And now the rest of the story…

Last night when I came home from my cousin’s house, I hit my garage door opener and strangely it opened six inches.  That was weird, I hit the button again (sometimes I double tap it by mistake) and the door went up another two feet or so.  I rolled down my window to listen for odd noises, I didn’t hear any.

A few more attempts and the garage door was open.  I pulled my car in and hit the interior button to close the door.  Nothing.  That’s odd… I’d better go check the rest of the house.  My kitchen light bulb (which we just replaced) was blown out.  A cursory check of the core systems: air conditioner (check), laptops and MythTV (check), and TV (check).

Everything else in the house checked out OK, so I thought that I was in the clear until I checked in the office.  Tasha had turned off the power strip, but it was an older strip and I wanted to check it anyway… I popped it on, the monitor and printer came back to life but not my desktop computer.  I checked to make sure I hadn’t left something unplugged or disconnected and I hadn’t.  I even tried it in a different outlet and checked the power supply hookups to ensure that I didn’t jostle something loose.

Now I have the dilemma… what do I replace it with?  The homeowners insurance requires me to meet a $500 deductible, my insurance agent told me “get the items replaced and send me the bill.”  I told him that the computer was older but I still used it regularly, and he asked me what it would take to replace it with similar equipment.  I said $600-800 initially, but after I thought for a few minutes about the upgrades that I had made over the years I’m guessing it would cost me around $800-1000 to get the items upgraded that I had paid to upgrade in the past.

He said that price wasn’t going to be a problem, so I’m torn.  I could get a Mac mini in that price range (no monitor) and slake my growing thirst from something from The Steve Jobs Fan Club, but I just priced out a pretty sweet Dell system that comes with a giant 24″ widescreen LCD.  The Dell system comes out to around $850 shipped, the Mac is $899 before adding a monitor.  And the Dell comes with stuff like wireless internet and an upgraded graphics card… so I don’t know.  I don’t want to go and price out a giant $2400 system and have my insurance not cover it, but the system I had was around a mid-range Dell which matches the Dell system level that I priced above.

I’m going to go to Sears and talk to them about garage door openers soon (probably Friday).  Until then I’ll take any suggestions on the system front.