Vermillion No Sekai

I am sure every individual has had at least one time in which they think everything that happens around them is wrong. Usually, they only feel that's the case for a few days, a few weeks, some even think everything works wrong for them while they are alive. In my case, technology has been my nemesis for a few long months, or to be more specific, one year and a half.

Everything started in Early 2008. I had a nice laptop which was my main computer of all the time, and I used it frequently. I got it in about March 2007. I used it everyday, until the day of my vacation came, and I packed my stuff to have a nice vacation in Orlando and Miami. I didn't take my laptop with me, because I really wanted to relax in those days. I stayed three weeks in the US, and it was time to return. When I got back, the first I thing I did was to finish some incomplete work in my laptop. I did all that, completed my work till the night. The next day, I tried to turn my laptop on, but every time I tried, it restarted in the middle of the process of turning on. I tried over and over again. After a few attempts, I checked the hardware on the laptop itself... I found a big melted hole near the "FN" and the Windows key, which was saying "I have melted like cheeses where your processor is". Yep, actually my whole motherboard was, literally, fried. So since we have no Acer, HP, or anything support in the poor Bolivia (Latin America), I took the laptop to a guy who owned a public internet local to fix it. The news were devastating: he would order a new motherboard for my laptop, it would cost me 300$, and I would be with no laptop for 3 weeks. In those days, I had to use my mother's computer, no MSN, limited Neo, and the old Office 98 to do my school work. It was awful. The three weeks passed, and the guy extended the delivery date one week, because the motherboard didn't arrive yet. I called the next week, same reply, and so on until I had to wait 3 months to get my laptop back. I got it back in around the first days of May 2008. The laptop was fine and working, but it still had the melted hole in the spot... And I still see the melted hole nowadays because no one would buy a cheesey-melted laptop, or would they?

So yeah, on May 20, 2008, it was my birthday, and my grandfather gave me money for a new computer. That computer lasted me a good year or so. It had the nice Windows XP, which for some reason was unfriendly with my hardware, and I ended up updating to Vista. I was thinking that Vista (x86) was the best experience I ever had in my computing life... Until a few weeks later, I wanted to see some movies on it, as I personally don't have any DVD player on my room, and my mother's one is messed up. The first times, the DVDs played fine with no problem, but later, I started to see sudden black screens, and an error in the bottom right corner saying that "x driver has problems" (or something like that). That problem caused my movie to either advance long minutes, or to stop completely. Sometimes, the sudden blackouts resulted in BSODs stating that my graphics card drivers are corrupted, or something in those lines. I though I could solve those problems without too much problem. Well I looked around until the end of the internet in Google for my problem with no avail. I ended up formatting my computer to see if that solved the graphics card issue. I installed Vista x86 again, and again it worked fine, except when I watched movies. I had updated everything on my computer, and the error was consistent. This problem lasted from early June 2008, and lasted to around October 2008, I had formatted my computer around 6 times really, without fixing that driver issue. I started to think it was the graphics card's hardware itself.

Then in Around July or August, I had a bad day overall. The main event was that my external 500 GBs hard drive died, badly. I lost information that I was keeping from early 2003, some heavy 4.00 GBs downloads I have made in the time frame of long months, and a big collection of personal pictures that had a lot of value for my and my brother. I will never understand what happened to that hard drive, I used it all the time in the desktop I got in my birthday that year, but I don't remember what event forced me to use the old laptop (the one melted like cheese), with my hard drive. I remember I had a lot of time in my hands that day, so I wanted to learn Flash in my laptop, while my hard drive moved some data to it... But when I opened the application, EVERYTHING in the laptop froze, nothing would respond, I had to disconnect it and take its battery off. I had to go to my Japanese classes the right time that happened, so I went there wondering if everything was right with my laptop and my hard drive. However when I got home, I tried to use my external hard drive on my desktop, and the desktop wouldn't detect it. It was dead. Muerto. Sayounara. I checked the hard drive, I smelled it, and it smelled like something was burnt inside. Yes, yet another important technology artifact had fallen in the hands of fire. The next day I took the hard drive to my computer teacher to see if something could be done to recover the data. He said yes, so I bought another external hard drive so he could put all the data there. He tried really hard, and I didn't have either of the hard drives for two months. He was able to recover many things, but unfortunately, none of them were really important.

Back on the graphics card drivers issue. In late November, I decided to open up my computer for the first time, because by then, I had no experience with hardware whatsoever, and I didn't build the desktop. I was very ignorant with what computer hardware was. I opened it up, and I disarmed it to clean the hardware parts. I checked the graphics card with special care, and nothing was wrong with it. I also learned that I had a sucky motherboard, and my RAM cards were very old. I had the computer completely disarmed for 3 days at first, because I was having huge problems with some case pin connectors that I had to connect in the motherboard. My motherboard was so bad, it didn't have the small pins labeled correctly. I somehow got the corrections right. I put in my hard drive with Windows Vista, but it wouldn't boot, so I had to format the hard drive again. Everything went smoothly to the part I had Vista up and running with no problems, but for some reason, it wouldn't boot every time I applied a patch on it. That patch was important for me, but every time I tried to use it in a fresh Vista installation, the installation would die right away. I was formatting the machine like crazy for two weeks, getting different versions of Windows Vista, and installing them and trying to make them work like crazy. I was two weeks in that just process, but I finally asked for help to identify my motherboard. I flashed my motherboard's BIOS, but I still had the same problem. So on the third week of the problem, I decided to disarm my computer again and build it from scratch. I didn't have any problems, I installed Vista, the patch, and everything working smoothly. Though I still had the graphics card's problem after that... Well, at least I had Windows working fine with no problems after 3 weeks of having a completely abnormal life!

I forgot to say something in that last paragraph. When I build the computer again, I connected the floppy disc driver wrong, so when I turned the computer on, the floppy disc driver burned like bacon. It would seem as I am an expert when it comes to burn computer hardware. Luckily, I really never used the floppy driver, and I was used in not having it since I have had just laptops prior that desktop.

My problems ended in December 2008, but returned in my birthday this year, 2009 for a bite. In May this year, I had decided that the current desktop didn't fit my requirements, so yet again I received money, this time from my mother, to buy new hardware parts. The funny thing is that I didn't plan in buying much. I just wanted a new motherboard and processor first. But due to the circumstances (my case was too small, and my first hard drives were starting to die), I had to buy not only the new motherboard and new processor, but also 4 new RAM cards, 3 hard drives, a new case, and securer SATA cables. It wasn't too cheap like I planned it to be. So now, ever since may, I have been trying to get an stable computer for the sake of it. I first installed Vista x64 with no service pack, but that one gave me a BSOD every 30 seconds, and didn't like my iPhone and iPod. Then I tried Windows Vista x86, it was being a bad guy with me with its constant freezing. I finally got Vista x64, and it was working fine, but every time I tried to do something, it would tell me that "X program has stopped working". I would originally deal with that, but when you try to go back one directory and you get the message saying that Windows Explorer has stopped working, then there's certainly a problem. Not to mention Firefox was crashing wayyyy too much on it, so even posting on Neo was almost impossible, and none of the three above setups would let me install Windows MSN for whatever. Now I got Windows XP x64 SP2, and I though it would be the solution to my problems while I wait the official version of Windows 7 to come out. But now iTunes is being a bad boy too. I wanted that program for a XP SP2 x64 machine, but there's only one available for Vista. I tried to install the Vista one, and it wouldn't let me because well, its for Vista. I though I would be conformed with the x86 version of iTunes I installed in my x64 setup, but guess what? Check the picture below:



So yep: There's no x64 version of iTunes for Windows XP x64, and I must sync my iPhone in a Vista machine or in a computer running XP x86. Apple, you are a wonderful friend of mine. I mean, give me a goddamn break!

Technology has been treating me like a bag of trash, and I don't like that :<. Remember folks, make sure you treat your stuff well. Don't give excessive use to laptops, don't disarm your computer for the first time before knowing its internal hardware specs, and more than anything, keep a backup of things you appreciate the most.

PS: I didn't say that my Samsung Razr V3 phone felt into the toilet accidentally, that I spilled milk on top of my TV to kill it, or that I accidentally lighted my 1 GB flash memory with a ighter rather than lighting a cigarette for my mom, did I?... Bleh.