Blessed by the Potato

Well, it looks like the initial euphoria over the massive bailout plan last weekend has faded already, and the market has given up much of the gains today.

My computer’s problem looks to be much more complex than just a dead video card: possibly the power supply, motherboard, CPU, or multiple combinations thereof are fried in addition to the video card. So I’m going to do some more troubleshooting tonight, but it seems like I’m looking at needing a new computer: either I can take Wayfare’s (which is virtually identical to mine from a hardware point of view) and get her a new one, or get a new one for myself (she doesn’t game, so a new one for her might be a bit cheaper). I think I might try to hold off and continue to use just my laptop and work computer (and game on the Wii) for a few months, then maybe hope that I get computer parts for xmas.

The company that partially funds my research stipend had some bad results in their clinical trial, and have moved surprisingly quickly to terminate my student support. It looks like they’re gearing up to go bust, which has wiped out the stock I held in them, too. This is bad, but could be very bad. Since they hold all the patents for what my supervisor invented (and I continue to research), it means I might not be allowed to continue my research if they liquidate the patent rights and we don’t continue to enjoy our investigational license. The stock’s at about 8 cents today, so if anyone has $800,000 or so to lend me, I could stage a hostile takeover, keep it a going concern (though realistically, once I started buying up shares in a hostile takeover, the price would go up — better lend me $2M just to be sure). Maybe if I pretend I’m a bank with bad loans, one of the world governments will give me a few million?

And Stephen Harper, against all sense, won the election. Ok, it wasn’t the best time for the Liberals to flog their Green Shift plan; but what’s he going to do with another minority government? He just dissolved parliament, breaking his own election law, because he couldn’t work with a minority government. Now that he has another he’s going to pretend it’s all hunky dory and a mandate from Canadians? I was also really surprised at some of the Ontario ridings that elected Con MPs — they should have known better.

Update: After further troubleshooting, I found that my CPU is fine, my RAM is fine, and I think my hard disk/DVD-R is fine. My video card is shot, my motherboard is shot, and my power supply is unknown. So I think I’m looking at a new computer here :(