girlofprey

I am posting this from my brand new PC that I built :D

First thoughts: the screen is kind of ugly, and I can't tell if it's because I haven't installed the drivers for the graphics card yet, or because I bought one that was just £200, or because it's so big I can just see all the imperfections in close detail, but. It's a little jaggy. Haven't tried watching any videos or anything on it yet though. Also: the screen is so bright and my keyboard and mouse are both glowing lights at me and I feel like I might be going blind. It's real pretty though. Also: literally every type of software you can have and even some hardware want you to make an account with them and give them all your information and let them track you always. It's actually quite hard and irritating to skip all those steps. Also: I've learned the gaming keyboards have extra keys and even a slightly different layout to most keyboards, so I keep hitting 'M4' instead of shift, and so on.

But overall, I'm pretty happy :)

I did it. I finally found the base post of a joke I've been laughing at for about a year now.

That was me yesterday, only instead of skipping breakfast, it was me thinking I'd just catch a train home from Lancaster.

It was appalling. When we got to the station, it said my train was delayed, but not by how much, but I figured it would only be a few minutes at most. It turned out it was delayed because of a trespasser on the line, which due to the time of year and how long it took them to resolve it, I'm going to now assume was someone trying to kill themselves, which is really sad. But it meant we were just stood about at Lancaster station for an hour, with them every now and then making announcements that the train was still delayed, they still didn't know how long it would be till it arrived, and then trespasser was still on the tracks. The best part was, the problem was happening at Morecambe, which was nowhere on my route home, but our train was coming from Morecambe, so we just couldn't get going till it was done. They cancelled 2 trains to Morecambe over the next hour, and started talking about replacement bus services. I stood out on a freezing cold platform for about 25 minutes before I realised that what with the cold and all, that probably wasn't the best plan, then went and had a chocolate brownie from Costa and sat in the passenger's lounge. My mum called, and my phone died, but happily there was a plug socket right in front of me in the waiting room, and I managed to charge it up enough for it to last the rest of my journey home. Finally, after an hour, they announced that a (delayed) train to Preston would have a connection to Leeds, so anyone who'd been planning to get on my train should probably get on that. Which was no easy feat, because it was packed to the rafters, particularly around the doorways - and not really in the aisles, so clearly people just didn't want to move. But eventually we got to Preston, and eventually we got on a train to Leeds that wasn't too packed, and I managed to give my parents some idea when I was getting home so I could get a lift from our local station. And the scenery was really beautiful in the sunset and the twilight. So it wasn't all bad. I did try to have a nap on that train and then as soon as I sat up from it ended up coughing my lungs up, while everyone on the carriage looked at me like I was Patient Zero, including a Brenda Blethyn-looking woman at my table. But anyway. After a short, cold stay at Leeds station, I managed to finally get home.

Home was a slightly different story. I'd been expecting all the sympathy from my mum cos I was ill, and when I told her about it on the phone she said she'd go out and try to get me all the cold remedies. Which I thought was odd, because usually she just gives me whatever's in the cupboard. But when I told her I was going to take the next few days off work, she looked at me in horror, because she'd thought I would just take all the cold remedies till I was all dosed up, and then go into work. She's been fretting about sickness at work and self-certification notes all day, which doesn't really help my anxiety. But I think she has a slightly overblown sense of what rational self-sacrifice is, so I am just not taking her advice. I feel way better now than I did on Saturday, but I think I'm going to take tomorrow off as well just to recover, and then try to go back in on Thursday. My boss has been super lovely about it.

I put the sides back on my new computer tower yesterday. In a show of either confidence, or not wanting to be bothered, my dad said I could do it, and I did. It makes it look very finished and beautiful. I'm currently trying to make a Windows 10 boot disk, even though I can't authenticate it, or do pretty much anything, without internet. But I'm going to try to maybe find a place for the tower, and plug in my keyboard and mouse. No word yet on the ethernet extender my dad was talking about, which is how I'm going to get internet, but it does feel like things are moving on at a decent pace.

Computer reconnected, hooked up, and switched on :)

I was so happy when all the lights came on. Then dad noticed as well as the cosmetic lights of the motherboard, there was one that was on in a funny place. I, in denial, was like "it'll be fine!", but we were worried it was the CPU. Which would be the hardest part to get out and replace, frankly. But then we switched it on so dad could take a picture, and I noticed the CPU light did light up, but then immediately went to the next light and stayed on. So it was actually the memory sticks with a problem. One of them had come loose in our tribulations earlier, I'd noticed, so dad pushed it again and it hadn't quite been clicked in properly. Then we turned the computer off and on again, and all the lights came on in sequence, up to Boot Device. I unpacked and hooked up my new monitor, and there it was. My computer, sending signals, telling me all about the CPU temperature, and showing it could see my hard drive and the memory sticks.

I'M REALLY HAPPY. Me and dad were both tired, so we left it there and we're going to look into hooking up the keyboard and getting Windows on it tomorrow. But I am excite! Dad's left the side panels off the computer, which makes me concerned dust will get in. But we left them off yesterday and it was fine. Also, I don't seem to have the right cable to hook my monitor up to the graphics card, so I can't actually use that at the moment. But I can probably buy one. I've got work tomorrow, but I also have an external cd drive, and a bunch of cd-roms with my various parts talking about being 'Windows ready', so hopefully tomorrow we can switch it on and I can see about getting on operating system on there. And then actual stuff! AKsHFLhDAHJDLKHFLK.

I am very happy. Also the Green Lantern movie from 2011 wasn't as bad as everyone said.

The computer's all hooked up. But I have no idea if it works or how it works, because my dad's still busy 'tidying' the cables. Even though you can take the side off and do that whenever you like. Also, there's a lovely plate for the motherboard that tells you what all the sockets are for, but my dad thinks you have to take the motherboard out to put it in, and even though I've been picking the thing up and putting it down for the past two days and saying 'this is here', he 'didn't see it'. Grrr.

I just spent 40 minutes trying to download a Windows 10 installation file to hopefully use on my new PC tomorrow, with my netbook struggling to load everything and unable to use a mouse because I only have one USB port and I needed it for the flash drive - figuring out the download tool, deciding which edition of Windows I wanted, researching my CPU to see whether I needed a 32-bit or 64-bit version - only for the download tool to repeatedly tell me I didn't have a flash drive attached to my computer, when I did, I could see it.

alskdjsalkfjaskdlvmnmd.

Also my MN spent quite a lot of today calling us all fat pigs and telling us he was going to kill everyone of us, merry Christmas.

I set out today to clear my bedroom and desk a little bit, in preparation for building and setting up the new computer. And then mostly I stared at the desk, and wasn't sure what to do about any of it. Unfortunately, since I don't clean my bedroom very often, there's a thick layer of dust that has to be dealt with before I do pretty much anything. Plus with all the boxes around from computer parts and Christmas stuff, it became a logistical nightmare. But eventually I did managed to dust some stuff, put it in boxes, and take it to a charity shop, along with a bunch of other things I've been meaning to take for a while.

Plus, the nice thing about buying and shifting so much stuff lately means things are actually quite well set up for continuing to move stuff around. I have a bunch of empty boxes from various Amazon deliveries, and my parents moved a sofa out of our spare bedroom to give to my sister for her new house, so there's a huge empty space in there where non-empty boxes can be stored for a bit. Plus I have more computer parts in my wardrobe than I thought would ever fit. I'm not excited to see the state of the shoes they're on top of when I finally move them out, but c'est la vie.

To be honest though, I'm not sure when I'm going to build this thing. If I spend all day preparing the bedroom, I still won't really have time to do it today - all the guides are very specific about building it very far away from any dust, so the desk probably needs a very thorough clean before I get started. Then I'm working all week because we don't really get many Christmas holidays. And then it's Christmas. I suppose we get the two bank holidays next week - but one of them's Boxing Day, which is traditionally a chill day where we all recover from having the kids down the day before. Plus mum wants to do some Christmass-y stuff in my room if she can, so a lot of my shifting things around is on hold till she does. Plus I have Christmas decorations of my own I might want to put up. So sigh. I keep thinking about all the PC games I can now play if I have a decent computer, and my brain's like "we can play them today, Rachael!". And it's like no. No we can't. We could, conceivably, but realistically, we won't.

I still need to take my old laptop somewhere. I'm a little bit concerned about data on the hard drive, but no-one really warns you about that, and I'd only be taking it to Curry's or somewhere respectable. Things are so busy at the moment. But it does mean things are moving, which is nice.

But anyway.

I cancelled my order for that one computer part and re-ordered it, but I still haven't got any sign that they're sending it to me. It obviously made some sort of difference, because before I cancelled my order it said there were 2 in stock, and when I went to re-order it it said there were 3 in stock. And still nothing. And as far as I can tell, there is literally no way to communicate with Amazon anymore - you can only track a parcel when it's been shipped, which mine hasn't. It's getting pretty frustrating. I really don't want to still be building this computer in the new year.

Also, it's sort of interesting hearing about news things all the time, but honestly Sky News is such a pantomime news station. When they run out of things to say - which they frequently do - I get treated to such debates as Man Flu: Is It Real? And Mansplaining: What Is It? A few weeks ago they did a story about a scam where sexcam workers took footage of the people they were talking too and blackmailed them with it, and they introduced it with like a horror movie intro of a sexy, treacherous woman talking into the camera and a bunch of ones and zeroes flying out of a bunch of houses. It was amazing.