Ufff.. the day today

What a pathetic day it was today. Things were going wrong with such
monotonic consequence that the even my PC gave up, just a day before I
have to give a demo to someone from Microsoft Research (sponsor for my
Display Wall project). It was wreckage. I was yet to complete the
preparations for tomorrow and here it was, my 1GB inferno lying
exhausted, uninterested in booting up despite all my pleadings. The HCL
guys were called up. I suspected an SMPS failure, as is generally the
religion in such outbreak; but the HCL guy declared that it was
something more serious -- the motherboard. It needed to be replaced. Now
started the wait for another guy from HCL service center who brought a
new motherboard. Things were settled not before 7:00 in the evening. I
had to settle with 512M RAM as this present motherboard supposedly isn't
supporting 1GB (needs some BIOS update, the HCL guy tells me).

And that was just one story. Today was the worst ever network failure in
the history of IIIT that has passed before my eyes. The central switch
in the server room broke down. Even rebooting the central switch, as is
infamously the norm in the server room, didn't work; it was hanging no
sooner it was booted. This ate up the whole day, and my lab (Room 227)
didn't get the network back even after all the others had got back their
life. Things improved only by 7:00.

The last two "No computers day" at the institute didn't leave me this
helpless but today I felt -- the PC doesn't work, the network doesn't
work, what the hell! what am I supposed to do?

Ufff.. the day today.