Current Mood: Angry

Cool–WP had saved a copy of this post for me!! So, here it is after all!

This week started with craziness and idiots and the trend kept going all week long.

First, some junk happened that I won’t mention further here.

Then the other day, a merchant got the notion that it should decide what it’s worthwhile to spend MY money on. Did they overcharge? Ship 10,000 things I didn’t want? Noooo! The opposite. They refused to sell what I DID want! So they’re fired.

And, despite their claims of having an “exclusive” on the machine I’m after, they do NOT have any such thing. They may have made a deal with that *particular* manufacturer, but there are several competing manufacturers, who surely have dealers who are not so jealous of someone who wants a private garden…and, the machine to delete the work of it.

In amongst all that, were other idiocies. I was shorted 3 items by a different place. Who didn’t know about it? Their billing department… So I had to deal with that. Did they email a confirmation that they read my emailed protests? Noooo…I was just about to send the check (sans cost of missing items) when surprise, a “claim number” arrived in my email with a request to include that number with the payment. The email had the title “claim”–even though my original email was titled “shortage in order!” I almost deleted it unopened–I figured it was spam. But something about the “from” name looked just *barely* legit, and I opened it.

And, yet another wholesaler held onto my order for 2 1/2 weeks before admitting to being sold out on an item. Thanks dudez for the notice! But at least the refund has come through.

A person returned some merchandise as defective. It’s clear that she broke it–the box was mashed. That’s the *inner* box. Shipping box, not mashed. So it had to have happened after the “customer” got it, unless the Post Office has invented a new way to dent inside boxes that were surrounded by peanuts–without affecting outer ones.

Another, more minor, irritation was reading a comment on Wordpress MU that said people who didn’t want to have to mess with their server’s root config ought to just “use [his] multi-user hack” for regular WordPress…saying that if someone couldn’t figure THAT out, they should just go with the version of WordPress hosted by WP itself (that’s the commie noncommercialiable version :p ).

Needless to say, when I went to the post with the “hack” in it, it was a pile of ununderstandable gibberish and non-explanations. Programmers love to put up stuff that’d take an MIT degree to understand and then call everyone a n00b for not getting it by osmosis *grrr* And of course, I have zero use for the commie version. If I want to have FUN, that’s what games are for. Sites are for money.

So I did the easier thing. Changed the server config file to prepare for the install of the full Wordpress MU setup! Yes that was easier. The config file has clue comments all through it! Unlike that unhelpful git’s hack.

I haven’t installed MU yet, but the supposedly-hard part should be done. But with any kind of program, I don’t relax until I see it running and not crashing.

I wouldn’t say changing the config is a “totally newb” operation, but it’s certainly not hard like he was making out. Reading the file plainly marked README gives plenty enough info. I had more trouble with vi…I hardly ever need to use it, so I had to look up the commands in Google. (Hint to people who find this while trying to find out how to use vi: Search for “vi commands” in G…)

Of course, I tried to find relief in the wonderful pixels of an old game. But, no dice even there! The game which had seemed so great 10 years ago–Pacific Theater of Operations–now strikes me as incredibly slow. I’m sure it’s partly because I instantly remembered exactly how to win.

The computer will OCDly send its entire Pacific Fleet at its objective, one small fleet at a time. ALL it takes to win, is to figure out the comp’s objective (easy to do), sail nearby with a full 16-ship fleet which has about 8 CVs in it, camp within easy airstrike range…and torpedo-bomb the blazes out of anything that dares to sail within range.

But the other problem is that between every operation, the ships’ crews require “shore leave” or their morale will drop (causing their fighting ability to start sucking), and if you push them too long, they’ll even get a “plague.” And, the ships have to be refueled often, unless you always sail at half-speed. So, most of the game is spent waiting for shore leaves, refuelings, and doing administrative junk.

It was fine and great when it was new and I actually used that time to think of my next move, but now I wish I had a hack that’d make them always have no fatigue and 100% fuel. Then I wouldn’t have all that infernal waiting. I’ll have to try to figure out the code. To heck with “realism,” the fun part is sinking all the enemy’s sh*t! So maybe tonight I’ll see if I can get the lead out of the thing.

Now…IE had better not crash…
*Hits “Publish”*

Where’s my “Oh Good Grief” icon?! I seem to have left it somewhere.
Anyway. Mood: *Rolling Eyes* Oh Good Grief.

My mother’s computer just started popping off. She calls up to me whining that it’s making a long series of beeps, but then goes to a black screen.

Immediately when she described the beeps, I think “Stuck Key Error.” But this odd black screen doesn’t say that. When I get there and take a look, it says something like:

Error with Drive A.

I then spend the next 15 minutes trying to make it skip Drive A (the floppy drive) on startup. It won’t accept my commands. I’m starting to get irked… To avoid blatantly staring at the ceiling, which I often do when a machine is making no damned sense, I look down at the keyboard.

And then what do I see…

You guessed it. A stuck key.

I unstick the stupid key, and put in the command to exit setup without saving changes.

Sure enough–computer’s fine. Nothing’s wrong with the floppy drive.

Gah…

Current Mood: Erm…

That was sarcasm.

A few posts ago, I talked about hearing the sound of a fan dying. I thought it was the CPU fan–a simple job. Really simple: Unscrew old fan, unplug from mobo, plug in new one, screw fan to heatsink, turn computer back on. And, I’ve got a spare sitting right here, so I wouldn’t even have to wait for delivery of a new one.

So of course, Murphy couldn’t have that! It’s against his Law!

Yesterday the thing was sounding off rather badly and I downgraded its survival rating from “up to a year” to “mere weeks, better get on it.” But for some reason, I decided to look in the case with my keylight to make sure it was indeed THAT fan.

And, it’s not.

When I touched the case, the bad fan was actually vibrating it on each revolution. Grind…grind…grind, it went… and each grind rattled the whole box. I looked with the light, and all the fans were spinning away, with no visual clues. So, I touched the fan case of each one.

CPU fan case…no strong vibration. Graphics card fan, no strong vibration. Case fan? Nope.

That left one. The power supply fan. Sure enough, that PSU was jumping around like it had a jet engine inside!

So, I “get to” tinker with a type of part I’ve never opened up before! (sarcasm) Goodie! (/sarcasm) Well, somewhat sarcasm. It beats buying a new PSU or paying some clod to do what I can do for free (labor-wise). On the other hand, I only bought that PSU a few months ago and the fan shouldn’t be dying yet! But, it’d cost more to ship it back than it will to just get a new fan.

So what’s different about this fan other than it’s in the PSU? The PSU isn’t made to be opened by “the consumer.” But I’m opening it anyway. So, chances are, it won’t have an easy-peasy plug for the fan’s power intake, and I’ll have to splice the new fan in. No biggie from a technical standpoint, but it’s a pain because I’ll have to find or buy some electrical tape as well as a new fan.

You may be wondering why I’d need to buy a new fan, when I’ve got one here! Simple: It’s a different size. The PSU has a big 120mm fan. The CPU one is 70mm. And the case fan I’ve had laying around here for 2 years daring me to forget about its presence and step on it one night, that’s 90mm.

So Murphy’s done a fairly good job of making a simple fan switch into a Job. I just keep reminding myself, I can:

Get a new PSU of this size and type: $89.

Send back the old one for an exchange: $10-12 shipping to California (via DHL)…AND about 2 weeks of being offline while it’s in transit both ways + another 3 days or so while the new order’s being processed

or
Just get a new fan and a little roll of electrical tape, timed to arrive before the old one’s death: $10-$15, free shipping, and no significant downtime.

Needless to say, I’m going for Option 3 and adding another Thing I’ve Fixed to my portfolio!

The Sound has started.

Ra-vzzzzz….shhtshhtshht…tickatickaticka
And variations thereof.

So what is this mystery noise I refer to in such a foreboding way? It’s the sound of a dying CPU fan.

When a CPU fan dies, it starts to make noise. The noise gets louder, and louder, and louder. It becomes annoying. Then, when you’ve finally gotten used to ignoring the industrial-level racket…silence. Suddenly, it’s very easy to get into the game (whatever game is being played at the time)! Or, easy to concentrate on getting something done.

Then, about 10 minutes later, comes the Heat Fault shutdown.

Thing is, trying to predict just WHEN it’s going to from dying to dead is not too easy. My first fan racketed for a year before it kicked off. The second one, only a couple of months. This is the third one.

A fan seems to make it in my computer for a year before it starts signaling impending demise. From what I understand, under normal usage, they’re good for about 3 years…but this isn’t normal usage. It’s often about 10 hours of games a night, which not only mean the fan’s running, but it’s running at full blast to make up for all the extra heat a decently-modern game causes! So they die quick.

This one made it longer before starting to make The Sounds–about a year and 7 months. Fortunately, when I last had to hunt down a replacement fan last time, I bought 2 of them. The reason for this is because my computer has an oddball fan size which is extremely hard to find, and I didn’t want to be hung up trying to find yet another fan on the old clunker (the one I use when this one’s needing my mechanical attention). It’s 10mm smaller than the norm. These latest ones are fancy-looking metal jobbies. They’re not the uber kind with the mega-sized heat sink (Zalman), though…just polished aluminum versions of the normal plastic kind. Zalmans look cooler, but the comp runs fine with plain square so that’s what it gets.

So now that I’m hearing The Sounds, I’m wondering how long it’ll take before this one stops altogether, or slows down so much that it’s not doing any good. It’s sounding worse very fast…not nearly as gradual as the other two. I’m tempted to just chuck in the backup fan this week instead of waiting for the inevitable, but on the other hand, I know I might get another year out of the thing before it kicks the bucket, so there’s quite a temptation to just wait, too.

The bigger question now, though, is whether to go ahead and get another backup (for when the next fan dies)! This comp is actually obsolete (obsolete = it won’t play the very latest games on the highest settings), and chances are, I’ll replace the entire thing before I’d need to get yet another fan. And one thing I’ll make sure of when I get a new computer is that it uses a STANDARD-SIZED fan!

Last night, I experienced a weird problem with my internet connection. Even though the “connections” icon didn’t send up any alert bubbles, I couldn’t get online!

Usually, this kind of thing is the fault of Comcast, so I waited somewhat-patiently for them to get it together. But unlike usual, when I got up this evening it was *still* not happening. I had gotten some sleep, though, plus I wanted to get some stuff done online and I had made plenty good use of my excuse to play Medieval til’ dawn, as well–so I started to think of other things that could be wrong.

First off, the cable TV had kept working. This usually doesn’t happen: If the cable internet’s out, it’s all out. So maybe the problem was on MY end? I had tried unplugging/replugging the modem immediately, and it hadn’t worked…but, awake now, I remembered that it has to be done in a certain way: The computer needs to be on, AND THEN the modem rebooted.

So I tried that. Nothing. Hm! Maybe it’s the router? So I disconnected the router and plugged directly into the modem. Then I rebooted the modem. ACTION! Quickly I checked my email and picked up my merchant sales, printed the shipping labels, and checked all my affiliate stats!

The immediate business done, it was time to see if I could get that router working. I did the business first, just in case the answer was NO! But I was lucky–I *have* gotten the proper, through-the-router, connection back.

THE STEPS:
It was simple enough once tackled with 10 hours of sleep AND a cup of caffeinated coffee under my belt.

Reconnect router (which I had disconnected, above).

Unplug/replug modem. Just turning it off with its switch doesn’t do.

Find “reset” switch on the router, which I had noticed last night. Hit it.

Wait a few seconds (lights on Linksys router will change, from green to red back to green)

ACTION!

Wonder WTF was ever wrong with it in the first place…
Decide “to heck with wondering” and instead, make a post in case some poor sap is sitting in a library looking for things to try in order to restore his/her home internet connection…

Current Mood: Sad

Way back in about 2002, I bought this computer. It was an UBER game rig! With its 1GB RAM, Intel P4 processor, a badass video card, and RAID striping, it played everything with max settings and no lag. How easy it was to get used to having the first thing after installing a game (after finding the patch…there’s always a patch) to be turning up all the settings from the mediocre default choices game places put in.

But about 2 years ago, I started picking up rumblings, and by this year they were outright tremors. People were talking about having FOUR GBs of RAM, somehow the P4 started having “Celeron” added to its name, and already I’d had trouble finding a decent replacement video card because all the new comps use PCIe instead of AGP… But still I couldn’t bring myself to really think of this computer as the O-word (obsolete). After all, it’ll play Rome: Total War fine.

Then last week I got a new game. Medieval II: Total War.
I went and found the 1.1 patch, installed that, and just for kicks, I read the ReadMe. In the ReadMe it had the “min specs” 512GB RAM…I laughed because nothing will ever run on the min specs a game place provides! But hey, I’ve got a gig, so…

SO I read the “recommended specs” and it says, 1GB RAM, 2GHz processor, or something close to that. And I know I’m in trouble.

General Rule of Game Specs #1: You need twice the “recommended specs” or the gaming experience is gonna suck somehow… UH-OH… My specs only match their lowball recommendation!

So I start playing. Seems fine enough…resolution on high or max for everything…battles in the field work well…wait, what’s this? “Enemy Reinforcements Delayed” well that’s nothing new. I wonder what they’ll have it say under the heading this time?

“Reinforcements are delayed because the amount of units on the screen are all your system can handle at the settings you chose!” Blahblahblah!! Well!

But so what, I figured. If my settings mean the enemy can’t get all his force on there at once, GOOD! That’s strategic. For ME. Means I can mop them up in more manageable chunks, rather than getting pwned by some uberforce!

Then I got to a fortress seige battle. On the fort scenes, there is none of that “reinforcements delayed” stuff because the enemy is all in the fort! I barged in anyway since I had a superior force, and encountered the one thing that’s more horrifying than even the best units on the game:

LAG!

Bam! Slideshow time. Did it drop to 30FPS? (Frames per second) 10 FPS? 5? Oh, ha ha ha! No such luck! Try 2 frames PER MINUTE! A true slideshow. Torture!

Finally I realized that if I maneuvred the camera to be looking at something stationary, it’d speed up some because the 1000+ dudes wouldn’t have to be rendered. So I ended up spending the battle looking at stuff like the castle walls, and only checking the battle when I had to put another command in. Even so, it took about 3 hours to finish the battle, which I obstinately did because I didn’t want to lose all the effort I’d already put in.

But that definitely settled it. It’s time for this computer to retire, after 5 good years of service.

Sure–it’s still fine for doing productive stuff. But, my ancient eMachines with its 172MBs of RAM and integrated graphics is still pretty good for doing productive stuff, too! It’s GAMES that need the serious power. DreamWeaver (website editor) isn’t trying to show 1,000-2,000+ guys swording at each other at once while also displaying highly-rendered grass, bricks, buildings, etc. Medieval II is.

And, to me, a computer is a game deck FIRST and other stuff is secondary. One of the main points of doing the other stuff is so I can keep playing games!

So, my always-on desire for lots of sales is now jacked up a lot more. I won’t build a computer that’ll just play Medieval II on max but that’ll go obsolete 2 years from now, I’ll build one that’ll be an uber rig by current standards–so I don’t have to do it again for another 5 or 6 years!

Now the question is…will I be able to hold off until I save up the money, or will I break down and CHARGE IT? It’s very tempting to charge it and start the assembly NOW, but I know that the main retail season will hit in a couple of months–bringing me a decent flow of money. AND some really high-end hardware is rumored to be coming out in January, too. So I will try to be patient…and always have enough troops that I can auto-resolve those seiges…