robot surgery

Spent this past week replacing the graphics card and power supply unit in my old computer.  There’s something about being sprawled on the floor in your boxers, legs cramping, digging through wires and stubborn hardware; fingers on circuit boards, diodes– wrenching out the guts of this old machine.  I slide out my hard drive, remount it then punch through the DVD-rom case to clear room for the new PSU.  I swap wires, monitor lights.  I position, reposition.  I turn it on and the screen stays blank.  No video input; no keyboard input.  I start over.  The carpet is a killing floor.  I curse my fat fingers, the engineers, curse the rules of time and space.  In the dark of my mind, some small piece of brain mulls over the return policy, over finding a repair place and how much more this is all going to cost. 

But that’s only a far-off noise.  Mostly it’s quiet.  A processor ordering itself, abstracting, kicking at all the struts.

A RAM chip has been knocked crooked on the motherboard.  I release the clamps, free it from the slot, then re-insert.  When l hit the switch, it’s like a miracle; everything does what it’s supposed to do: the beeps are booping, the screen lights up, the vents do not smell like burning plastic. 

I am Purified.