Computers Are Not Fun

Tiff and I went down to visit my Sister over President's Day weekend. It was nice to go down; we haven't been down to see her in Virginia for several months, so I was happy to go see her at her place (as opposed to her coming up here to stay at our Parents'). One of the goals of the weekend was to get a wireless network setup at her house so she could be on the Internet upstairs as well. "No Problem," I thought. I've done this a couple times now, and knew exactly what to buy. A wireless router and a USB wireless adapter should be perfect.. or so I thought.

The wireless router part was simple enough. The USB adapter turned out to be a nightmare. I feel fine blaming it completely on Windows 98, though. I spent all of Saturday trying to get the thing to work; which wouldn't have been so frustrating had it not worked the entire time, but unfortunately it did work for awhile.. in the beginnning. Then never again. We even exchanged it thinking it might have gone bad. The verdict? Install XP on the box sometime soon (she'll bring it to me this time).

We only got to stay up a short time; we left kinda late on Friday despite me taking off work early and had to leave early Sunday morning. So it was quite frustrating for me to spend all day working on the damn computer and not spending time with my Sister and Nephew.

Of course, my own computer decided that this weekend would be a good weekend to act up as well. It would do this thing where it would turn on for about a second in a big wirrr of fans and then shut off. I'd have to pull the plug for a couple seconds to even try again. "Okay; something is probably sucking too much power," I think to myself. USB thingies (I just bought a Bluetooth KB&M)? Nope. "Drat; something inside." After opening the patient up, it seemed that some fans were making a bit too much noise; "Maybe they're gunked up and sucking too much juice at boot..." This involed removing the Video Card (Radeon 9600 Pro - not something I wanted to break) and the Video Card fan and lubing it up. I did the CPU fan for good measure after the box was working again.

Good thing I go back to work tomorrow.... oh wait; I work with computers.

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