Archive for November, 2005

Man, I haven’t written a journal entry in a couple of days. I’m too tired to write another poem, anyway.

I’m exhausted. The last two days have been complete hell. Yesterday, a rare day to sleep in late, I was awakened to the sound of my computer screeching loudly and repeatedly. I instantly knew it was my harddrive. The head in my main drive would skip once a month or so, but just once and that was it. This time around, it just kept skipping and screeching. I powered down and restarted. Use my defragmenter to stress each individual physical drive separately, I quickly proved my suspicions of the main drive slowly failing. The system is still running (drive locked up on me twice yesterday), but obviously, something needs to be done. I was going to simply buy another drive, but then I realized that I have plans to buy a whole new system in 2 to 3 months. Is it worth shelling out extra cash into a dying machine? No. Honestly, I was still hesistant even after realizing the truth of the situation. My parents, though, offered to help a little. My mom is applying my Christmas gift money to the cost of the system and my dad waived my rent for November and December. I was still a little nervous and anxious about taking that much money out of my bank account. Considering I only make about $7,000 a year, I managed to save up a good $1100 or so over the past 12 months and I’ve been proud of myself for it. My dad told me, though, that we put that money there to use when we need. I guess he’s right. I have to use it eventually.

Any geek reading this probably wants me to shut up and get to the system itself. Well, I’m going to be buying a barebones system to save myself some money. I’m going to get an AMD64 3500+, MSI nforce 4 mobo, another 512mb stick of corsair pc3500 ram (I have one stick already), a Seagate SATA HDD and a 256mb Geforce 6600. It’s not high end, per se, but it will do the job. I’m going to port over my Audigy 2, Asus CD burner, floppy drive, my PSU (AMD and P4 compatible) and maybe my Microsoft ethernet card since I like it so much. It should serve me well.

What does this mean for my Firefox builds? Here’s my slightly incoherent post from Mozillazine:

Now that I’m awake and conscious, I wish to explain things a little better to everyone. This morning, I had my build going as usual and I was intent on enjoying my only day to sleep in. Suddenly, I heard a repeating loud screech coming from my system and I flew out of bed to quickly realize that the head on one of my drives was skipping over and over again. I cancelled the build, but a few seconds later, my system locked up. I restarted and started to do some testing. I used my defragmenter to test each individual physical drive and it became clear my main drive was having issues. The system didn’t lock up, but the head skipped and screeched a lot. It’s only done it once, since, under a light load, but I don’t want to try it anymore. This PC is over 3 years old and is on the way out, anyways. After talking with my parents and getting my dad to waive my monthly rent for two months, I’m going to be buyning a very barebones amd64 3500+ system and bring over any of my higher end parts to it. It’s going to cost me around $650 or so. During this time, my builds are on hold. I can’t risk destroying this system until I get the replacement. After I do get the new PC and get settled in, I’m going to gauge circumstances and see if I wish to resume building. I apologize to everyone for this inconvenience and I know it’s been excuse after excuse, but I really have no other choice.

All of this really killed me at work, today. Besides the fact that I was stuck doing physical labor all day and not selling (again), I was just tired from the day before.

Anthony and I talk a lot more now that he’s in Merch and works mornings. It’s kind of cool to have something like that. Today, we talked a little about a certain someone. Besides the other crap I’ve been writing about on the topic, he made a point. “The only thing you might not like is that she’s very perky and happy and well………you’re not.” He has a point. I’m not that guy anymore. I can joke and such, but I’m a lot more cold and sullen than I used to be. To be honest, though, all the thinking has made me sick to my stomach and I just don’t want to get into it anymore. My poems tell the story. Read them.

My only escape has been the Calvin and Hobbes collection I got for my birthday. It makes me feel better and I just love laughing like that. I almost wish I could go back and have a childhood like that. Thanks Joe. It was perfect, dude. I treasure this collection.