Being as I am of the somewhat "older" persuasion, my eyes and ears are less efficient than they were when I was a youth. Doctor says that years of staring into a CRT is at least partly to blame for the eyesight part and I suspect that BellSouth holds much of the blame for the strain on my hearing. Between these two diminished senses, my life has become a continuous litany of "could you speak a little louder please," and hauling navigators in the van on trips because I have trouble with both street signs and maps.

Just when I thought things could get no worse, my monitor quit. As is usual for stuff owned by me, it ceased meaningful function on a Saturday morning just before I was to start a weekend of typography for "Breezes," the newspaper I help with.

It was a Digital Brand monitor, the first really big CRT I ever owned. It retailed for more than 1100 bucks when the manager at CompUSA decided to barter it to me as partial payment for an advertisement, with a single caveat. "It was brought back as defective," he confided. "I never want to see it again."

It was a shaky deal from the gitgo. It wobbled between perfect and purple. The screen danced every once in a while and it sometimes made a faint buzzing sound. Skip Weaver advised me that the problem was "most likely a cold solder joint." Bill Webb scolded me for having two computers hooked up to the same monitor and keyboard with a Rube Goldberg contraption of switches and wires. He swore that the monitor would die a horrible death if I continued such an imposition.

The thing was BIG though. It impressed everyone who visited the apartment that is also my office with it’s largeness. It was bright more often than dim. It was shaky less often than it was stable. I soon came down with a bad case of denial that anything was wrong at all or that someday I’d fix it. Though many a cuss word was leveled toward it when it acted up, it was none the less, my friend.

Until Saturday, a week before I wrote this column.

Freshly showered and clothed, and after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and red kool-aide, I sat down at the new AMD-XP2000 computer that Frank Szerzo built for me and switched it on. The flight line at NAS Meridian is quieter during morning ops, but that is one of its charms. In the midst of spooling up, the jet engine whine of my chip fan was overpowered by a brand new sound, best described as BZZZZZ-ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSPTFFFFTTTTTPOP!

A baby blue Windows 2000 screen gyrated like a drunken cowboy on a Gilley’s mechanical bull and disappeared faster than Bugs Bunny after having just kissed Wile E. Coyote. For a second or two more, it buzzed more quietly then stopped.

Probably, I should have taken the hint. But at that moment, my other 21"CRT was enjoying its new home in Mobile, having been turned over to my print shop to use for pre-press. One false move, one wrong word and I would be without CRT and would be typesetting on nothing at all.

They say everything happens for a reason. I believe that. No car breakdown occurs unless I have no money for repair or at the least have scared money in the bank (rent, insurance money). It was as if the Furies knew my account balance. Just exactly one hour from the time the monitor settled down, (see sound effect above, but add a much louder pop) the thing went wild again. It did so in the middle of a story that I had only saved to disk once. This time it did not recover. I was now the proud owner of an environmentally unfriendly 145 pound boat anchor.

The story has a happy ending. Southeastern Computer had a 19" AOC for less than $250. Yeah, I know, Best Buy and Wal-Mart - but Scott Weaver and John Link carried it up the stairs, unboxed it and installed it! Charged me zip, but I am not supposed to say anything about that. Southeastern just was a better choice.

So now I have my work stations back. There’s a 17" Future power CRT on the Millennium computer and a pre-owned 15" on the 266. The AOC is on the AMD and working like a champ. Each of the two new and one used monitors is brighter and more mechanically sound than either the Digital or even the Hewlett Packard 21’s were, but I miss them anyhow. I miss the way people would light up in astonishment upon seeing the two behemoth screens, I miss their comments about "How big it is," and "Wow, that’s HUGE, dude."

Someday, me and Viewsonic are going to get together and then.....