My monitor is broken, sometimes, ambiguously, until it isn't anymore. I HATE THAT

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

God damn you, machine. God damn you from the hard little cherry-pit center of my tiny monkey brain.

I’m pretty sure it’s the monitor that is to blame. Unless it isn’t. I turn on the machine, and the screen flickers like mad for about a half second, then goes black. I turn the monitor off and on again, and it does the flickering thing again. The computer appears to be working normally otherwise.

HOWEVER if I turn the monitor on and off a sufficient number of times, the flickering gets a little brighter after awhile, until at last the screen deigns to start working. This may take 15 tries, or 50 tries. After that it seems to work fine, until I stop working. Once it goes back into low-power mode again for awhile, it goes back to the flickering deal again. The screen apparently has to be off for some time before that occurs though. If I start work again within 20 minutes or so, there’s no problem. If it’s off for a couple hours, back to square one.

So it won’t work, AND it works, based on a largely invisible set of occult variables. I cannot deal with this degree of uncertainty. I CANNOT EVEN EXPLAIN WHAT IS GOING ON. Do I need to buy a new monitor? I DON’T KNOW. It could just be that I haven’t clicked on the Ping box.

(The Ping box is the thing that you’ve never heard of, but when a knowledgeable person finally figures out what your problem is, they say: “Oh you just have to click the Ping box,” and when you do, it goes “Ping” and everything fixes itself without costing you any money. Similarly, I have a set of expensive computer speakers which may be irrevocably broken, or the wire to the Ping box may just be loose. I DON’T KNOW.)

WHY THE HELL do these machines not come with a function that tells you if it’s broken? Like a turkey! The turkey has a little plastic knob that pops up when it’s fully cooked. Computers should have a thing that pops up on top and says in big letters, “THIS COMPONENT IS NOW BROKEN.” Ideally they would also print out a receipt which lists the exact broken part and how much it will cost to replace.

You miserable stinky computer manufacturer. I bought your filthy horrible cyclops specifically because you maintained a physical storefront, with actual salespeople whom I could confront and explain problems to, using pencil renderings and crude sign language if necessary. They could have told me if the monitor was broken or not; and if so, how much it would cost to replace. Then you decided your storefront was too costly, and shut the thing down. My brain-pit heats up with hate for you.

The local university computer repair place doesn’t even have the resources to fix monitor problems. Well, damn them too. Damn them with stray electrons.

Speaking of which, the new student union building looks like pure ass. What in the hell is it? I DON’T KNOW. I thought it was impossible to surpass the tan-brick 1960’s-era brutalist pile that was the old student union. I guess I didn’t imagine that the university would consider A HUGE WALL OF CORRODED METAL to be an improvement. Yes, it appears intentionally corroded when brand new. What a brilliant idea to save on upkeep. I hate the world and everything in it now. Why must everything be broken and ugly?

I can’t afford to just buy a second monitor if the old one isn’t broken. I am not made of money.

I can’t get my antidepressant meds refilled for some reason either. That’s a whole other rant right there. In fact that may be part of this problem too, I can’t tell for certain.

Why is nothing going right today? Oh sure, the monitor’s working… RIGHT NOW.

IS IT BROKEN?

I DON’T KNOW.

2

Mine has been doing almost the same thing lately. Sometimes it boots normally, more often the monitor has strange streaks of color as though the graphics are all screwed up and sometimes the monitor won’t do anything at all. After rebooting between 1 and 30 times it will eventually work right. I checked all of the connections the first time and they all seemed to be fine. This morning at about 6 am while waiting for my coffee I picked it up and started shaking it because it was pissing me off. That made it come on so I’m going to have someone else check the connections and see if I missed something. After that I’ll try a different monitor and see if the whole problem goes away.

3

Ah, I had streaky graphics one time and it turned out to be the video card. I know* that’s not the problem this time because the graphics aren’t affected, and also because the monitor acts up even when it’s not hooked up to the computer-- it has its own little video settings menu that flickers instead.
*This is of course a total lie. I don’t KNOW anything of the sort-- it could be voodoo for all I know.

4

Same here. I even bought a new monitor first on the advice of more computer-savvy buddies. I kept the receipt, so it was all good - oh except that the video card from my 2003 Dell has faded away into obscurity and the only replacement was the less powerful European version.