Getting desperate. No one has bought the computers I have for sale, and only one person even came to look at them and then he said he didn’t really have the money and I never saw him again. After all my work putting them together and then making flyers and paying for ads, I am just stunned that NO ONE in this entire county is even nibbling. They are reasonably priced, and I am not even factoring in my own labor or the software I installed on them. Even if I sold one I wouldn’t really be making a profit, or if I did it would be so razor thin it’s not even worth talking about. But you know, it seems like most people are so stupid that if it doesn’t have “Gateway” or “HP” engraved into it, they won’t touch it. They think they’re a safer bet somehow. The sad fact is these days name-brand computers are made with mediocre or just plain shitty parts, and the support people think they are getting with those names are a complete joke. Nor are they very upgradeable, if at all. Even I fell for this several years ago. Despite my sister’s pleading and admonishments to build one myself (as she did), I bought a Sony Vaio. I wish I had listened to her.

Anyway, I have had in the back of my mind several desperate “plan B”s, and today I finally acted on one of them because things have been looking so damn bad. I mean, how am I supposed to just eat a loss of something like $700 - $800 in computer equipment? So one of the plan B’s was to prostrate myself at one of the local computer outlets and see if they would buy it or sell it on consignment. I confess I really found it kind of humiliating trying to beg them to buy it–but desperate times call for desperate measures, as the stupid cliche goes. So I went in this afternoon with the main one I’ve been trying to sell. Fortunately no one else was there and I got to speak with the owner. The first thing he said when I told him I built it myself was “Good for you! That’s great,” and smiled. That seemed like a good sign, and made me feel better. He seemed genuinely impressed that I built it. I showed him all the specs and all my reciepts for parts, and after a bit of sniffing at the fact that I obviously can’t get wholesaler prices on anything, seemed interested.

“I’ll tell you what. If I buy it from you outright, I can’t really give you a good deal. You and I are in the same boat. My profit margins on systems and parts are ridiculous. But I’ll take it on consignment. How does 18% sound? And you will have to provide the support for it.”

Fine, I said. I know he wasn’t lying about his profit margins. Everybody is getting crushed by the big box stores and independent computer stores are among the hardest hit.

“So let’s have a look at it,” he said, and started plugging it in. Great, I thought, now he’ll really see what a good job I did and how much work I put into it. He pressed the on button. It came on for about one second, then turned off. Then it wouldn’t turn on at all. It was totally dead.

Mortification does not even really come close to describing how I felt at this point. The thing completely betrayed me when I most needed it to work. The owner swiftly uplugged it, told me to troubleshoot it, and loaded it back into my car. My humiliation was complete.

Amazingly, he did seem interested in offering me some part-time work just on the basis that I could put them together. But I was so totally embarassed by what had just happened I could barely speak.

Then I had some errands to run. While I drove I obsessed over what could be wrong with it and concluded it was probably one of two things: the power box or the motherboard. I have a 400 watt PSU I could put in if that was dead. But if it’s the motherboard, I’m basically fucked. And with no voltage meter tools, it’s going to be hard to figure out which one screwed me without a lot of work.

I still had a giant knot in my stomach when I ran into Mollie at Trader Joe’s. “Are you okay?” I told her she could read my post about it later, and just about ran out the door because I felt like crying. Pathetic.

When I came home it was time for Bruce and I to go to our legal appointment. I finally made an appointment to have a living will and trust made for both of us. In case you’re wondering, this was not prompted by the freaking Terri Shiavo thing–though that should be motivation enough for anyone–this was planned in advance with the idea that we could use our tax return to pay for it. Fortunately talking about important things like DEATH took my mind off all the stupid computer crap.

So we did that and came home to wide-awake twins, twins that were supposed to be napping but have decided that’s not on the to-do list anymore. Not since I got rid of the cribs a week ago. Miss C said they were only quiet for about ten minutes, tops. Every since they moved to the queen-sized futon on the floor, their sleeping schedule has been frighteningly erratic. They don’t take their usual scheduled nap and instead fall asleep at random, separate times during the day and get very cranky in the evenings. They usually go to sleep at night better, but last night it took them a couple of hours to fall asleep for some reason, and I don’t think they slept very well. Lately they seem pretty tired in the morning. If this persists I may have to get separate beds for them, since it’s probably the same problem I had with their sharing a crib: lots of kicking each other.

I attempted to take them to a nice little barbeque at SM’s house this evening (who is also having horrific computer problems at the moment) so my husband could actually get some work done at home, but as you might have guessed, their flaky sleep schedule got the better of them and they screamed and cried the entire time. I had to leave after about 15 minutes. Since this isn’t the first time they’ve done this at her house, my friend is beginning to wonder why they hate it so much. It’s a mystery to me too. But she very kindly gave us a bunch of roasted veggies to go, yum!

Now it’s time to get a BIG glass of wine and start ripping the guts out of a computer. It just might keep me from kicking it across the street.

* Update: just switched the PSU, and it’s still not coming on. That means it’s probably the motherboard, so I guess I am motherfucked. Ugh…