, I called it a night and went to bed.

The pain: over the weekend, in anticipation of my new machine, I bought a USB hub. A nice, new 7-port 2.0 hub. I hooked it up today. Everything was looking really good.

Then I plugged in my flash drive.

I wasn't able to read anything off my flash drive. And it got really, really hot. And smelled like burning metal.

Curious, I unplugged my hub, re-connected it, and this time, I tried my MP3 player. Same thing...it wouldn't read the player. It got really, really hot, and it smelled like burning metal. Plus, there was a really loud pop when I plugged it in.

The hub was getting really, really hot, too, and I was really getting worried. I tried my flash drive and my MP3 player in my laptop, and it came up, "Warning! Power surge detected in USB ports."

I facebooked my more computer-savvy friends to confirm my suspicions.

I outlined what happened and then asked my friends, "Is this USB a piece of shit and did it fry my flash drive and MP3 player?" And my friends said, "Yup."

Damn damn damn.

So, the pleasure: new computer!

The pain: my new USB fried my flash drive and MP3 player.

I bought the hub at Staples...I'm going to try to return it this weekend. It says right on its warranty, "If you think it's defective, return it and you'll get a full refund."

Not sure what to do about my flash drive and MP3 player, though. The flash drive was a promo item I got through work. The MP3 player was a hand-me-down from my brother.

But still, I am really, really pissed.

And now, the new problem. I'm beginning the task of transferring old files from my old computer onto my new computer. I told you about my problem with my old laptop...it just keeps running and running and the hard drive just keeps filling up and filling up. This making it difficult in the file transfer. I couldn't figure out how to get the network working so I could just transfer things over the network, so I went with old method of copying everything to CD and walking the CDs across the room.

My computer's telling me that it can't burn CDs because of how little space is left on my hard drive. And I've deleted pretty much everything, except for the files I need to transfer.

To delete the files, I need to burn them to CD. To burn the files to CD, I need to delete them.

Ya know, when we have computer problems like this at work, I turn to my co-workers and say, "Haven't we learned the lesson of Jurassic Park? This is what happens when you rely too much on computers! Today, this problem. Tomorrow, there'll be rampant velociraptor attacks in the streets!"

I need a Slurpee.