coyoteseven

Looks like they're partying in North Carolina like it's 1859. 9.9

I actually had the computer off last night. Usually I leave it on so that it can complete its virus scan while I'm sleeping. The scan is scheduled to start at midnight and I usually go to bed at 1am. Last night the scan finished ten minutes before that. I was like... ooh.

Anyways, I turned it off because I was a bit paranoid about how securely fastened was the new heatsink. Also I wanted to attempt to re-orient it so that it was pushing the air back instead of up. I tried that this morning, but the metal brace, as I'd said in my last post, is of an unorthodox design with respect to most other socket AM3 heatsinks, and after several minutes of fussing with it I could not get it to pop out of the base. I didn't want to spend all morning doing that, and I had to get ready to go to work, so I just left it that way, put the cover back on the machine, hooked it back up and turned it on.

It might be just as well. The case I'd like to get will have a fan on the top that vents air upward from it, and the PSU is mounted under the motherboard. I kind of think that will greatly improve heat dissipation.

Wow, an update! And about my computer, no less! After all this time. Miracles!

With part of my federal tax return money, I got a six core processor and a heatsink/fan to go with it. I wasn't certain if WinXP home would even be able to see a CPU with six cores, much less even use any of them. To my pleasant surprise, it had no problems whatsoever. All six cores are operational!

Removing the old single core CPU and replacing it with the new one was, of course, no problem at all. But the heatsink was a bit of a bother. It's unweildly and the clip to attach it to the base is unlike what you find in a standard issue heatsink. I ended up cutting my thumb on the thin copper fins while attempting to position it into place; a small blood sacrifice to the gods of computer assembly.

Turning the machine on, the BIOS immediately noticed the new CPU and implored me to go into the settings. I did, but I saw nothing that really needed changing there, so I simply exited without making any changes and proceeded with booting the OS, which is still Windows XP Home SP3.

There didn't seem to be any problems, save for two. Firstly, Firefox refused to run correctly; actually it refused to run at all. It kept quitting almost immediately after I'd launched it. I had a hunch that it might be the hardware acceleration mode. I managed to keep it running long enough to go into the advanced settings and disable that, and then I restarted Firefox. So far, that seems to have worked.

The other problem was with Silverlight, or rather with Netflix. Suddenly it was complaining of a DRM issue, saying the date was wrong. Though the date it told me was erroneous was, in fact, today's date. That was very confusing. Re-installing Silverlight didn't work, so I Googled around for an answer. I found one suggestion to delete or rename a specific file, and so I tried that. That worked!

So this is where I am right now. I'm cautiously eyeing this computer, hoping it doesn't somehow crash or that the heatsink's clip doesn't pop off (knock on wood), which it shouldn't! I still intend to get Win7, but it's nice to be able to use the CPU I just got to pretty much its full extent already. Yay!

My mom's been in the hospital a couple of times since Sunday, all due to low blood pressure and dehydration. Could it be because she was still taking meds for high blood pressure? I'd say yes, but I'm not a doctor!

I think my mom's really sick and tired of all this by now. I really can't blame her at all. I know I'd want to fuck that shit already if it was me.

Changing the subject!

I'd been feeling way depressed since January, but it really hit me hard last month when it got coupled with these peculiar anxiety attacks that kept me from sleeping correctly for a bit over two weeks. For a while there I was getting by with only about four hours of sleep a night. It really messed me up for a while. My sleeping schedule has since returned back to normal, more or less. Also, I'm feeling a bit better. I was pretty much just hiding for those three months. Given how reclusive I already tend to be, that meant I'd pretty much disappeared into a hole somewhere for many people! While I'm a wee bit more active now, I'm still not very active here on this LJ. That's... for several reasons, some of which some of you might be aware of, ahem!

Lastly, zrath got me some really cool presents for my birthday. One was a Bewitched Barbie doll and the other was an HP 32 gigabyte flash drive. Both are awesome in their own ways and Z is a totally cool person who you should get to know!

My mom went back home some time on Monday, and she's feeling a lot better lying in her own bed and watching her own TV. She seems in much better spirits.

I'm of the firm opinion that absolutely nothing else should happen to her at all for at least the rest of the year.