August 8

I'm grateful I can still count myself among the employed.

This morning I found myself putting together graphics for a presentation at the last minute and suddenly, Pop! My entire monitor turned purple. After cursing my luck that of all days, it had to be today this would happen, I headed out to quickly buy a replacement. We brought it back to the office, I hooked it up (I cannot BELIEVE how light the thing is) and my monitor was no longer purple. Instead, it was a beautiful, incredibly clear shade of blue.

So, great troubleshooter that I am, I decided that it must be the video card. After raiding some old computers lying around in my office and discovering they didn't work with my motherboard (hey, I'd already spent $400 on a new monitor I didn't really need, I was trying to save the business some money!), I finally went to the computer store and bought the only AGP video card they had in stock, which happened to be twice as good as my old one. I brought it back to the office, installed it, and yup, my monitor was still blue.

Admitting your faults is the first step, so I cried uncle, called the computer store and they took me through the proper troubleshooting steps. By the second step, we found that my monitor cable was bad. Golly gee. A free fix. And I spent $450 to get there. But oh, what a great monitor it is!