October 20, 1997 -- Okay...the Orgo test was awesome. There was only one question I had never seen. I only got four of the multiple choice ones wrong. I was thrilled. Everything else was fine too. But that was over two weeks ago.

A few days ago...I think Friday, I'm not sure now, my CD-ROM broke. Needless to say I was not pleased. It was all quite dramatic too. I was going to play Diablo against Brian (Finally!) and when I put the cd in the drive to set up the multiplayer schtuff, it went all the way to "New Character" then froze and made clunk-clunk noises as it read the cd. It actually sounded like my computer was chewing, and I expected to hear a burp then open the drive and see nothing there. So, of course, I opened the drive to see how big of a chunk it had taken out of the cd.

It was immaculate. I tried to read another cd. More chewing noises, no physical damage to the cd.

I nearly cried. My cd-rom is toast. So I gave up, called Brian, and made him come over to confirm the diagnosis of toastiness. He did and I restarted windows only to realize it had reset the display for Diablo and hadn't had a chance to get back to normal when the computer crashed. I tried to fix it but soon discovered that the stupid computer had changed the DRIVER and I only had the option of ONE that worked and was NOT the right one. So then instead of options for 16-, 256-, 16-bit, and 24-bit colors, I had 16 color. Wondering why I didn't just use the drivers disk that came with the computer and fix it?

The drivers disk is a cd. Welcome to my life. :::snicker:::

It's still under warranty but I couldn't be without my computer for two weeks (They'd be shipping it to Rochestor for the nearest Acer-authorized repair place) ...I have reports and projects due. So started looking into buying a new cd-rom. Circuit City had one. EB sells it too....Newcom. 16x. $159.

I nearly cried.

Then I checked Red Barn Computers. They had a 16x for $79. They also had a 20x for $86. And I say, for $86, how can I go wrong? Just for reference, I had a 6x now, but they don't sell those in stores anymore....too slow.

So Brian installed it for me (We took the stupid door of the front of the case and put the CD-ROM in an extra expansion slot because Acer makes good computers in stupid, yet very snazzy-looking, cases.). It only took a few minutes, it went smoothly and now I have a 20x CD-ROM.

I must admit, it is quite a nice upgrade, even if it was somewhat forced. The new CD-ROM is noticeably faster than my other. I didn't need faster, but it sure is nice.