Rant #1,718: The Amazing Shrinking Screen

No, today I am not going to talk about food.

It made me too hungry the past two days, so today I will skip the food, at least here, and talk about a problem I have ...

My incredibly shrinking computer screen.

As I type this, it is about 4:51 a.m. in the morning. I overslept a bit today, because the past few days, I was done with my Rant by this time.

But I have typed out all of these Rants on an iMac that is ready for the dumpster, but I can still use.

A few months ago, my cherished PC died. I really enjoyed that Hewlett Packard PC, had it for years, and fixed it several times.

After fixing it about two years ago, I vowed I would not do this again, and when it broke down once again, I kept to my word.

A few years back, my place of work offered all of us out own iMacs when we went through a computer upgrade. I took my iMac, paid $100 for it, and I had it as a backup.

It was the iMac that has the fabled "lines on the screen" problem, which has been traced to various sources, including a loose cable in the front photo area, you know, the one where you can take a photo of yourself doing what you are doing at the computer, for whatever reason you would want to do that.

Apple initially offered a free fix for that problem, but that offer is long gone.

So what I was left with was an iMac with a screen filled with lines, probably about 20 or 30 of them at least, going up and down my screen. (Yes, that is a scan of my screen up above, but don't go by it--it is a sham. The scan looks good, but it doesn't show the lines and other things on the screen I will soon talk about.)

So when my PC died its death, I didn't have the money for a new PC, so I simply decided to use this iMac backup as my main computer.

Heck, I typed on this at work, I can do it at home too.

It has served me well the past few months that I have used it full time, even though I noticed that the lines were progressing.

I adapted the computer to my needs--not an easy task--and I continued to use the computer.

About a week ago, a strange black bar surfaced on the right side of the computer, about an inch thick, and I had to hastily move everything to the left side of the screen, where I could do this.

Some of the things I moved I did pretty easily, others are stuck in the black territory, and I cannot get them out, so I had to create new folders to hold the files that I could access.

I can access the programs that are on the right side that had icons simply by going to the recent items area, including Google Chrome.

My trash folder is a little bit of a problem, because it is part of the dock at the bottom of the screen. Since that inch of screen is obliterated, the trash is part of that area, so what I have to do is that I need to move the dock to the left side of my screen when I want to access the trash or empty the trash, and I can do it then, and then move the dock back to the bottom.

Going onto the Internet has never been a problem for this computer, and it still isn't, although I have to move the screen a little bit to access certain things at the top of the screen. That really is the least of my problems associated with this.

With the coming of the black bar on the right side of the screen, I am almost expecting a similar black bar to emerge on the left side, further squeezing me. Remember how in the movies and TV shows our heroes would somehow get in between two walls that were moving a little each second, eventually leading to crushing them if they didn't escape? This is what I am electronically going through now on my iMac screen.

So here I am, typing on a very sick iMac, but like the Eveready Bunny, this thing refuses to stop working, knock wood.

I think I will use it until if fully dies, and then, I will be forced to get another computer.

Since I have changed everything over to an iMac, I will probably go for another Apple computer, maybe even a used or refurbished one, as I don't have $1,000 to spend on a new one.

So when you read my Rants each day, just think of the effort I put into not only creating these things, but also, typing on a computer that is equal to a 100-year-old man--my computer may have its faculties, but it is in its last stages of action.

Anyway, I have to take the day off from work for some personal business tomorrow, so I will speak to you again on Monday.

Have a good weekend.