Please disregard the four gallons of water and the rubber gloves. They are part of a very different, sexier project.
You know what cool people do on Saturday when it’s 95 degrees outside? Me either. So I’m gonna take my computer apart. Why? Well, apart from the fact that your mom is out of town and I’m bored, I just remembered that I put an extra hard drive in there like a year ago but didn’t have the right wire or some gay shit so I just closed it back up and forgot about it.
So going to Best Buy and getting some weird wire and then coming home and ruining my sweet computer seems completely logical to me. I’m pretty handy, you know. One time I fixed my car by buying another different car and years ago I repaired a rocky relationship by moving to another state. So my working plan is this.
- Get the pdf of the manual for my computer (in case I fuck something up).
- Go to Best Buy.
- Buy the wire I need as well as some other crap that I don’t understand. Maybe a gyronad or USB underwear would go nicely with my new system.
- Get some of those super organized looking cable ties that are all color coordinated and make myself think that I’m going to use them. This feeling will last until later in the project.
- Come home and recklessly yank all wires out of my computer, making sure that my workspace is dark and cramped.
- Go to my tool box and get ONE screwdriver without looking at the computer at all. I will make sure to not bring the tool box with me so that if I need something else I will have to go back to the tool box while muttering. Step six may be repeated up to 11 times.
- Start unscrewing screws with no heed whatsoever paid to whether or not they seem to be pertinent to opening the computer. This may include struggling with a bolt on the bottom of the case that, when finally removed (by using a hammer and an M-80) does not seem to have been holding anything to anything.
- Put all screws in some sort of container that will later be spilled like the lug nuts in A Christmas Story. These screws will also be painfully stepped on later as for some reason computer tinkerin’ requires bare feet.
- After taking 99.9% of all removable parts off of the case, I will try to slide it open by making some weird, mounting maneuver that will look awkward and sound like a robot giving birth to another larger robot. The .01% of screws remaining will slow this process down, so I make sure to yank extra hard!
- Sit on floor wondering why I took my computer apart and if I have any important emails.
- Go to car and get the bag of stuff I bought at Best Buy. Up to two hours of TV, sandwiches and video game playing may elapse between steps 10 and 11.
- Marvel at how much dust is inside computer and wonder what my lungs look like. Make mental note to buy a Swiffer.
- Realize that the act of buying a bunch of things that may fit in a computer in no way makes me qualified to actually put them in there properly. I remember at this point that once I bought a stethoscope and one of those reflector head bands at a yard sale but they didn’t make me a doctor.
- I then refer to the pdf manual that I cleverly made sure I had in step 1. When I don’t find it I realize that step 1.5: “Print the fucking thing” would have been good.
- Dick around with the stuff I bought, poking this thing into that thing and seeing if it fits. It’s like having sex but with more sharp metal than I usually like.
- “Wrap it up” by sliding the computer part back into the other part and start putting screws in. In order to avoid corny “screws left over” joke I throw the first three screws I pick up away.
- Look at the cable ties and then look at the power strip under the desk. I decide to reach for one plug that looks extra tangly to start my neatening project.
- Unplug the only light in room.
- Go out to eat.
- Come back and get light plugged back in. As the wire neatening seems ridiculous now (why wouldn’t I need to lift up my router if I want to put on my headphones?) I wrap cable ties around my fingers and pretend I am a brightly colored finger monster.
- Turn on computer by poking the 1/3 of the power button that is actually visible through the front of the case. Somehow the whole front of the machine looks like an elevator that stopped two feet short of the floor. The CD drive button is nowhere to be found. The CD drawer thingy itself is mindlessly bonking itself against the inside of the front part. It does this until I smell smoke. Then it stops and I’m fine with it.
- Confirm that the pdf manual is on the desktop and that my new hard drive is still not in any way recognized by the computer.
- Check email (none). 🙁
- Erase all memory of any of the first 23 things ever happening so I can repeat the process without prejudice a year from now.
- Get Windows warning that disk is almost full. Regretfully delete old episodes of Wipeout from Tivo folder, thus freeing a million Gigs. Go to sleep.
I’ve witnessed similar scenes in my own house. I’ve been a part of them. My mother’s computer currently has no casing on one side, because it got taken off to insert a wireless card. That went well, but the casing needs to be… like… slid back on, and then clicked in and then screwed on. And the sliding and clicking thing just isn’t happening. So it’s been that way for about a year.
thank goodness for friends with pc skills
If I don’t hear from you in like 4 hours, I’m calling the cops and filing a missing persons report.
It’s seemed so promising. Most of my projects go down like yours, in flames or other magnificent failure. Pretty much for the same reason too, I don’t have a clue what I am doing, no one bothers to stop me and talking to repair people of any kind intimidates me. I just buy new cars too.
LOL! This is one of the funniest things you have written, Acadia. I think I will email it to a bunch of people and take credit for it.
If we don’t see Acadia in 4 hours, it’s because he got lost in the computer.
I have to add that I added an additional hard drive in a computer I had, and it took all damn day. I don’t know how many F-bombs I dropped, but there were a few. Now if Acadia had been around to help, we probably could have filled a swear jar.
You seriously need to find some local tech friends. They could be so useful at a time like this. For spare parts, specifically. I have several of the cables you needed and would have gladly spared you hours of misery, lol. Not to mention the waiting a year thing. Non-techies working on their own computers…it’s almost enough to make me cry. If I wasn’t laughing my butt off, that is. 😉
I downloaded these exact steps AND printed them years ago. It works rather well for us tech noobs. Also, the remains of my other self repairs serve as a warning to my newer ‘puters, makes them work properly, the first time.
I think this is a nearly universal experience. It describes my attempts fairly well, down to the brightly colored finger monster. That’s my fave part.
I don’t know what to put on the new hard drive….