I've also been working on securing parts for my new computer. My old Alienware machine died last year after 6 good years of service. Unfortunately last October it decided it didn't want to stay cool anymore and kept shutting down. Cleaning the heat sinks, recharging the liquid cooling system and various sacrifices to the computing Gods could not get it to stay alive. The old machine was retired and usable parts have been stripped from the old case. Over the last year I've been slowly buying parts for my new machine so I can build it myself.
Now I am a computer geek and do my own repairs, replace hard drives, upgraded memory, video cards and so on. My initial plan was to buy the parts and put it together, with some heavy lifting help, but then found out I can take all the parts and have someone else put the damned thing together in a lot less time than it would take me to do it myself. Yes there would be a level of satisfaction and no small amount of thrill from building it all myself.
Think Dr. Frankenstein when the monster first moves "IT'S ALIVE!!!" but then I remembered my somewhat shady track record with computers.
I'm known by friends as the Tim Taylor of computers... if there is a way to fuck it up, I'll find it. Not intentionally mind you, but things just seem to happen. Like the night years ago I was playing Everquest (Does anyone even play that anymore?) and decided that during a break in the action I would run to the kitchen and grab a coke. As I headed for the kitchen I heard a sickening squeal from my pre-Alienware machine, looked back and saw my machine shutdown, never to live again. I not only lost the hard drive, but baked the motherboard and CPU all while being more than 10 feet away from it.
So anyway Friday was pretty exciting cause I ordered the case for my new machine
That's the Cooler Master HAF 932 case with blue LED fans. It's going to be a QUAD Core 3.2 GHz AMD system, 8 Gig memory, 1000 watt power supply, aftermarket CPU air cooler and nearly 2 TB of hard drive space. All I need now is Windows 8 and it's ready to go to the shop to be assembled. The blue LED fan lights made me think of the scene in "The Hunt for Red October" when USS Dallas goes to battle stations and all the lighting on the bridge turns blue. Plus gaming in a dark room with that blue glow will look pretty cool.
I've also been thinking about Christmas presents. I'm going to be trying my hand at something I've always wanted to try. Candy making or more specifically making chocolate truffles. This is the part where I confess to being a Food Network and Cooking Channel junkie. This is something I've wanted to try for a few years and I'm just now getting around to it. I've baked homemade cookies from the Alton Brown recipes, baked pumpernickel bread from a recipe in an Frugal Gourmet "Our Immigrant Ancestors" and grew up watching Julia Child as a kid.
When you've spent as much time as I did growing up stuck in the house in casts as I did you have to find something to do and my guilty pleasure was cooking shows... Julia Child, Jeff Smith, Martin Yan, Justin Wilson The Cajun Chef and a slew of others.
Last week I also made the mile trek across town to vote early. If you've not voted early make sure you get to the polls on Tuesday Nov 6th. If I can roll my ass to the polling place and vote you can too...
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