Reason #405698 that I am sometimes not as bright as I’d like to think I am (which is a much nicer way of saying that sometimes, I’m a friggin’ idiot).

I turned on my computer today and when it loaded up, everything had a green tinge. Confused, I checked my contrast, brightness and display settings to see if anything had changed, which it hadn’t. I asked Sean what he thought was wrong, and he didn’t know. Yelling down to the living room from my office upstairs is not conducive to getting a very educated answer, I might add. A good point Sean did make was that I’ve had my monitor for nearly ten years. I then remembered that it was refurbished when I bought it so maybe it was just dying a natural death.

So I started pricing out new monitors, figuring this was a good excuse to get a snazzy LCD monitor. Of course the best prices involved waiting for rebates that may or may not show up. (I did get the last rebate I sent away for, but it took just over six months.) I’m doing this research on my green-tinged monitor, so everything is looking kinda lucky or environmentally friendly.

Frustrated, I left my computer and its green screen. A couple hours later I got Sean to come up with me and take a look at it. He did what any technical support person would like to do to malfunctioning hardware – he hit it really hard. It bounced a little and went black.

Well, that cemented it. It was time to go and get a new monitor.

I’m broke right now so I started my search in Wal-Mart. That was a terrible idea as they only had four monitors and they were all ridiculously priced. I supposed the happy-faced slasher hadn’t come to visit them yet. Undaunted, we went over to Future Shop. They had many more choices and I picked one out, paid for it, and after some other errands, we went home.

So now I’m getting excited. I have a snazzy new monitor that is two inches bigger than my old one! (From 15 to 17 inches – not as big as my 19 inch at work, but that was just too pricey, and I wasn’t sure if it would fit on my desk.) This will be great for when I’m working on photos or graphics or whatever! LCD’s are also so much easier on the eyes! And easier to move around. While I didn’t really want to spend the money right now, the necessity of having a monitor that worked and getting an upgrade was making me happy.

So I bring the box up to the office. I’m unplugging everything to get ready to truck the old monitor out. Then I look down at the floor.

There is a cable that is unplugged.

Am I really that stupid? I haven’t been drinking today, and I don’t remember doing anything to my computer recently that would make the cable come out.

Again, I yell at Sean to come up. I’m afraid to replug everything in and find out if this is monitor death or human stupidity, so of course I want a witness. I replug everything in and fire things up.

The monitor is fine. We decided that it was mostly unplugged when Sean hit it, and when he did that, he unplugged it the rest of the way. At least, that’s the story I’m telling.

Sean asked me “Didn’t you check to see if everything was plugged in? I asked you that, and you said you hadn’t yet.” I do not remember this part of the conversation and as a former technical support person, that should have been the first thing he checked, rather than hurt his hand by giving the monitor a good slug. Not to pass the blame on or anything.

Now a new dilemma has come up. Do I keep the new monitor that I has turned into a want instead of a need? The monitor I can’t really afford, but I really want to use?

Yes.

I justified this by remembering that my parents are looking to join the computer age and get online. I figure that I will save them money by giving them my old monitor and keeping this one. Being such a good daughter has made my over-expenditure worth it. I am typing this entry staring at a beautifully sharp picture. Vector graphics look crisp and clear. Everything is bigger. This is cool.

I guess that the moral of the story is that sometimes you do have to be an idiot to make things work out.