It was good, though. Pizza was eaten, air hockey was played (I won one out of two games). Candles were blown out, cake was eaten. And, of course, gifts were opened.
I want to thank everyone who sent, replied, or tagged me in a birthday message—I really appreciate it! 😊 (If you sent one and didn't get a notification that I posted it, please assume that Tumblr is being broken, and check the #bug's birthday tag. Likewise, if you sent one and I didn't post it, Tumblr may have eaten it; I hear it's doing that now.)
Some gift highlights, for anyone who cares:
This has been ripped and is now on my computer and phone, ready to listen to (and presumably break my heart, if all I've heard is true).
Finally got a copy of this; I've wound up reading this particular run out of order (volumes 3, 2, 4, and now 1). Maybe some later things will make more sense after reading this one.
I haven't talked a lot about the refurbished Wii I bought earlier this year, but if there's two games for it that I absolutely want to try first, it's these two.
Yes, my dad bought me a quadcopter. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it'll be fun to try out, at least.
This is to replace the SSD serving as the system disk in my desktop. There's nothing wrong with the old one (though it is 6 years old and they do eventually wear out), but it is very low on disk space, and after some usage analysis, I determined that upgrade was the best choice.
Finally, there is this, a PNY GeForce 770 graphics card. I have my friend @basssuperpower to thank for offering it to me, and at a very reasonable price. It's used, but I'm sure it's going to be freaking awesome compared to the one I have in my desktop now (which, if all goes well, will be installed in my brother's computer).
Bottom line: I have plenty of things to do this summer. 😉 (Still need to motivate myself to prepare for July 4, though...)
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Yesterday (Thursday) morning, I saw an early-Black Friday sale deal on the Fry’s Electronics promos for a hard disk drive I wanted for my computer, at a price I couldn’t pass up. So I ordered it, telling them to reserve it in store, thinking that I could pick it up anytime in the next few days.
Wrong.
Turns out that the pickup-in-store at this sale price was only valid through today. (Which helps explain why, when I finally got to the register, I discovered that the item hadn’t even been paid for, just reserved. Sonuva...) And today, naturally, was Black Friday, the worst shopping day of all.
I knew it was going to be bad, but fortunately I had someone to talk to (my dad and our friend visiting this week tagged along). And I was lucky my dad was there, to help me purchase that which *should* have been paid for. 🙄
Guess how long the wait in line was? Two and a half hours. 😵
Also known as, “All that work I’ve done on you, and this is how you repay me!”
Longtime followers of this blog know that I have had numerous issues or grievances with my desktop computer (”Apollo”) over the past 7 years, including but not limited to:
a memory incompatibility in 2014 that rendered my system unable to boot after 3 weeks (expanded on here);
tiptoeing around the Windows Media Center DRM when doing upgrades, resulting in very few major upgrades being done—until this year, and that memory upgrade (related here) finally broke it;
various power issues (which at this point I think can be blamed solely on the ASUS mobo)
Others can be found in the #bug builds computers tag. I’ve managed to overcome all of these issues, but not without much grief and frustration, (lapsed) A+ certification and all.
This episode of “Bug’s Love-Hate Relationship with Apollo” illustrates another one of those power issues that have plagued this thing ever since the memory scare of ‘14. Lots of technical stuff below the cut.
First off, the results of my Christmas. I got an Intel Core i7-2600 CPU used (the third-best chip for this board, with 8 logical cores compared to the i5-2400′s 4, and a bit faster clock speed):
The CPU installation went fairly smoothly, though there were plenty of steps: taking the old one out, thoroughly cleaning both it, the heatsink, and the new CPU; reinstalling the CPU, adding thermal compound, and reinstalling the heatsink (which is a pain in the butt); and testing. I did have to reset CMOS to get the BIOS to cooperate (which is annoying), and I did lose one recorded TV program (no biggee), but at least it works. I have yet to do a more appropriate test of its capabilities (e.g., a video render).
I also got a second Western Digital 4TB disk drive, to replace my 2TB data disk. I initially tried doing a direct copy in Linux with dd, but that proved to be fairly inefficient as far as time (I didn’t specify a block size, more fool me). So I did the copying folder by folder in Windows, and then swapped the drive letters. Still took a fairly long time. But it works. *shrugs*
Finally, I had bought myself some cork shelf paper at The Container Store before Christmas, intending to put some under my keyboard (dampens the key sounds a little) and under my computer case. (It may not be the best choice—it flakes like crazy—but it was kind of an impulse buy, so I’m going with it.) The latter is where I ran into problems; it played out tonight like a comedy of errors, and I’m ashamed to call myself a technician.
All I really wanted to do tonight was install the cork paper underneath my computer. (The bare wood suffered pet damage a decade or so ago, so I had put shelf paper on it then, and by now it had worn out on the edges.) But I wound up doing a lot more work than I bargained for. See, in order to put the new paper on, I had to move the computer. And because I wanted everything out of the way, I decided to unplug everything from the computer, too.
I had no trouble getting the cork on, of course. But it’s very dry at this time of year, and while I didn’t have my computer open at all, there was nowhere for static electricity to go if, say, I touched the computer case. So when I plugged everything back in and tried to boot it, it wouldn’t. So I go, “Really? I unplugged you for all of 15 minutes!” So I replaced the CMOS battery, figuring its time had come.
I then reset the CMOS, thinking maybe that was the problem (as it often is). No luck, even after multiple tries. I did get it to POST (twice), but the BIOS was screaming about supposed CPU voltage and temperature warnings. Going into BIOS setup revealed the sensors had gone absolutely haywire, with voltages reading twice as high as they should be, and an IMPOSSIBLY high CPU temperature (in the hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit).
I shut it off, unplugged the power supply from the board and tested it. It was fine, of course. Fearing the worst (dead mobo), I pulled out my phone, and Googled my problem, thinking that there may be something that I missed. There was. Apparently, with this motherboard there is a way to “discharge” excess electricity from the system by unplugging it, holding the power switch down for 15-20 seconds, then plugging it in and powering on. And bless them, it worked. Date and time were wrong, though. XD
Of course, continuing the comedy of errors, I accidentally dropped the case from where it was leaning (really, I should have seen that coming; the thing’s damn heavy). It seems to be working fine now, though (once Windows stopped acting weird); tomorrow will tell if there are any lasting effects from this incident.
(Oh, and I replaced a SATA power adapter that kept popping loose from the Blu-ray drive. It’s old and the connector wore out, I guess.)
If any of you would like to hear about the LED case fan modding I did a couple of months ago (and neglected to post about), let me know.
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You know, looking at the case fans that I have now... If I got some green LEDs of the right color green, and figured out how to yank the blue LEDs out of these fans, I wouldn't need to buy any new fans at all! 🤔
Did some late-night tinkering with my computer case last night:
It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the power LED, which was blue before, is now traffic light green. This is just step one of my case modding; I plan to replace the front and top blue LED fans with green also, hacking and installing LEDs from other fans if I must.
ANYway, this meant that I was up super late last night, and thus got a very late start on my day, and on Tumblr. So:
Memory came up as 1333 MHz, not 1600, but I am not going to care this time. After all, I’d really like it to last longer than 3 weeks.
* Weeeell, other than me accidentally disconnecting the system disk while fiddling with a fan cable. “What do you mean, “can’t find boot device”?! ...oh.” 😅 😅 😅
