More Post Office Fun, And New Computer Joy, Part 1 (AKA I Should Learn How to Read)
Quick-hitters:
- We had some Thai food last night! Pad thai, yellow curry–way too sweet, btw–pineapple fried rice, and laab. Twenty bucks for four dishes, and we had tons of leftovers. In fact, I still have some of the laab left over; too bad I don’t have any cabbage or cucumbers to slice up.
Oh great…my oldest sister just told me that she wanted to go have Persian food tomorrow at Shirin Restaurant. I hope I still have some antacids.
- Another day, another trip to the Post Office marred by a person who held up the line, looking for a particular stamp. This incident was much more theatrical than the recent incident I talked about, though. Apparently, the woman had held up the line for about twenty minutes, to the point where the cashier had a number of stamps laid out in front of the woman, so that she could find the ones that she wanted. This prompted one of the senior workers at the PO to intervene. The worker told the customer that she was holding up the line, and that she couldn’t keep making others wait she was choosing the stamps that she wanted. The customer got offended by the comment, saying that she had “every right” to take her time. The worker responded with something along the lines of “no you don’t.” The worker then spoke to the cashier, and the woman continued her “I have my rights” defense. Finally, she bought one other set of stamps, and checked out.
Prior to the confrontation, the woman had turned around to the line, and apologized for holding things up. She mentioned that she was just looking for the stamps that she wanted. I guess that forced the senior worker to notify the woman that she was taking too long.
- So my new computer (code-named Q9o…long story) is finally up and running! It took nearly two full nights, lots of PEBDAC screw-ups, a number of sodas, some force, and lots of patience, but the system works.
(Don’t be surprised if this story becomes a two-parter.)
So I had to start by removing my old computer parts (P4 2.4GHz). I began by disconnecting cables and power adapters from drives and power adapters from fans. I then had to remove the power supply and motherboard; as soon as I removed the final screw holding the motherboard to the chassis, I had to angle the board to remove it (I left the heatsink/fan on the board, and the thing is pretty big!). After doing some dusting, and removing the ATX backplate from the case, I had to attach the new backplate.
(Whoever invented compressed air needs to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Seriously.)
After that, I installed the CPU into the motherboard, slapped the heatsink/fan on top of that, installed the RAM, and installed the motherboard into the chassis. So far, so good, right? I then installed a new power supply (an Ultra 600W PSU), and followed that up by installing my new Maxtor SATA drive, and I will now remember that SATA connectors are pretty fragile; I nearly broke off the SATA power connector on the drive. I made all the necessary connections: 4-pin power connectors to drives, power/HDD LEDs, power/reset switches, monitor to the onboard video connector, Logitech MX3200 Laser keyboard (you know, the one with the “hidden” scroll lock key), and my DVD+RW drive. I then fired up the computer…and nothing happened.
(Oh oh.)
It helps to actually connect the PSU to the motherboard 
Once that was fixed, I hit the power button again, and it turned on. I immediately noticed that the CPU fan was really quiet; according to the BIOS, the fan spins at ~ 2500 RPM, less than half of my old P4 heatsink/fan. I also noticed that my case fans were spinning a heck of a lot louder than normal. I then recalled that my old Antec PSU had “fan only” connectors, that thermally controlled the rpm of the fans. This new Ultra PSU had no such capability, and now my once-quiet case fans will now be whirring at max speed. No biggie, though; it’s so hot here that my computer might need the increased air flow.
I proceeded to install Windows XP, and that went rather flawlessly. Once I got into Windows, I began installing the motherboard-specific drivers from the included driver disk. For some reason, I could not get ANY of the drivers to install properly. I was forced to download the LAN drivers from Gigabyte’s site, and fortunately, that worked. However, the other drivers found on the web site didn’t work at all. I was completely pissed off, until I noticed a second CD that was included with my motherboard. I looked at the CD, uttered a “Grrrrr…,” and popped the CD into my DVD+RW drive.
(Apparently, that CD contained drivers for a WinXP installation; the disc I had been using was for Vista installations. Two million stupid points.)
Naturally, everything worked using that new disc. I finished driver installation, and left program installation for the next day, as well as the PCI IDE controller card I needed to use my old hard drives.
I think I will finish the story tomorrow. Yes, there’s more stupidity to come