Well, my laptop decided to kick off the new year by going spastic! Literally on New Year's Day it began to suddenly convert its visual display to a wild, colorful pattern of dashes. It looked like the screen was covered in plaid. Then after rebooting it, a window would pop up with the pronouncement, "VPU Recover has reset the graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands."

For a while it worked OK, but would occasionally be overcome with another fit of plaidness and have to be reset. But finally yesterday, it decided to stop working at all. When I restarted the computer, it would just cycle through the start-up sequence over and over, never quite able to bring itself to launch Windows--covered in tartan the whole time.

:P This is, of course, on top of the fact that my television dropped dead last week. Fortunately, we DO have another computer. And there IS a "communal" TV down in the media room. But all the major equipment in my personal space has gone fzzzzt. Maybe it's just trying to remind me that while the new year is looming bright and full of hope, entropy is never very far away...

To quote the new Doctor: "Yes...I am definitely Mr. Grumpy-face."

PS: I am being inducted as a member of the Council of Four Eyes at the CLAW Great and Grand Yearly Ceremony tonight. More to come on that later...