My legs are surprisingly not sore this morning. Considering than I ran 10 miles yesterday, this is most welcome news. It was a wonderful run; I ended up making as far as a city called Winchester before turning back.

So, the continuing saga of the PowerMac. The news is that it does not work still, after hours of tech support calls and two trips in for repair. A new height was reached when it skipped the “pretending to work” phase and promptly began to not work as soon as I got it home from the shop on Thursday. I called tech support again, who surprisingly asked me to bring it in again. Joy.

Yesterday morning I decided to, on a last ditch attempt, see if I could better diagnose the problem. I opened it up and reset all of the cables and chips. I carefully checked the connectors, and when I booted it up… It worked!! I danced with joy, and in celebration we went out and bought Warcraft III to play on it; almost a month being deprived from my workstation had gotten to me, and the thought of tiny computer orcs engaged in epic conflict with tiny computer knights left me giddy.

Upon our return home, I installed the game, and with Varia hovering on the couch, began to play the tutorial. My smile turned to a frown as over the span of 30-40 minutes the display progressed from crystal clear, to glitchy, to a wild cavalcade of colors, to black, where it has remained since. I can still access the computer over SSH, so I was able to back up all my data, but I can honestly say that it does not work.

Verily, it will return to the shop again this afternoon, both tower and monitor. My patience as a consumer and as a professional has run thin, and I will accept nothing more than total repair! Excelsior!