woodsmoke Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 The better part of Friday morning is spent fighting off a hangover and back pain at work. While a bunch of my friends are gathering in Kamas for a party that night, I'm sitting at home because I have to work Saturday. Leave work a half hour early on Saturday to join the fun up in Kamas, and my car dies on the side of the freeway. Check engine light on and everything. I call a sort-of-mechanic buddy of mine out to see if he can do anything with it, but it's not to be and I have to spend $75 to have it towed. Come home and in the mail is student loan bill. Go to bed early, figuring I can't deal with much more going wrong. Wake up this morning, tool around on my computer for about an hour before I suddenly get a BSoD. Trying to restart it first results in a disk boot failure, then a CHIPset failure. Nothing I can think of has any restorative effect. Lost patience, hooked my 360 into my monitor with the intent of blowing the everliving shit out of Stilwater. It freezes at least once an hour. Car's dead, PC's dead, 360's on the fritz, bike still needs new tires/plates/registration/insurance, student loan/rent due, and I'm flat broke. Anyone know what vengeful blood god I pissed off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted April 6, 2009 Super Moderator Share Posted April 6, 2009 You poor bastard! Sometimes it all hits at once. From what I can tell, God just hates bikers. Better days to you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noob Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 What else can go wrong? Does your dick hurt? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astreja Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 Oh, dear... This sounds like it falls into My jurisdiction, as I happen to be the goddess of random equipment malfunctions. *snif* I'm sorry! Please, have some chocolate. (offers bowl of Cadbury mini-eggs) As for the dead computer with the BSoD... See if you can get a Linux "live" disk such as Knoppix, or the try-before-you-install disk that comes with Ubuntu. If that boots the system up, you should be able to use a flash drive key to rescue your important files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitchu Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 It wasn't any god, Sonny-wood, it's that you chose the wrong 'net-Mom. To improve the quality of your life, I'm disrupting the adoption. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deb Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 What else can go wrong? Does your dick hurt? Condolences Wood...and Noob, so glad to have you back- you always get me chuckling!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 Damn dude, that sucks. I think we've all been there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodsmoke Posted April 6, 2009 Author Share Posted April 6, 2009 What else can go wrong? Does your dick hurt? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Thanks, Noob. I needed that. It wasn't any god, Sonny-wood, it's that you chose the wrong 'net-Mom. To improve the quality of your life, I'm disrupting the adoption. "Horse cookies! Er, sorry Padre." (name that reference ) You'll do no such thing. Unless you want to have to explain to everyone we meet why I still call you Mom. I guarantee you'll tire of it long before I will. As for the dead computer with the BSoD... See if you can get a Linux "live" disk such as Knoppix, or the try-before-you-install disk that comes with Ubuntu. If that boots the system up, you should be able to use a flash drive key to rescue your important files. I don't have access to any kind of Linux boot disc, unfortunately, though my roommate's pretty confident we can just hook my HDD into his PC and retrieve the important stuff. I'm not sure the hardware itself hasn't gone belly-up, as it was making some pretty awful sounds (when I turn it on, the PC sounds like a smoker with emphysema. And blacklung), but I'm hopeful. There's a good 80g+ of music, movies and pictures on there which I really don't want to lose. Fortunately, after calming down a bit and discussing it with my roommate last night, I realized replacing my PC won't be as arduous and expensive a process as I had thought. First of all, I don't really do PC gaming anymore, so required hardware specs just went way down. Plus I've been looking into getting a micro PC for a while now, and Asus Eee and Acer Aspire One both clock in at <10" and ~$300 (if anyone's aware of any other similarly sized/priced (note/net)book, please let me know). Storage space could be a problem, as could video scaling in the event of hooking the notebook into my 28" monitor to watch movies and such; but the former could be more than bypassed by later buying an external HDD (1.5t for $150, fuckin' beautiful), and for the latter there are nifty little devices that allow for media use on TVs/monitors not hooked directly into a PC. Most importantly, I'd finally get to be one of those pretentious pricks trendy kids who have their laptops and internet access (a few models of the Aspire One are actually 3G capable, which would be loverly) with them at all times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 I'm not sure the hardware itself hasn't gone belly-up, as it was making some pretty awful sounds (when I turn it on, the PC sounds like a smoker with emphysema. And blacklung), but I'm hopeful. There's a good 80g+ of music, movies and pictures on there which I really don't want to lose. Really? Have you had a good look at the CPU fan? I had one go on me and made similar types of sounds. Bearings were shot so it spun but not at right speeds so thing overheated (my BIOS had screens that showed wonky fan speed/CPU temps that confirmed suspicion but not all do). Replaced it with bigger, quieter, one and all better. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noob Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Hey, Woody!!! I hope things are looking up for you!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodsmoke Posted April 8, 2009 Author Share Posted April 8, 2009 It's possible, but, really, the entire setup is pretty bad. My tower is too small, with too few vents, and those too small. Both of my HDDs are stacked directly on top of each other as the location of the front fan displaces the lower slots (and their being SATA, they run too hot for a tower that small anyway). The CPU sits directly above the video card and vents heat toward the side of the tower (where, again, no holes for ventilation), and the video slot is situated such that the card has to vent heat down toward the bottom of the case, where it's inevitably just going to rise back up and double the strain on the card fan. I've known for the past few years the shit was going to hit the fan eventually, but until Sunday I'd always been able to jimmy-rig it back to life whenever something went wrong. When I couldn't do anything to save it this time, especially in the aftermath of my car dying on me the night before, I pretty much got fed up and decided to wash my hands of the thing. Even if there is some way to save it still, I just don't want to bother. All I'm concerned with is getting my files off the hard drive, after which I'll probably consign the whole thing to the trash heap. In other news, my car is fixed. Apparently it was some problem with the distributor which was throwing the timing off - a somewhat common problem with Acuras, according to the guy at Tunex. Fortunately, it's a fairly simple operation to replace it, and he was able to get me in and out within a single hour. Unfortunately, distributors are fucking expensive, and the final bill came to $660. It's certainly a good thing I'll be pulling 40 hours for the next few weeks, though I had hoped to use the extra income to fix my bike and get ahead on some other projects rather than simply to break even. Edit: That note of cautious optimism you may have detected above? Go ahead and forget it ever existed. Goddamn check engine light just came on again. I can't even afford a fucking 13 year old care with 215k miles on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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