thistlechaser: (Happier than...)
This week was a pretty stressful week, but at the moment things are going smoothly.

- Gauze in wound: It's still there, but the doctor finally replied back and said it would fall off on its own ([livejournal.com profile] changeling72 was right!). I worry the skin will grow in around it, but I'm not a doctor. Pulling it off would be painful as hell, so I'm happy to just leave it there. Two days of worrying I'd have to run to their office on the drop of a hat (whenever they had a time they could see me), whew! Done!

I do have to see my regular toe doctor again on Wednesday, hopefully she'll agree with this other doctor that it's okay to just leave it.

- My new computer: After having parts in stuck in that port strike, they still got it shipped out on time! And somehow UPS Ground shipping was overnight shipping. o.O I suspect because their location is so close to where I live.

Once it arrived, I carefully unpacked it and set it up, then turned it on... nothing. Dead. Though I don't like opening it up, I checked all the connections I could find, and it looked fine. Turns out there's a second power "button" (a section of the case/housing), I found it only by chance. Who in the world would think of poking random parts of the case to see if that would start it!

I've spent most of today reinstalling stuff. Still not done, but getting closer.

The tower is bigger than any tower I've ever seen before. It has to be nearly three feet tall, and about as wide! One side is see-through with a blue glowing light, which would be seriously cool if I didn't have to set it up with that side facing the wall. There's not much I really need to use on the front, maybe I'll turn it around and just have the wires in my face all the time.

- Weight: Most weeks I lose 1-2 pounds (or less...), which I'd be overjoyed about if I were on a normal diet. This week was a good week though, six pounds lost! I have ZERO idea why. Losing weight is such a mystery.

I wanted to do "diet math" for a while now. I meant to do it on the six month anniversary of my surgery, but that would have been five days ago. Close enough!

While I had my surgery on 9/15/14, I started losing weight for it on 7/9/14.

Total lost since 7/9: 104 pounds in 36 weeks = 2.8888 pounds lost per week
Total lost since 9/15: 82 pounds in 27 weeks = 3.037 pounds lost per week

Those are interesting numbers, but let's see if I'm slowing down like I think I've been.

Total lost since 1/1: 26 pounds in 11 weeks = 2.36 pounds lost per week

Well, brain, you see the numbers now. It's slowing down a little, but not horribly badly.

Before surgery, I expected to lose 15-20 pounds per week, so I was just a tad off there. Wait! Let's do another bit of math. If I keep losing at that rate for the next six months, I'll hopefully lose another ~80 pounds. (Okay, I didn't need to do math there, since we already had the six month calculations.)

Oh, and I saw the doctor about my bloodwork (to make sure I'm not short on vitamins and my organs aren't failing and such). I had good numbers on everything except magnesium (only slightly low, so I'm taking a pill twice a week) and protein. Blah on protein! I don't know how I'll eat more of it, since I mostly only eat protein now and I don't want to drink shakes (too many calories). Will have to ponder.

Well, enough babbling on about weight. Yay weekend! I haven't slept more than four hours a night all week, so hopefully tonight I can sleep.

Edit: OMG, my computer is so cool! And I mean that literally! Curious, I checked the temperatures, and the highest one is 32 degrees! One of the readings is -55 (must be the heatsink thingie or an error). My laptop was ~100 all the time, even with a cooling mat and a stand to keep it off the desk. This new machine has like 12 fans (and a nice screen covering them, to keep the cat hair out!). I'm not getting the FPS they advertised (261), but I'm getting in the low hundreds with all settings on max, which is still quite nice.
thistlechaser: (Avatar: Zuko)
The three-day work on my apartment's heating unit had been put off because there was a strike in a major port. That was annoying, but not too big of an issue.

Know what is a big issue? The same strike is keeping me from getting my new computer. GRUMBLE!

I ordered it on 3/7. It was supposed to ship by 3/18. That's three working days from now, and they don't even have the parts yet. Blah.

I was mostly okay with my glacier slow computer, until I ordered the new one. Now I get endlessly grumpy that I'm so much slower in game than everyone else.

I know I'm not their only customer effected by this, but I'm going to ask if they can upgrade my shipping anyway. Also, this explains why their live help/customer service chat has been offline for days...
thistlechaser: (Moon)
While my computer is only a couple years ago, apparently I either bought at a bad time or (more likely) my lack of knowledge did me in. I have just a regular hard drive in it, which means in online games, I'm already far far behind. You need a SSD for fastest zoning.

People with a SSD zone near instantly/in seconds. I take multiple minutes.

I've been thinking about upgrading for months, but what held me back was that I didn't know what I should get (beyond "must have SSD"). I know building your own machine is best, but I don't feel comfortable doing that. We were talking about it online, and I was told that there are services that will do it for you, for basically the same price as making it yourself. Sold!

Poking about the site, I decided on this one: Gamer Infinity 8800 Pro with a few customizations. It's not their most powerful gaming one, but it should be a major upgrade for me. (Currently I get 15-30 FPS, the new one will give me 261 even with max settings.)

It's a desktop machine, which I realized meant I needed another monitor (I got spoiled with my laptop's second one), so I headed over to Amazon and ordered another of the ones I currently use. This one.

Now I just have to wait. It will take 8 business days for them to ship out my PC, and it comes by ground, so I probably won't get it to the end of the month-ish.

My current computer is acting up, so I hope it lasts that long. It'll be nice to be able to make the switch between machines at my own pace, with both of them running, instead of trying to fumble through it after the old one died. The old one just has to last long enough to let that happen!
thistlechaser: (Avatar: Zuko)
This morning someone linked me to an image, and I noticed that it had a really odd background (the area of the window outside of the image itself, but within Firefox's view area).

Today I took a screenshot for someone else, uploaded it, and noticed the "blank"/black part outside the screenshot looked very odd in the same way. See: Strange background.

The image in the middle looks just as it should, but the screen to either side of it should be plain black.

Happens in IE and Firefox both, happens on both monitors (hooked up to the same computer).

Darned laptop is only two years old. Looking on the Amazon page I bought it from, the only warranty I see mentioned is "This laptop is backed by a 1-year limited hardware warranty.", so that does me no good.

It has been running hot lately, even though I blew the dust out of it last night or the night before. I don't know which number "counts", but these are the readings I get from my monitor at this moment:

GPU: 76C
HD0: 50C
Core0: 95C
Core1: 86C
(Edit: After rebooting, with no MMO running, the temps are 45C, 53C, 60C, 30C respectively.)

I have no idea how there could there be a 45 degree difference in temperature within a laptop...

How much trouble am I in? I know nothing about hardware. :/

Edit 2: Rebooting seems to have fixed the issue. Would this kind of thing come and go?
thistlechaser: (Default)
Edit: Fixed, YAY! [livejournal.com profile] tersa is the bestest!

Neverending computer problems, I tell you. So the wireless keyboard and mouse came today. Keyboard is spiffy, but I need to get used to the mouse still (buttons are different and I keep right clicking everything when I don't intend to). The problem is the monitor/display! For nearly three hours now I've been trying to make this work, and all I have is a headache.

On my laptop, everything looks fine. Looks great, even. On the monitor, everything looks wrong. Pixelated, the size seems slightly off somehow. Text is slightly blurry (enough to drive my eyes crazy, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it's off).

I noticed the laptop is using only about three-fourths of the screen to display things (there's black on the left and right that even the task bar doesn't use, dead screen). On my monitor, it uses the whole thing from end to end. So I assume the image is being stretched, which is causing all my issues?

So that should be resolution, yes? But I've tried every one and none of them work right. I'm using the closest one now.

On my previous machine, I'm nearly certain I didn't have to set up a custom resolution, I picked one of the available ones.

Google is no help, or I'm not using good search terms. Arg, I want to do things tonight!
thistlechaser: (Happy/sleepy/stretching cat in fez)
Copy pasting is hard on iPad, so here is artist's whole post:


I'm open for requests for free icons over on my livejournal, here - http://djinni.livejournal.com/367530.html

There are a few tip incentives, and tips are appreciated, but not required. I've done this twenty times, previously, and you can see my last completed batch, here - http://djinni.livejournal.com/367109.html and other examples by clicking the 'icon day' tag in my journal.

Feel free to swing on by and grab an icon!

/// icon on this post was a free one!

Edit: computer repair place called. Said it really is only the power supply. O.o Will cost under $200 to fix, so going for it. Color me surprised! This is very unexpected.

Edit 2: I HAVE A COMPUTER! Yay! It cost only $120 total. o.O I didn't have a credit left with them (I checked my old emails, looks like they sent me a check instead), but hey.

I turned my WoW settings back up to ultra to see if it would explode again how it would do. Fans are loud, but so far no crashes.

I'm going to switch over to the laptop when it arrives, but this way I can do it slowly and without losing things. WHEW!
thistlechaser: (Default)
Sometimes I have to use an uncreative title like that, because I'm not sure if it's a YAY or a BOO post.

The repair shop was supposed to update me last night, by noon today at the latest.

If I wanted to get a new laptop overnighted through Amazon to arrive on Friday, the order had to be placed by 11:45.

At 11 I called and talked to the tech. He's waiting to get a new power supply to plug into my machine and see what starts and what doesn't. (He said my graphics card still looked good, for what that's worth.) He said he might know by 1.

While last night was sort of relaxing and I got a ton of housecleaning done, I cannot continue on without a computer. (Picture me with the back of my hand dramatically placed to my forehead.)

So I ordered a new laptop, this one. It should arrive tomorrow, hopefully early. HOPEFULLY EARLY, hear that, world? I have to go to the dentist in the afternoon, if I miss the delivery I may have to scream.

Worse comes to worst (best comes to best?) if the desktop can be repaired cheaply, I would like a backup machine anyway. This "having no computer because one died" thing sucks, and it's not the first time I've gone through it. However, the more I think about it, the less I have any confidence it can be repaired at all, let alone cheaply. If it's just the power supply and that costs only a couple hundred, then maybe I'll go for it (I have a $100 or so credit at the place anyway). But I don't want to sit here with no machine hoping for that.

Reinstalling everything is going to be such a pain, and there's going to be data loss as well. I wish I remembered how long ago my last backup was, I want to say less than two weeks ago, but it's not exactly something that sticks out in my memory.

At least reinstalling and updating WoW is faster than FFXI. (Sorry, [livejournal.com profile] veloxe!)

I love Amazon Prime. Any item overnighted for $3.99. Such a win.

It's times like this I wish I knew more about computers. I picked this one based on reviews (both "professional" reviews and ones like users on Amazon). This will be my first laptop (I know, I live in the stone age), but I'm looking forward to it being smaller than a desktop machine.

I just wish I wouldn't have to reinstall everything. Sigh! I know for months I'll be running into missing programs and trying to find old things I used to like. But on the other hand, yay that I'm in a situation where I'm able to buy a new one and not sit around without one forever.
thistlechaser: (Default)
Nearly literally exploded. On iPad, forgive typos.

For a week or so, computer seemed to be overheating. Cleaned out dust, opened housing, left open.

Came home today. Soon after sitting down, it powered down like overheating normal. I reached to turn it off so I could blow it out again, and it exploded. Electricity arced out almost a foot wide and there were two loud bangs and then another electric arc. Never saw anything like it. Dived to unplug it.apartment smells like electric fire.

Carted it off to computer repair place. They might call me tonight with what,s wrong, but it might be tomorrow. No computer D: too hard to make big unhappy faces, imagine more.

iPad has Twitter and AIM but not MSN/Trillian. No idea what to do with no computer. Sad face.
thistlechaser: (Cat sushi)
Saturday started off with making chicken stock/soup/broth whatever you want to call it. I kind of forgot to do the first step (brown garlic in olive oil) so I threw the garlic in two hours into the simmering, but it still worked out fine. Also, I read that throwing just a little (1-2 tablespoons for a big pot) of soy sauce would help the flavor a lot without tasting the soy sauce, so I tried that. I have no idea if the soy made a difference, but it still came out well. Most of it is packed away in the freezer for later use.

Today's cooking was yummy yummy yummy. Mostly I eat boring chicken all the time, but now and then I make something else. Today it was Crock pot baby back ribs. They were simple as heck, even for me. I followed that recipe exactly, other than I didn't have a spice rub (so instead I just used salt and pepper). I'm not sure what the point of baking them in the oven first was, as you can see from the picture they don't brown at all and almost no grease comes off them. But I did that, then put them into the crock pot with the sauce in the fridge overnight (so I wouldn't have to deal with cooking them in the morning). Five hours later (one hour on high, four on low), they were amazing. Sweet Baby Ray is the yummiest sauce I've ever had (which I knew before today, but is worth repeating).

I wish I had bought more ribs. Sprouts sells meat in tiny little packages (as well as normal or large sizes), so I can buy single serving sizes. Which, unfortunately, I did. One day I shall make these again!

On RP, I can never decide if RPing over Twitter counts as RP. Last night I kept saying that I should go RP, but Twitter was so busy that I couldn't even walk away to get a drink. I don't know why I balk at calling Twitter stuff RP, because what else would it be?

I decided Reed needs the "of Silvermoon" title (though it will kill me using it when he has Professor as well), so I've been doing SMC quests on him. SO BORING. And worse than boring, even with the +10% guild bonus, I don't think there are enough quests. D: I still need 18K rep and I've done all the big zones (Eversong, Ghostwood, Falcon Watch in Hellfire, and Blasted Lands), the rest of the quests are one or two scattered in various zones. Oh how I wish we could still turn in cloth for rep...

My computer kept shutting itself down today, which worried me greatly. On the last time, I decided to stop being a slacker and open it up and blow the dust out. It was so hot, eek! There didn't seem to be much dust in there though. I left the side open for now, but I'm not sure about keeping it open -- it'd get more air, but it'd get more dust and cat hair, too.
thistlechaser: (Default)
I think it's been a week since I got my new computer. I'm sort of getting used to it, I have most things reinstalled by now.

I rather like the window preview thingie when you hover over the task bar buttons. The search window in the start menu is surprisingly handy, I find myself missing it on my work machine (XP).

However, I still have some really odd behavior. Freshly rebooted machine, open two Firefix windows. Change no text size.

Window one:


Window two:


(Edit: Okay, that's odd. These screenshots look different than they did in Photoshop and in Window's image viewer program. Both are much bigger. The smaller text is perfectly readable here, but on my end, outside of the screenshot, it's like size 6 font or so. And yeah, I had the images at only 100% in Photoshop...)

Yes, those are two different websites, but on my old machine all text input windows had the same font size (matching the rest of the window's).

Web pages do the same thing. Open three Firefox windows and I'll have one with size 8 font, one with some "normal" size (12-ish), and one really large one, all from a reboot, adjusting nothing.

I wonder if this is a wacky Firefox issue and not Windows 7? Let's see! Nope, I can reproduce it on IE, so it's not Firefox.

It's really a rather annoying issue. I'm constantly resizing any window I want to read, and the tiny little input window font gives me a headache.

Not a problem but just an odd behavior: When I log one WoW character off, for a second when it moves from that world closing to the character selection screen, WoW vanishes for a second, then the window reappears with the selection one showing.
thistlechaser: (Default)
I think it's been a week since I got my new computer. I'm sort of getting used to it, I have most things reinstalled by now.

I rather like the window preview thingie when you hover over the task bar buttons. The search window in the start menu is surprisingly handy, I find myself missing it on my work machine (XP).

However, I still have some really odd behavior. Freshly rebooted machine, open two Firefix windows. Change no text size.

Window one:


Window two:


(Edit: Okay, that's odd. These screenshots look different than they did in Photoshop and in Window's image viewer program. Both are much bigger. The smaller text is perfectly readable here, but on my end, outside of the screenshot, it's like size 6 font or so. And yeah, I had the images at only 100% in Photoshop...)

Yes, those are two different websites, but on my old machine all text input windows had the same font size (matching the rest of the window's).

Web pages do the same thing. Open three Firefox windows and I'll have one with size 8 font, one with some "normal" size (12-ish), and one really large one, all from a reboot, adjusting nothing.

I wonder if this is a wacky Firefox issue and not Windows 7? Let's see! Nope, I can reproduce it on IE, so it's not Firefox.

It's really a rather annoying issue. I'm constantly resizing any window I want to read, and the tiny little input window font gives me a headache.

Not a problem but just an odd behavior: When I log one WoW character off, for a second when it moves from that world closing to the character selection screen, WoW vanishes for a second, then the window reappears with the selection one showing.
thistlechaser: (Default)
I've been working steadily through the day to get my list of fixes/downloads on the new computer done. Many things have been crossed off, but two of the largest things have not been (and one won't be anytime soon).

1) Font size. It's tiny. Size 8-ish on my desktop, maybe 6 or so in Firefox. Trying to adjust the font size for the whole machine does nothing. Changing the font size in Firefox sometimes works, but then only on some pages (like, not LJ at all). I cannot read LJ in size 6 font, so I've been doing the ctrl+mouse wheel to make it larger... but I do not want to spend the rest of my time on this machine having to do that for every web page I look at (the change doesn't follow across pages). ((Edit: I may have gotten the font issue in Firefox settled, woo. I can deal with the rest of the computer having small text, since I don't spend all that much time looking at it.))

2) AIM will not minimize to the tray, it stays on the task bar. I've spent quite a bit of time googling about this, but there seems to be no answer/needs an upgrade from AOL to make it work better with 7.

I sort of like the.... windows preview thing? Where you hover over something on the taskbar and you can see the window. It's nice that it's real time, not a snapshot (I can see what's going on in WoW without actually switching).

WoW's really, really nice on this machine. I can run through Dal perfectly, zero lag. Sometimes it takes a PC a moment to load (I can see the shadow but no person), but that's semi-rare and I get no lag in moving at all. Graphics look better, too!
thistlechaser: (Default)
I've been working steadily through the day to get my list of fixes/downloads on the new computer done. Many things have been crossed off, but two of the largest things have not been (and one won't be anytime soon).

1) Font size. It's tiny. Size 8-ish on my desktop, maybe 6 or so in Firefox. Trying to adjust the font size for the whole machine does nothing. Changing the font size in Firefox sometimes works, but then only on some pages (like, not LJ at all). I cannot read LJ in size 6 font, so I've been doing the ctrl+mouse wheel to make it larger... but I do not want to spend the rest of my time on this machine having to do that for every web page I look at (the change doesn't follow across pages). ((Edit: I may have gotten the font issue in Firefox settled, woo. I can deal with the rest of the computer having small text, since I don't spend all that much time looking at it.))

2) AIM will not minimize to the tray, it stays on the task bar. I've spent quite a bit of time googling about this, but there seems to be no answer/needs an upgrade from AOL to make it work better with 7.

I sort of like the.... windows preview thing? Where you hover over something on the taskbar and you can see the window. It's nice that it's real time, not a snapshot (I can see what's going on in WoW without actually switching).

WoW's really, really nice on this machine. I can run through Dal perfectly, zero lag. Sometimes it takes a PC a moment to load (I can see the shadow but no person), but that's semi-rare and I get no lag in moving at all. Graphics look better, too!
thistlechaser: (Default)
What a horrible, terrible weekend thus far. My computer's been doing something bad: Screen goes black, programs all crash in 15-ish seconds after that (I can tell by the sound they make as they die). I thought this was a hardware issue (my graphics card runs really hot), but googling around, it's a WoW issue. WoW + nVidia = not happy.

I didn't want to go get a new graphics card right away, so I thought I'd try updating my drivers. Everything I read said you should uninstall your drivers before installing new ones, so I did. It then asked me to reboot. "Hmmm, but if I reboot, will it work after? You know, display anything with no video card drivers? But... it wouldn't ask me to reboot if that wouldn't work, right?" Idiot that I am, I rebooted. Black screen. Rebooted. Tried for safe mode. Black screen. Nothing.

Gah. It was about 9 AM by now, I struggled to the extent of my highly limited knowledge to try to fix this. Nothing. Oh well... I was semi sort of thinking of upgrading my machine anyway? Not really, but... Off to Best Buy for a new computer.

Arrived there at 10. By 10:15 had a new machine picked out, was going to upgrade the video card. Since I'm an idiot, I have no idea how to do that. They told me to come back in (2|3|4) hours -- different people said different things. Sick of being offline, I went back at 2 hours. Not ready. Sat out in the parking lot, checked in every half-hour, didn't get finished until nearly four hours.

BUT! "Finished" was not finished in a good way. They couldn't make it work, they thought the computer itself was broken... and it was the last one of its kind. Sigh. Next closest machine cost $100 more...

Got next machine. Waited in the parking lot 45 minutes while they installed the graphics card AGAIN. (Really? It takes you people 45 minutes to do that?). Went back in. "Oh nos! Your power supply isn't strong enough for the new video card! You need to upgrade that too!" Another $100...

So, five hours later, I finally headed home with my machine. Hooked it up. Didn't work. Black screen. GAH. WTF! Hauled out my old monitor (thing must weigh 100 pounds) and hooked it up, no image. At least I wasn't wrong to think that it wasn't a monitor issue!

Took it back to Best Buy. Apparently the new graphics card meant I needed some adapter. Silly me, I had been plugging my monitor into the color-coded slot marked "MONITOR". Wacky! It went a totally different place!

So, finally I'm on the new machine. WoW has been installing for hours (I haven't been on all day, grrrrrrrrr). And Windows Vista-- Ooops, 7, sucks so much god damned ass. It's Windows Vista. Seriously. Looks the same. Acts the same. STOP HIDING MY PROGRAMS FROM ME! I AM AN ADULT! I KNOW WHAT THE HELL I WANT TO CLICK ON MY OWN! AND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, I DON'T HAVE ADMIN LEVEL PERMISSION BY DEFAULT? AND NOT ONLY THAT, YOU ***HIDE*** HOW TO SWITCH TO ADMIN? Fuck you, Windows 7. Seriously. XP was nice. XP was non-intrusive. XP worked. Fucking Windows 7.

It's now 5:30. I've still done nothing online. I've cut and bruised myself multiple times lugging the damned new computer around and trying to set it up. Thankfully I did a backup about a week ago so I can get most of my data back, but still!

And thankfully I have enough money to make up for my utter cluelessness about computers. I've been kicking myself all day, that the fix for my old machine might be something simple.

Blah. What a stressful, annoying day. Computers are great things... until they stop working.

PS: I better not lag in Dal anymore, otherwise I might throw this new machine out the window. New graphics card is a Radeon HD 5770 and my computer is quad-four something or other, which is hopefully twice as good as my previous dual-something or other.

Edit: I've been using this time to watch The Watchmen. Other than being too violent for me, it's not half-bad. I don't get what all the uproar was about the blue penis though. I was sitting here expecting it to be six feet long or mutated or something, for all the uproar there was online about it. (I'm only two hours into the 2:45 movie, so maybe there's some wacky blue penis panic coming up!)
thistlechaser: (Default)
What a horrible, terrible weekend thus far. My computer's been doing something bad: Screen goes black, programs all crash in 15-ish seconds after that (I can tell by the sound they make as they die). I thought this was a hardware issue (my graphics card runs really hot), but googling around, it's a WoW issue. WoW + nVidia = not happy.

I didn't want to go get a new graphics card right away, so I thought I'd try updating my drivers. Everything I read said you should uninstall your drivers before installing new ones, so I did. It then asked me to reboot. "Hmmm, but if I reboot, will it work after? You know, display anything with no video card drivers? But... it wouldn't ask me to reboot if that wouldn't work, right?" Idiot that I am, I rebooted. Black screen. Rebooted. Tried for safe mode. Black screen. Nothing.

Gah. It was about 9 AM by now, I struggled to the extent of my highly limited knowledge to try to fix this. Nothing. Oh well... I was semi sort of thinking of upgrading my machine anyway? Not really, but... Off to Best Buy for a new computer.

Arrived there at 10. By 10:15 had a new machine picked out, was going to upgrade the video card. Since I'm an idiot, I have no idea how to do that. They told me to come back in (2|3|4) hours -- different people said different things. Sick of being offline, I went back at 2 hours. Not ready. Sat out in the parking lot, checked in every half-hour, didn't get finished until nearly four hours.

BUT! "Finished" was not finished in a good way. They couldn't make it work, they thought the computer itself was broken... and it was the last one of its kind. Sigh. Next closest machine cost $100 more...

Got next machine. Waited in the parking lot 45 minutes while they installed the graphics card AGAIN. (Really? It takes you people 45 minutes to do that?). Went back in. "Oh nos! Your power supply isn't strong enough for the new video card! You need to upgrade that too!" Another $100...

So, five hours later, I finally headed home with my machine. Hooked it up. Didn't work. Black screen. GAH. WTF! Hauled out my old monitor (thing must weigh 100 pounds) and hooked it up, no image. At least I wasn't wrong to think that it wasn't a monitor issue!

Took it back to Best Buy. Apparently the new graphics card meant I needed some adapter. Silly me, I had been plugging my monitor into the color-coded slot marked "MONITOR". Wacky! It went a totally different place!

So, finally I'm on the new machine. WoW has been installing for hours (I haven't been on all day, grrrrrrrrr). And Windows Vista-- Ooops, 7, sucks so much god damned ass. It's Windows Vista. Seriously. Looks the same. Acts the same. STOP HIDING MY PROGRAMS FROM ME! I AM AN ADULT! I KNOW WHAT THE HELL I WANT TO CLICK ON MY OWN! AND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, I DON'T HAVE ADMIN LEVEL PERMISSION BY DEFAULT? AND NOT ONLY THAT, YOU ***HIDE*** HOW TO SWITCH TO ADMIN? Fuck you, Windows 7. Seriously. XP was nice. XP was non-intrusive. XP worked. Fucking Windows 7.

It's now 5:30. I've still done nothing online. I've cut and bruised myself multiple times lugging the damned new computer around and trying to set it up. Thankfully I did a backup about a week ago so I can get most of my data back, but still!

And thankfully I have enough money to make up for my utter cluelessness about computers. I've been kicking myself all day, that the fix for my old machine might be something simple.

Blah. What a stressful, annoying day. Computers are great things... until they stop working.

PS: I better not lag in Dal anymore, otherwise I might throw this new machine out the window. New graphics card is a Radeon HD 5770 and my computer is quad-four something or other, which is hopefully twice as good as my previous dual-something or other.

Edit: I've been using this time to watch The Watchmen. Other than being too violent for me, it's not half-bad. I don't get what all the uproar was about the blue penis though. I was sitting here expecting it to be six feet long or mutated or something, for all the uproar there was online about it. (I'm only two hours into the 2:45 movie, so maybe there's some wacky blue penis panic coming up!)
thistlechaser: (Default)
I was finally able to get my H1N1 shot. Woo woo, no turning into a pig for me! Seems really late in the season to be finally able to get it, but hey. It came with a girly pin bandaid (which luckily is hidden by my shirt sleeve).

I suspect my computer might be fixing to catch fire and/or run out the door. Twice in 12 hours it did a really odd thing: Screen went black, whole machine seemed to lock up (the first time I was in a quiet area of WoW, but the second was in a battle so I could tell the noise did that 'window froze' thing). WoW friend thought my video card might be going, so I googled around a bit and decided it might be the temperature of the card. I downloaded a program that would monitor how hot various parts were working (and how fast the fans were turning). Wow! The video card was 100+ C (200+ F!). Hottest it got was 107/222. (My card is rated safe over 120C, but... sheesh!)

I leave my machine running overnight (with WoW loaded but window minimized) and it was about 70 C this morning. Logging on for a half-hour this morning sent me into the high 80s.

I opened up the housing and I need to get a little fan to direct inside (going to be a pain in the ass, since it'll hit my legs as well. I'm cold enough as it is!).

Last summer my machine was shutting itself down and I thought it might have been because it was too hot, so maybe it is. (This is the first time seeing the black screen behavior though.) Blah!
thistlechaser: (Default)
I was finally able to get my H1N1 shot. Woo woo, no turning into a pig for me! Seems really late in the season to be finally able to get it, but hey. It came with a girly pin bandaid (which luckily is hidden by my shirt sleeve).

I suspect my computer might be fixing to catch fire and/or run out the door. Twice in 12 hours it did a really odd thing: Screen went black, whole machine seemed to lock up (the first time I was in a quiet area of WoW, but the second was in a battle so I could tell the noise did that 'window froze' thing). WoW friend thought my video card might be going, so I googled around a bit and decided it might be the temperature of the card. I downloaded a program that would monitor how hot various parts were working (and how fast the fans were turning). Wow! The video card was 100+ C (200+ F!). Hottest it got was 107/222. (My card is rated safe over 120C, but... sheesh!)

I leave my machine running overnight (with WoW loaded but window minimized) and it was about 70 C this morning. Logging on for a half-hour this morning sent me into the high 80s.

I opened up the housing and I need to get a little fan to direct inside (going to be a pain in the ass, since it'll hit my legs as well. I'm cold enough as it is!).

Last summer my machine was shutting itself down and I thought it might have been because it was too hot, so maybe it is. (This is the first time seeing the black screen behavior though.) Blah!

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