All done by 3 am….

So my weekend started Monday morning. And I usually end up spreading my essential errands over the entire weekend. This weekend was different. Got home. Immediately placed a delivery order for my groceries. Got them delivered and put away. Normally I dilly-dally around till mid to late afternoon (especially the past couple of weeks, when I was working on my computer). But Monday, I went to bed at my usual time for a worknight. Got up at  8. And then I decided to to laundry early. Had it done by midnight. Washed a few dishes. And all of my weekend errands were done by 3 am. Yesterday, I was going to go to lunch with Dad, but that plan fell through. My brother was going to reschedule it for today, but I wasn’t going to make it because of my work schedule (I call out from work way too much as it is)…

And then I spent the remaining day and a half really bored…

An arrival.

I think summer has finally arrived. It is now warm enough outside that I need the AC in  my room. Like I mentioned last week, it started working again. Had it not worked, my plan was to take the AC from the living room (which was Mom’s old portable unit, which also was given to me specifically when she passed).

Anyway, the door is closed, and the AC is on. Cooling season is upon us…

Finished for now….

Ok, at 1:30 this morning, I finished reinstalling everything on my computer, after the latest round of hardware upgrades. Now when I switch to Windows 11, I’ll be able to run Android apps under Windows.But I will run Windows 10 for now.

And more importantly, I’ll try to stop tinkering with what’s inside my computer. If it ain’t broke, then I shouldn’t try to fix it…

So, what all happened tonight?

I get up, jump in the shower, and then head out to work. Get on my first bus, and get off the bus in downtown Tacoma. Then I’m waiting for my connection to get me to work. That bus pulls up, and I start walking towards the shelter (it was rather crowded, and I wanted to keep a distance). The bus rolls up, and then rolls out, without completely stopping or opening the door. I missed the bus. And I can’t afford to Uber it to work (I had paid my bills Sunday night, and so my checking account was depleted). So I’ve called out. Don’t want to, but I had no choice.

Sorry, coworkers.

It works!

My portable AC died a couple of weeks ago. Unplugged it, plugged it back in. And it didn’t work. So I unplugged it for good, and used my old window fan (that my brother got me back in 2003 when we were living in Puyallup). The weather has been extremely cool of late, so it sufficed. At the time, by the time I got that situation straightened out, it was 5:30 in the afternoon, and there was no way that I was going to get any sleep (my alarm goes off at 7 on weeknights), so I preemptively called out of work. I am a firm believer in it’s better to be absent than be a zombie.

Fast forward to this morning. Computer rebuild is progressing, currently downloading all my Epic Games Store games (seriously, you can score some really good games for free from them). The new processor and heatsink are working (though I’m going to hold on to the old parts, as they still work)…. Anyway, it comes time to get ready for bed, and I thought why not try the air conditioner again. Plugged it in, and it turned on. So, I’ve set it back up again.

It still works. Which is good, as I can’t afford to replace it…

Solving one problem after another….

So, all the parts that I ordered 2 weeks ago arrived. And I put them in. And it has seemed like there has been one problem after another….

So last week, I put the new hard drive in and the other SSD. The hard drive wasn’t the issue at the time. Except for the fact that I knocked a couple of power cables looses, and when I turn the computer on I was two drives short. So I had to take the tower apart to plug them back in. And to install the SSD, since the motherboard’s design has a heatsink that covers them both, I had to take off my expansion cards to install it (not really that big of an issue as it was just a video card and my tv tuner). And M2 screws are tiny. Then came the cpu cooler (the ‘new’ cpu hadn’t arrived yet). I gave up on it. With the way it was designed, I figured the risk was too great that I would crack or damage my motherboard before I got it on….

EDIT: right after I gave up in this CPU cooler, I ordered a cheap one from Rosewill, which shipped from Newegg. I thought it was going to be a challenge to install it, but it turned out to be almost as easy as the Wraith Prism. And as an added bonus, my ‘new’ Ryzen 7 3800X is about 20 degrees cooler now. It doesn’t have an RGB set up like the other one, but I don’t need it. It does have a blue led on it, so I can see if it’s working.

So this week, I got the processor I ordered. Relatively quick and painless install. And then I turned the tower back on. Had to make a change in the BIOS. Ended up having to flash a new BIOS. But I finally got the processor installed. Then I came time to install Windows 10. So I put the tower back in its place, untangling the rat’s nest of usb cables. Plugged in the usb flash drive to install Windows, and when I selected the drive, I get another error.This one was easy. After a simple google search, I just pulled out the flash drive and plugged it back in, and I was able to proceed. The rest of the windows install was relatively quiet, except when it came time to set the account up. This time instead of entering your Microsoft credentials, or selecting an offline account (which is what I prefer, then I’ll sign in with my Microsoft account), it was asking for my homedreams.com.au account credentials. Which I obviously didn’t have. Solution: start the software installation over, but this time, unplug the network cable and once you get your offline account set up, then plug it back in.

The last problem I’ve so far was when I was installing my game controllers. I just needed to plug the USB hub into a different port…..

The moral of the story is that the more you upgrade your computer, the more likely you’re going to break it…