My cat is an MCSE!

[James Nguyen]

well, not quite....
So I boot up my laptop this morning at the office and I get nothing but colorful fuzz on the monitor. Hmm.. odd.
reboot. same. reboot. same. lather rinse repeart some 20 times. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I hook it up to an extrnal monitor and it works fine on the external monitor, so....great, looks like the most expensive part on my dell laptop just died on me, the built in LCD, shit. Call up dell, get a ticket number, arrange to send it in for repair/replacement since I'm still under warranty.
So, as I'm looking for a box to pack the machine into I leave it on, attached to the external monitor--and sitting on my coffee table, about a foot and a half off the ground. My cat then apparently gets drawn to all the fuzzy colors scrolling by starts sniffing around, trips on the power cord and then proceeds to accidently tug it down to the ground....the machine falls a foot and a half to hit my carpeted floor....and what do you know...all the random color, flicker and fuzziness of my display suddenly disappears.

Now I've got to explain to the dell tech reps that uh..yeah, my cat fixed my computer.

anyhow, I'm assuming, some connection inside must have been loose and the drop just happened to snap it back into place... shrug..if it were a desktop I would have just ripped it apart and tried to solve myself, but heh, expensive laptops still under warranty....from now on, I'll always leave to my cat to fix.

 

[Ryan Wright]

Actually, you probably turned the internal display off by accident and the drop may have hit the appropriate key to turn it back on. Most laptops have a key that toggles your displays between the following states:
- Internal LCD on
- External VGA connection on
- Both on
Check your owner's manual...
Oh wait. I re-read your post and you said you got colorful fuzz, so this couldn't have been the problem. Nevermind.
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-Ryan ( http://www.ryanwright.com )
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you do criticize them, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
[Edited last by Ryan Wright on October 24, 2001 at 11:56 AM]

 

[Philip_G]

hrm. my only thought was maybe the lid switch that shuts off the LCD when you close the lid might have been stuck down (they get gummed up sometimes) but usually just cause a black or REALLY faint screen and not funny colors.. weird. I dunno

 

[James Nguyen]

Yah, I really don't know either...
it was actually kinda cool to watch the colorful fuzz...the only comparison I can make is...hmm...if you've ever tried out the various visualization plugins for Windows Media Player or Winamp.....my screen looked like THAT....except you could make faint distinctions of windows open, dialog boxes, start menus, etc...but yeah, it was mostly just colorful...stuff.
but hey, that's why I've got the cat fixing things now

 

[Scott Merryfield]

So, does this mean you are going to let your cat calibrate your TV with Avia?

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AFI 100 Films to watch: 40 -> 4

 

[Clinton McClure]

Hey James - Is your cat ISF certified, and how much does he charge per hour?

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My DVD Collection Casa del Clint

 

[James Nguyen]

lol....hmm....will have to talk to the critter, see how much its going rate is now..

 

[Brad_W]

That's actually a really funny story.

LOL. laugh out loud? licking old ladies? lice on lisa? Anyway...
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"I was born to murder the world." -Nix (Lord of Illusions)
My Home Page http://www.geocities.com/masternix/DVD.html
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[Rob FM]

James, get that cat "re-certified" before the end of the year so he's W2K current.
Believe me, there's nothing worse than an un-certified cat lounging around your house.
~Rob

 

[James Nguyen]

ah, but it was WinXP Server (beta 2) that it fixed...so it appears my cat is up to date on the latest out of Redmond...

 

[Jeff Blair]

yep, cat's can be good. Just make sure he dosn't try to "fix" the mouse.

But, anyway. What it might have been is the ribbion cable, think IDE but half as thick. They get loose all the time. Easy to fix, but a pain to get to.
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Jeff Blair
AIM blairj2
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
My DVD's

 

[brentl]

"So, does this mean you are going to let your cat calibrate your TV with Avia?"
Mine prefers VE.
Brent L
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OK guys ..... The tour of the Paradigm
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[James Nguyen]

Jeff, interesting idea...I'm still loathe to open up the laptop though until the warranty runs out
I dunno WTH is going on anymore....once again, at the office it started freaking out on me...so I came home to work on my desktop machine....hook up the laptop again to my spare monitor to grab a few files off the laptop...and low and behold, the damn laptop monitor is juuuust fine once again.
Perhaps my laptop just hates my office? Or maybe my laptop will only work now when my cat is nearby....which would truly hamper the mobility of my laptop unless my cat will put up with non stop toting around in its carrier...
either way, I have a call out to Dell support now...it'll be interesting to explain this all to the tech when he arrives, but oh well...I just want consistent performance again.