Back on April 2nd, I got a box. An expected box, containing computer parts. A box that rattled in an unsettling manner....

It was packed well enough, though. Of course it was. Because my parents packed it, and they both know how to send computer parts so that they don't get broken.

The source of the rattling. My mom [or possibly my dad] thought to include some screws. Thoughtful...but some warning would've been nice. Unless it was my mom's idea to scare me, since the 'Regular' thing didn't really work last Christmas....

My new motherboard. Except it's kinda old. But new to me, and that's what counts, right? It's not much, by today's standards, but it beats the hell out of my old one. It's a Socket 939, and my old one is a Socket A. The difference may not seem like much [I was at 1.9ghz before, and now I'm at...2.1, I think], but it's...enough.

The videocard my parents sent along. Not as good as the videocard that's in my old machine, but, well, I'll get to that later....

The book for the motherboard, and the CD that goes with it.

...it's been a while since I cleaned it. But, hey, I'm about to take it apart, right? So, I can do that now....

The old board.

And the new one.

And the fan's nice and...well, okay, it's only kinda clean. But that's okay. It's time to get this thing up and running.

But, it's not that easy. Oh no, it's never that easy. Because, first, I go through this whole 'oh, what the fuck?' thing where I'm looking for the right bit of the power supply to plug into the special part of the motherboard that my old board didn't have -- and, of course, it takes me half an hour to find it, because I'd tucked it away so it wouldn't get in the way. I was about to swap everything out because I had myself convinced that this one didn't have the right bits....

I found it, though, and got everything plugged in.

Then came the really fun part. The part where it wouldn't power on. At all. Until, after an hour of experimenting, I unplugged the DVI cable, and it magically powered on.

Another WTF moment. It's on, though. So I can't complain too much.

Which, of course leads to 'oh, hey, I'm an idiot. I have to reformat this thing to get it running right again'. Which I knew. But...I kinda forgot to back everything up, and, since I haven't got any other computer up and running so I can do that [not counting Gremlin's], and my rescue gadgets are all dead...so, I get to back everything up in 800x600 hell.

I did find something neat while I was doing all that, though.

Somehow, I have spam from 1970! I discovered this because, while backing up my email, I happened to notice that the largest file was actually the junk folder. I kinda never cleaned that out. Oops.

Once all that was done, I managed to get it reformatted. And I ran into another problem.

My videocard -- my good one -- just didn't want to work in this machine. I don't know why, but it's a good thing my parents sent that old videocard with it. I'm currently stuck with a 128mb videocard, but it's better than nothing.

The 256mb card that I had is now living in the TV tower...on my old motherboard. Wasting all its power just playing videos for me.

Zombi was helpful cat throughout the entire process, of course.

After all that, I started having some stability problems. One of my drives was dying. Not good.

I ordered a new drive, and a new rescue gadget. Which arrived broken. So I'm debating whether or not to bother Newegg about it, or just use the power supply with the old USB connector I have that still works. I...didn't manage to rescue everything from that drive, either. Not fun.

My computer seems stable enough now, though. And Photoshop opens way faster....

So, I've got this computer that I have to fix. Simple enough. Just a basic reformat, really.

Except it's never that simple. Never.

The latest snag? My external power supply for drives just died on me. So I'm going to have to get a new one of those -- because the other new one I bought broke. And I don't mean 'broke' as in 'oh, that's an inconvenient cosmetic flaw'. I mean 'oh shit, that really important part just fell off'.

I'm also supposed to be building a theme for someone. And, wouldn't you know it? I suddenly got inspired...to do a different theme. One that has nothing to do with the first one.

No. I'm really not having any fun at all.

See, I got an Eee, and the keyboard? Redefines 'tiny'. I keep hitting the enter key when I want the apostrophe. This will take some getting used to.

I haven't decided if I want to keep the OS, or try something new. I guess it won't hurt me to try some stuff out, either way. Might give me some more room on the drive, or something. But, hell, I might as well give the current OS a chance....

I'm really only posting this to see how horrible the keyboard is, and how much I'm going to have to work to get used to it. I'm going for 'kinda horrible' and 'a bit'.

Maybe I'll have to install some sort of chat software on this, so I can give my fingers a better workout. Obviously, this isn't going to help me at all.

If that doesn't make any sense -- my toaster doesn't work anymore. The 'launch toast into orbit' button doesn't work anymore. My computer, not having a cool 'launch toast' button [since it doesn't make toast], is really just...the C drive corrupted. Which I didn't know until I managed to get it working again, because it was claiming be unmountable.

So I almost lost all my drawings, and all my recent pictures. I'll have to learn from that, or something.

I've got it working again now, but I'm going to reformat anyway. I'm backing everything up right now, because I was smart enough to keep an unused drive with Windows on it.

This is not my idea of fun, especially since I'm waiting for an email from Newegg on something.

And then I figured out what I might want to do about a slight redesign here.

So, I grabbed my whiteboard, and my lovely fine-tipped dry erase marker, and I sketched it out.

Then I tried to scan it.

Does that look right to you?

Yeah, it didn't look right to me, either. Sure, the colours at the bottom are nifty, but...that's not what I meant to get.

So I rebooted and tried again.

Oh, hell, it's getting worse....

I tried scanning a couple of other things, all with the same result.

I changed where it was plugged in on the computer. No change.

I turned the printer off and back on. No change.

Then, for some reason, I decided to check the electrical plug-in thingie.

It was loose.

Victory.

So, I don't need a new scanner. And I got my sketch scanned in properly. So I'd say this all ended well.

So, I'm back to the old IBM. I guess I'll just have to be careful with this until I find a place that sells keyboards that I actually want to use.

I woke up about two hours ago to find that the two 500gb drives I'd ordered had been delivered...at some point earlier in the day. Which is great, because...well, maybe not so.

You see, I have this thing with computers. I'm reasonably good at putting them together and making them work, but there's always a non-monetary cost -- a whole crapload of stress because something stupid goes wrong.

This time? Well, first I had to figure out why the hell my computer didn't want to detect the new drive, which was pretty easy, because I was expecting that. It's a newer SATA drive, and I have older SATA ports. So I had to track down the jumper settings for the drive. Annoying, but simple.

...then, my internet breaks. Fucking Comcast decided to be my big problem this time. And since I'm used to things going wrong on my end, I go through everything [including resetting my router to factory default settings] before even thinking of calling Comcast. And the problem was theirs, not mine.

And now, I'm not even happy. You'd think having a whole terabyte in my computer would make me happy [the new drive is actually a 500gb SATA, but with the other drives, it still ads up], but I'm just not. It's nothing now. Not like the two 100s I had excitingly combined into a single 200 way back when. And not even a little exciting like the two 200s I've been using for a while. Time has passed, and now all I can think is 'yeah, I probably have that in DVD-Rs. So what.'

I wonder what exciting problems I'll run into when I try to put the other drive into Gremlin's tower....

Which means it took me forever to get these pictures from xiph....

Just thought I'd share.

I hope I remembered to back everything up....