thisStrangeEngine.com

Something is up.

In the last three months, several major components of my computer have suddenly failed on me (I suppose it’s not often that they gracefully and slowly fail on you, though).

Just before the move, my computer would power up for about 4 seconds before it would shut itself down again. I thought maybe the power supply was bad, but a power supply tester confirmed that it was okay. I figured it had to be my motherboard. Replacing the motherboard pretty much rebuilding the system, so I ended up doing a full-on upgrade: motherboard, processor, and video card. All that cost me about $300.

Then, about a month ago, I found my computer wouldn’t even turn on. Interestingly, this happened while trying to diagnose a problem with my internet connection. Strangely, it was somehow linked to the fact that I had my coaxial internet running through my surge protector. I decided I wanted to try and see what happens if I reset my protector, so I shut off my computer. Then when I tried to turn it on again, it wouldn’t. After checking cables and all, I decided to test the power supply again. My worst fear was right - my power supply gave out. It was a nice name brand one, too, and I had it for less than a year. Incidentally, it was only the 5V+ that was no longer giving for some reason. So I went to the store and bought a replacement for about $80.

I came up to the loft this evening to do some stuff on it, and I saw something I did not care to see. The computer looked like it had rebooted sometime today or maybe even last night, but Windows did not boot up. Instead, on the bottom of the screen was message saying that it could not boot the OS. Of course, that is never good.

I tried rebooting and, sure enough, it was the same message. I opened up my computer to see what was going in there. I heard a tell-tale “click-click-click” that could only have been the final death throes of my hard drive. It seems my luck with components haven’t been that great.

I also noticed while I was in there that everything seemed pretty hot. I wasn’t sure if it was normal or extreme, but it seemed like it was more than I was used to. The thing is the loft in my new apartment has this window that is in a peculiar position where it is impossible to mount any blinds or curtains on without, maybe, a sturdy ladder and someone to hold the other end down, and even then, you risk falling down to the living room below. All the heat in the apartment already rises up to the loft, but then the window lets in the pure sunlight all day long, so it gets really hot up there. I have a feeling it could very well be having a considerable effect on my hardware.

So, I’ve got this thing called a “temporary shade” which means it is less elegant than a blind, but it’s stupid easy to mount and it’ll get the job of blocking the sunlight done. Getting to the window to put it up is still a task that I’ll probably have to leave to the complex’s maintenance crew, but I hope that this will help things out. Maybe it’s also just bad luck, but I hope that my components aren’t dying out because of any one faulty component I keep overlooking.

Anyways, hard drives are stupid cheap these days, and luckily Best Buy happened to have a good sale on some Seagate drives this week. You can pick up a 120GB for $50 or $200GB for $80. I originally was going to get the 120GB, but I decided to spoil myself (again). Fortunately, I’ve been doing regular backups, and most of my important day-to-day stuff is on the laptop, so there are no real setbacks. My only fear is that since my backups are only weekly, I may very well have lost the pictures I took from the last day of the Austin City Limits Festival this past weekend, although there may be some hope in restoring them from my currently-empty flash card.

So those are my current adventures in tech.

Coming up: how to get any Linux+GNU/BSd distribution running in a virtual machine on your Windows desktop.