In case you were wondering, where I've been...

No? Well, bad luck, then.

My PC had died. It just... stopped working at very odd times, and it got increasingly bad, to the point where I compulsively quick-saved after every single sentence I wrote. The damn thing just shut down, no signal coming, no power to the peripherals, but the blue glowy power light on the tower never went out. It was very weird. And annoying.

At the end of my personal, yet considerable, wits, I employed the help of a PC-Doctor. Who kept the thing for a week, then told me he has no idea why it happens. Then went on to tell me I just might have to do a full re-install of Windows 7, including a full wipe of the Hard Drives. Just to be sure.

I will spare you the details of losing pretty much all of my por-... all of my stuff, but there's only so much a 500 GB external hard drive will hold, so choices had to be made, sacrifices to be... sacrificed. Yeah. That's what I meant to write. Anyway, fresh from the install, two hours in, the same thing happened. And I was miffed. Call in to the Doc, who then tells me, that it now can only be on of two things: The CPU or the Motherboard. For the non-nerds, the CPU is the the Central Processing Unit, the thingy that does pretty all of the computer work. It sits, nestled in a motherly embrace, on the Motherboard, which is like the land and infrastructure on which you build that house they call a "Computer". He also mentioned, in a "on a side note" kinda way, that those were the two things he did not check when he did his check, ergo, there the fault must be.

Unfortunately for me, that meant buying new stuff, namely, a new CPU and/or Motherboard, which considering the age of my CPU pretty much took the "or" from the equation, faulty processor or not. The kind of motherboards that would support it, went out of production years ago. Very fleeting business, that is.
I did some research online - by which I mean, I checked on amazon for do-it-yourself build your own PC kits - but... well, I know what most of the stuff means, but I also know that I don't need most of the newer stuff. I don't want to play games on that thing, I just need a working "typewriter" with good web-functionality - most everything else, that's what my PlayStation is 4 (Ha! Get it?), and, recently, once more my trusty Xbox 360 (Dark Souls II, people!). Plus, I wanted someone, whom I could call upon in my hours of need, someone, who would not live in India, but kinda closer to home. Close enough to come buy and fix stuff.

So again I called my trusty PC-Doc, and told him what I wanted: Take my old one, use what you still can use, and put in new, and more importantly cheap, stuff until it works. And so they did. One day later, it came to my door, I paid for it, plugged it in, and was just in the middle of setting things up... and the same damn thing happened again.

In the end, what might have happened was this: A power surge damaged my old PC, either both the power supply and the Motherboard, or the hinky power supply eventually hinkied-up the MB, who can tell? When the first new MotherBoard was installed with a new CPU, the hinky power supply damaged that board, too, which in turn fired the CPU. Thinking it was just an odd coincide, they put in another CPU, test-drove it, and it fizzled again. Only THEN did they consider a faulty Motherboard, and the possible reasons said MB might have begotten these faults.
The final tally amounted to three CPUs (two fried), two Motherboards (one hinky) and one new power-supply. None of which I had to pay, since I never had gotten a working product, but it took quite some time. Plus a new graphics card - for which I DID have to pay - because the on-board GFX did not support audio output via DVI-HDMI, and since my TV is my monitor, that was pretty much not acceptable.

Over one full month of computerlessness. My Smartphone did get a healthy workout in that time, believe you me.

And, believe it or not, that was only the smallest of four pretty devastating things to happen to me in the last six weeks. Yeah. The smallest, the most insignificant. But you don't care, so I won't bore you.

Next up: Watch_Dogs :)

For all your PS4 or Xbox One needs, especially the European needs, head over to Amazon UK - best deals in Europe (mostly). For TV or Movie Streaming needs, as well. Yes, they did help me through this. Yes, I do buy there myself. Exclusively. Unless I find a better deal, elsewhere...