Probably because I have just spent the past four days pretty much constantly on my PC.
The new one turned up on Thursday morning, so when I got home that afternoon, I got all excited looking at the parts, and phoned Collin immediately. He was not available until 19:30, so I had to sit and twiddle my thumbs until then, then throw the whole kit and kaboodle into the car and fgo round his place.
He didn’t actually build it for me. Rather, he told me what to do and made me do it - I learn stuff that way.
Everything went smoothly, until we got to hooking up the power supply to the motherboard. Firstly, I was one power lead short for the devices I have. Secondly, the connector from the power supply was a 20-pin, but the motherboard (being newer) required a 24-pin.
Bugger.
No major problem, just meant that I would have to buy an adaptor and a splitter tomorrow (I took Friday off just in case it arrived, and to make a three day weekend into a four day). I was a little p*ssed off though - I really wanted to start playing that night.
Friday morning was spent looking through the yellow pages trying to find a place that sold the parts I need. It’s no wonder that Novatech do as well as they do - even though they suck big time, finding somewhere else to go locally is virtually impossible. I finally found a place called Copperhead Communications on Brockhurst Road in Gosport. Problem was, they only had the splitter, not the adaptor.
I had to swallow my pride and order one fasttrack from Novatech. So the vow to never ever go there lasted a week or so…..
I draw consolation from the fact that while I spent £4 there, I spent £500+ elsewhere.
So after fighting through Gosport traffic on my bike, and then into Portchester, I got the parts I needed and went home to fit them. That part was no problem, and then I hooked up the monitor, etc and fired her up.
“Beep! Beebeebeepbeeeeeeeepbeebebeepbeepbeeeeeeeeep!”
Whoops! We had hooked up the CPU fan to the wrong terminal on the Motherboard.
FIxed that, and then installed Windows. That all went smoothly. Because I had five devices and need a IDE expansion card, I had to do a bit of juggling on the IDE front, but when all the drivers were installed, I re-arranged them to fit. Then I sat down to get on with some serious rearranging, and make use of the extra 260gig that my new hard drive offered me.
Or maybe not. Half my drives were missing in Windows Explorer, and when I looked at Disk Managament, I discovered a rather significant problem. Because my old OS was XP Pro, it had formatted the drives as ‘dynamic’ (without my knowledge), and unfortunately, XP Home Edition (which I now use) does not recognise dynamic disks.
Balls.
I phoned Collin, and after him offering to sort it for me Saturday morning, I decided not to wait, and fix it myself.
My rather convoluted solution was to find the old hard drive (40 gig) which I did not use anymore, reinstall XP Pro onto that, connect the other hard drives, and move three hundred gig worth of data from the dynamic drive onto my new 300gig, which I had formatted as a basic drive. I had to spend a protracted amount of time getting SP2 to work on XP Pro, as the drives were all over 120gig, and pre-SP2 systems do not recognise large hard drives. Then I had to swap over the operating system about five times and reboot each time to get everything where I wanted it to be.
I finally finished getting all the devices recognised and working at half past midnight. Fifteen hour day then, all told.
Saturday morning, I started moving the files around into my new arrangement. When you consider that there was about 600gig worth of them, you can imagine that it took rather a long time.
I had a welcome break when Glenn came around. He stayed for a few hours and we caught up a bit. I have seen so little of my friends these past couple of months, I feel a little guilty. It’s the same every year though at this time, what with Summer Camp, and prepping for next term, and this PC situation has been a real pain in the butt. When he left I got on with more moving around, and then started installing some more software. Saturday was easier than Friday, but I still spent most of the day sat in front of the PC. I decided to get the Summer Camp photos done that night as well, which entailed looking through 650 photos and choosing which ones to use, then photoshopping them. Finished at about 02:00.
Sunday started off with a break, as I had told Collin that I would help him take some garden waste to the tip. Three trips, and a hack and slash at almost all of the plant life in their front garden later, Collin took me round to Asda to treat my car to wash (cheers Coll!), and then I went home to do some more work on the PC. It’s amazing how much there was to do, just housekeeping. I let my PC get into the same state as my room - totally disorganised. It’s become a bit of a crusade this weekend though - I knew I was going to spent the meat of it doing PC stuff anyway, so I don’t consider it a weekend wasted. I have been pretty oblivious to the weather outside though - apparently its been quite nice.
Sunday night I took Tom and friends to the Dugout - they have their semi-final at the Wedgewood rooms on Thursday, and they have another practise on Wednesday night. Picked them up again at 22:00, and took the scenic route back while headbanging to ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Carried on on the PC when I got home and finished at about half past midnight again.
Monday has been more on the PC so far, although I did do my first ever bit of rewiring in the house - Dad showed me how to replace a light socket. I have been writing and printing stuff to deliver to the Scouts about the start of next term. I was hoping to deliver them tonight (and finally get out on the bike and get some much needed fresh air), but remembered that if I am to get a camp in before it gets too cold, I need to book it now, and hand out the letter on this delivery, to allow the return slips time to get back to me. I phoned Wilverly, then Braggers Wood (which Collin recommends), and am currently waiting for them to phone me back.
Must get to bed at a sensible hour tonight, as I have work tomorrow…