For my sins.

I love computers.

My job depends on using computers.

I use them maybe 6 or seven hours on most days, and when i'm finished working, I sometimes blow the living shite out of electronic monsters for hours on end (Technical term is turn em into "gibs", short for giblets). I rip computers apart and put em back together for the fun of it, I add bits, I remove bits, I tweak em, I download beta software, test it, and chuck it away on a regular basis. There are hundreds of Icons on my desktop background that I'm afraid to delete or uninstall coz they might be useful someday, I am the nerd who hasn't seen the side panel on his computer in two or three years (the week after I bought it I remember putting it away safe for a day while adding in some card or other). I don't work in the computer industry but am what you might call a gifted amateur I suppose. I'm the guy that gets the phone calls in the middle of the night to tell my mates that they have to click this, press that and jiggle the other. This causes my wife to despair at having a conversation without being interrupted with talk of "Re-install that shite" or similar utterances.

Now,

I've just had one of those happenings that we all are warned about, tech guys on the other end of phone lines make their millions from, You know better, you know it'll never happen to you, you haven't bothered to make the weekly backup of your files in two or three months. Yes, you've guessed it, a complete motherboard fucking meltdown.

We manage to get two weeks of sunshine together, in a row even, on this waterlogged Island that we call home, and us Irish whinge about it. I had just got used to seeing my arms turn back to a somewhat golden colour up to the sleeves anyway (Farmers Tan), numerous external garden works were undertaken and then to crown off the fortnight, the shaggin lump of silicon and steel and wire in the corner decides to pack up and fuck off to the silicon equivalent of Majorca and somehow find a job in a plastic paddy pub called "O' Breens" or "Mcmurrihy's" and then stayed there, yes, stayed fucked, even when the rain (Winter even) returned.

The general upshot of this is that I have had to spend most of the last 6 days and nights attempting to get the damn thing to work, succeeding, it locking up again, succeeding again, ad infinitum (wel ad about 4 days) finally giving up the ghost, forking out a ridiculous wad of cash for a new machine (Cheapo ones wouldn't do me natch, I have to keep up with the modern stuff like), finally managing to install all the work software and files on the new machine and then what happens???

The fucking thing coughs, farts, gives a grunt, I swear I hear "HEEEERES JOHNNY" and it starts to work again.

To date I have refrained from clocking the damn thing with a sledgehammer or threatening it with my favourite "DOOM" weapon, the chainsaw, but I don't know if I can hang on much longer..........