Excessive

I've been letting my writing slide over the last month or so, and it creates this sinking, guilty feeling in my stomach. I know I should be writing more, and I know that I'll regret my lack of writing in the coming days, weeks, months and years, but I've been finding it easier and easier to just put it off, or just not feel like it, and that's dangerous, as it seems to be somewhat of a slippery slope. If I'm busy playing a game at night, or reading, or watching a movie with Bekki, chances are I'm not going to stop what I'm doing to sit down and write, but I think I probably should, or at least start trying harder, because the last thing I want to do is fall into another blackout period where I don't write for a few months and that period of my life isn't recorded. I need to turn this around and get back on track, start recording my day to day life, so I can bore myself in the future!

Today is the last day of my so-called vacation, not a I'm Going Somewhere vacation, rather just a week off from work so I can try my best to unwind and be stress free before having to start school again next week. Things didn't go exactly as planned, although there were positives and negatives to the week, it wasn't really what I had in mind truthfully. I didn't read as much, nor did I play the specific games I thought I would, I didn't garden as much as I thought, and I didn't do my chores as often as I should. I did end up getting some new computers, playing a lot of Borderlands and Blue Dragon, as well as getting a pretty annoying and physically exausting cold on the first day of my vacation. All added together, it made for a pretty good week off, and while I may not feel like I accomplished as much as I had in mind, I think it was time spent well.

Monday morning, the first day of the vacation, is the day I woke up with a cold. A scratchy throat, completely blocked sinuses, that wonderfully terrible feeling of irritated and sensitive skin due to raised temperature... what a way to wake up and start what I thought was going to be a relaxing week. My cold kind of took over the first two days of the week, spending both days in kind of a stupor, sitting on the couch mostly, putting off doing chores because I felt so bad, so stuffed up, headachey, dizzy... I sat on the couch and watched Bekki played Final Fantasy X, or played Blue Dragon myself. Don't get me wrong, those activities are fun, were fun, will continue to be fun, but it wasn't what I had in mind, and I was just barely comfortable, feeling quite out of it. I would've loved to read more, or even had been more active around the house, but I just didn't have the energy for it, I couldn't motivate myself or feel good about getting up and moving around.

It was Tuesday evening that I had talked with my Mom about my laptop situation and with the fact that school was coming quickly. I won't get into the details but basically after talking we decided that it would be a good idea if I were to get a new laptop for the new school semester, mainly because of how hilariously destroyed my HP has become. With the side of the case broken off, the heatsink exposed and the fact that it runs so hot and so loud (so loud that you literally can't hear the prof from where I sit). We talked about how buying a laptop for gaming is kind of silly, considering a desktop pc can do it so much better, and the added stress of trying to run high end games on a laptop will do nothing but shorten it's lifespan and overheat or damage it's parts. We somehow decided it would be best if I bought a cheaper (not cheap by any means, but a non-high-end laptop) laptop, and also bought a higher-end desktop for any and all gaming purposes, and only use the laptop for school related work. I was surprised, to say the least, about the encouragement I was recieving, almost excitement. I spent Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning obsessively going over every part, every detail, every convievable aspect of both computer builds, and Wednesday afternoon, Bekki and I went out, and started shopping.

I had literally spent hours upon hours obsessing over parts lists on various websites, trying to figure out the best combination, and how much I was willing to spend. It almost got to the point where it was unpleasent, the amount of time and attention I was spending on it, but I couldn't help it. It paid off though because I had a list of all the parts I needed. We took the bus to Oxford and Richmond, stopped at the bank a few times (for both of us) and had lunch at Wendy's, and then made our way to Canada Computers, where I simply handed the girl my list and said, "I need these." and I also asked for a cpu cooling system recommendation. I bought the CPU, the motherboard, the cpu fan, half of the RAM aaaand, that might be it. It was about half of the cost of the rig though, and I put the parts in my backpack, and we made our way home to wait for our second half to begin.

I had asked Calen if he wanted to pick up computer parts with me, a polite way of asking if he could drive me I guess, since walking home with that much crap just isn't realistic, and it would be fun to have Calen around while we talk computer parts too, so I knew it would be fun. He picked us up around 4:30pm, and we drove down to the south Canada Computers (about a two minute drive from my house), and I picked up the second half of my list. I had walked out of the store with everything I needed to build the desktop computer, and due to credit card limits (and timing), I would have to wait until the next day to pickup the new laptop I had picked out.

Once home, Bekki and I made a wonderful chicken stir-fry, but I was eager to build the desktop, so I pretty much started right after dinner. It took most of the night, and Bekki helped me when she could. Everything went smoothly, and I purposly went slow and carefully, taking my time, reading instructions and not cutting corners. It wasn't until about 11pm that we were finally done. It was time to bring it in to my computer room, plug it in and see what happens when you hit that power button... possibly the most stressful few seconds of the entire experience, because this is the time, the time you send actual electricity through it, that something could go terribly wrong. I plugged it in, hooked up the peripherals, and pressed the button. We encoutered two problems. First, the cpu error light turned on, on the motherboard, which mean something was wrong with the cpu. Turns out I had forgotten to plug one specific plug into the motherboard, so that was an easy fix. I just plugged it in, and turned it back on. This time it worked, but BIOS warned me that the cpu fan wasn't working! It was, but I didn't have the fan plugged into the right pins, so BIOS thought there was no fan, and it doesn't like that, so I opened the case and switched it so it was hooked up properly. Turned it on again and everything worked, it gave the normal error message of not being able to find a boot device.

I pressed the button on the DVD drive to open the bay, but it didn't respond... the light was on but nothing was happening, and even the emergency pin-hole release didn't do anything, so I turned it off and played with the cords, discovering that the power cord wasn't in as tight as it could be. I plugged it back in, turned it on and voila, worked. I put in the Windows 7 DVD, installed Windows and everything has been perfect since.

Here are the specs for my new desktop gaming rig:

CPU: Intel i7 3770 3.4Ghz 3rd Gen 22nm
MOBO: Asus P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3
RAM: Corsair 16GB DDR3 1600
HDD: Seagate Barricuda 1TB 7200RPM 6Gb/s SATA
GPU: MSI 1GB GeForce GTX 560
KEYBOARD: Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Backlit
MOUSE: Razer Naga
MONITOR: 25" Asus 5M:1 LED Screen

The next day we made our way back to Canada Computers to pick up the laptop I had them put aside for me. The night before, my Mom had told me that the credit card company coincedentally offered to raise the credit limit on my Visa, so she called that night and doubled it, thus making it possible for me to go out and pick up that laptop. I grabbed a really nice laptop backpack while I was there, because I was severely unhappy with method of transporting my old laptop. I would place it inside a large laptop bag, and then put that laptop bag inside a large backpack, and then place the cords in the second section. It was annoying and time consuming taking it out and putting it away at the start and end of class, and this new backpack will be lighter, easier to manage, and hopefully, quick to unpack and pack up during class. The laptop is an Asus, a brand that I have confidence in as far as quality and confidence, and I feel good about my choice. Here are the specs for the new school laptop:

Monitor: 15.6"
CPU: Intel i5 2.4Ghz 2nd Gen
RAM: 6GB
HDD: 640GB
GPU: GeForce GT540M 1GB

I didn't really have to do a lot to set the computers up, at least not yet. I've installed Visual Studio 2010 on both computers, and tried to find a way to get my Fanshawe copy of Office 2010 but couldn't, so I'll need to visit the IT office during the first week of school to borrow their DVD to install it on my laptop. As far as getting it for my desktop, I'm not sure if it's possible at this point. I would need to pirate it, and find one that activates and works properly. I wish I could remember how I did it last time, because I feel like I pirated it at the start of last semester but I honestly don't remember. Other than that, I've got the desktop setup to work on web development, grabbing Dreamweaver CS6, Filezilla, and Notepad++. The majority of my time on the desktop has been using Steam though.

The thing that really stuck in my head when building this computer was the game Borderlands, strangely. It's not the most technically demanding game, nor is it new or anything, but I had always wanted to play it, and on my old 'supposed' gaming laptop, it would overheat before I could get to the first save station, every time. So playing the game was impossible, and I always wished I could, so my goal, the one thing that stuck in my head was... I want to play Borderlands with all the settings maxed, have the experience be silky smooth and hiccup free, and have the CPU stay cool. The first thing I did was install Steam and start downloading Borderlands, and I spent a lot of the day playing the game, all the while keeping the CPU at 35C (to compare, my laptop would overheat at 100C, which it did, frequently). I downloaded a few games I thought I would like to play, or at least give a test run, so I downloaded Half-Life 2, Orcs Must Die, Costume Quest, StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft, as well as the predownload of Diablo 3 (a game which I'm now surprisingly excited for, since I can play it properly).

I did spend awhile with Borderlands, really enjoying it. Finally being able to play it, it lived up to what I had hoped it would be, which is a kind of first person shooter Diablo-ish game. Quests, randomized loot, and satisfying shooting, can't really ask for more. While I did load other games, set up their video settings, and try them for a few minutes, Borderlands was the only game I spent significant time with.

As far as the new school laptop goes, I am feeling quite stressed out about the software side of things, specifically having it all installed and set up properly in time for assignments for school. I'm not 100% sure that I need all the same stuff as last semester, but I'm assuming I will, and that means I'll need Boost installed for VS2010, SQL Server (but the right one, and set up properly) and working version of Office 2010, and the pressure to set it up all properly, and maybe I might forget something... it feels like it's pressing on my chest and I can't breathe, but I'm sure it'll be okay. Boost was kind of hard to install, but everything else wasn't very complicated I don't think. I'm going to put off installing it until I'm in school and know I need it, mainly because I can then steal the schools bandwidth to download the apps that I need.

Here it is, Friday afternoon - almost Friday evening, and this holiday is coming to an end. The time went by very quickly, too quickly if you ask me. I open at work tomorrow, so I can't stay up late tonight, and then work the weekend, Monday off (I hope) and then school begins on Tuesday. Monday will be my last chance to get ready for school, and I should probably try to make a list of things I should do beforehand, but nothing is jumping out at me, besides perhaps copying over my last semesters folders from my old laptop to my new one, but that's not really important.

I'm going to think about dinner soon, and then spend the evening reading, playing games, playing PC games, and trying my best to feel at rest and relaxed, before I have to head to bed fairly early, and go back to work for the first time in five days. It's been a crazy, almost surreal few days, and hopefully things will start to feel normal before too long.

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