Busyness and computer troubles
This entry is going to be hella long, so here, let me cut it for you:
On Wednesday night, after choir, I had a friend over for an honest-to-God girls-night sleepover. We were back late from after-choir socializing, so My Sweetie had already gone to bed, and we just sat up talking Harry Potter for most of the night. It's SO NICE to talk HP with new people from time to time! I hadn't even realized that this particular friend was a fan, until VERY recently, when she joined HP Club after I'd posted about our movie marathon on Facebook.
On Thursday morning, I was playing Wizard Rock for my friend, and she was introducing me to Heartsy (which is like Groupon for Etsy - referral link over here) and my display went all sparkly... and then locked up completely. I'd been having issues earlier with display on WoW, but had assumed, since a pretty major patch came out on Tuesday, that they'd just messed something up in-game when they were making changes (which is a pretty common occurrence) but this wasn't WoW, so I was forced to admit that there was a bigger problem.
Thursday became an epic shopping trip where we visited some of our favourite off-the-beaten-path specialized sorts of merchants. We went to Hajar's Halal meats for the good lamb (it's very difficult to find Alberta lamb, unless your either at the Farmers Market or a Halal meat shop, but there are very few Halal meat shops that My Sweetie will shop at. If you live in Edmonton and want to go to a Halal meat shop for the good lamb, please please PLEASE ask us first!) and Smokin' Iron Farms for GIANT steaks. We also visited Superstore and Costco, and finally Value Village.
Most of Friday was spent cleaning, because we were having people over Saturday night. We did get out to My Sweetie's cousin's place for fireworks, though. They live on the 13th floor of a highrise condo on Saskatchewan Drive, so the fireworks actually burst at about eye level from their balcony. Also, two of My Sweetie's cousins know way more about computers than we do, so we brought my tower with us, to see if they could diagnose the problem. Of course, as hardware problems do, this one chose to hide the whole time we had it running. It performed beautifully, even when I started up Dragon Age and ran it for a while, which led us to believe that the problem might be the monitor, and not the video card.
So, on Saturday, My Sweetie and I switched monitors. Nope. The problem was not the monitor. We went to Future Shop and bought me a new video card, and both of us new monitors. We were still using VERY OLD CRTs, and we got two fairly small LCDs for about $90 each, and although the screen size is about the same, the desk space is dramatic. Anyway, I went to install the driver for my new video card only to be told that it was incompatible with my operating system. Yes, I was still on XP. So, BACK to Future Shop for the Windows 7 upgrade. I talked to one of the techs, and he warned me that because I was upgrading from XP and not Vista, it WOULD wipe my system, so I should back up any files I didn't want to lose. I figured, since I had three hard drives, and one of them was 2 terabytes, that I would just transfer the files in question to that drive and UNPLUG it while I upgraded Windows.
I upgraded Windows, then installed the drivers for the new video card and installed that (bought a new case fan, while we were at it, because it seemed necessary) then I got the new monitor up and running. Next, I reinstalled WoW. This is a priority for me. Anyway, when it came time to access the files I'd put on the larger hard drive for safekeeping, I realized that the system wasn't recognizing it. I eventually figured out how to assign a letter to it, so now I have all my music, all my pictures, and all my writing (some of which dates back to junior high!) back.
To back-track a little. Saturday night was had friends over for a barbecue and hot tub party. It was what I like to call a modified potluck, where everybody brings something of their own to put on the barbecue as well as a side dish or dessert item to share.
OMG SUDDEN DIGRESSION!!!! I just gave a telephone interview to the Edmonton Journal about Harry Potter Club! I mean, I know that it's a thing right now, with the last movie coming out in two weeks, but who knew we were newsworthy! Reporter-Lady is planning on showing up briefly at Friday's meetup, in the hopes of talking to a few other members, and she's bringing a photographer! Of course, I've told the group that this is happening, so that anyone who doesn't want to be involved can just arrive a little late, and avoid any potential awkwardness. And anybody who DOES want to be involve can wear their geekiest HP duds.
Anyway, my computer is working again, my files are found, and I'm currently playing WoW, while listening to close to a season's worth of episodes of The Unknown Studio back-to-back. Hmmm... I wonder if Scottybomb would consider doing an episode on Harry Potter?... Why couldn't I have thought of this sooner, when it might actually have been timely?...
On Wednesday night, after choir, I had a friend over for an honest-to-God girls-night sleepover. We were back late from after-choir socializing, so My Sweetie had already gone to bed, and we just sat up talking Harry Potter for most of the night. It's SO NICE to talk HP with new people from time to time! I hadn't even realized that this particular friend was a fan, until VERY recently, when she joined HP Club after I'd posted about our movie marathon on Facebook.
On Thursday morning, I was playing Wizard Rock for my friend, and she was introducing me to Heartsy (which is like Groupon for Etsy - referral link over here) and my display went all sparkly... and then locked up completely. I'd been having issues earlier with display on WoW, but had assumed, since a pretty major patch came out on Tuesday, that they'd just messed something up in-game when they were making changes (which is a pretty common occurrence) but this wasn't WoW, so I was forced to admit that there was a bigger problem.
Thursday became an epic shopping trip where we visited some of our favourite off-the-beaten-path specialized sorts of merchants. We went to Hajar's Halal meats for the good lamb (it's very difficult to find Alberta lamb, unless your either at the Farmers Market or a Halal meat shop, but there are very few Halal meat shops that My Sweetie will shop at. If you live in Edmonton and want to go to a Halal meat shop for the good lamb, please please PLEASE ask us first!) and Smokin' Iron Farms for GIANT steaks. We also visited Superstore and Costco, and finally Value Village.
Most of Friday was spent cleaning, because we were having people over Saturday night. We did get out to My Sweetie's cousin's place for fireworks, though. They live on the 13th floor of a highrise condo on Saskatchewan Drive, so the fireworks actually burst at about eye level from their balcony. Also, two of My Sweetie's cousins know way more about computers than we do, so we brought my tower with us, to see if they could diagnose the problem. Of course, as hardware problems do, this one chose to hide the whole time we had it running. It performed beautifully, even when I started up Dragon Age and ran it for a while, which led us to believe that the problem might be the monitor, and not the video card.
So, on Saturday, My Sweetie and I switched monitors. Nope. The problem was not the monitor. We went to Future Shop and bought me a new video card, and both of us new monitors. We were still using VERY OLD CRTs, and we got two fairly small LCDs for about $90 each, and although the screen size is about the same, the desk space is dramatic. Anyway, I went to install the driver for my new video card only to be told that it was incompatible with my operating system. Yes, I was still on XP. So, BACK to Future Shop for the Windows 7 upgrade. I talked to one of the techs, and he warned me that because I was upgrading from XP and not Vista, it WOULD wipe my system, so I should back up any files I didn't want to lose. I figured, since I had three hard drives, and one of them was 2 terabytes, that I would just transfer the files in question to that drive and UNPLUG it while I upgraded Windows.
I upgraded Windows, then installed the drivers for the new video card and installed that (bought a new case fan, while we were at it, because it seemed necessary) then I got the new monitor up and running. Next, I reinstalled WoW. This is a priority for me. Anyway, when it came time to access the files I'd put on the larger hard drive for safekeeping, I realized that the system wasn't recognizing it. I eventually figured out how to assign a letter to it, so now I have all my music, all my pictures, and all my writing (some of which dates back to junior high!) back.
To back-track a little. Saturday night was had friends over for a barbecue and hot tub party. It was what I like to call a modified potluck, where everybody brings something of their own to put on the barbecue as well as a side dish or dessert item to share.
OMG SUDDEN DIGRESSION!!!! I just gave a telephone interview to the Edmonton Journal about Harry Potter Club! I mean, I know that it's a thing right now, with the last movie coming out in two weeks, but who knew we were newsworthy! Reporter-Lady is planning on showing up briefly at Friday's meetup, in the hopes of talking to a few other members, and she's bringing a photographer! Of course, I've told the group that this is happening, so that anyone who doesn't want to be involved can just arrive a little late, and avoid any potential awkwardness. And anybody who DOES want to be involve can wear their geekiest HP duds.
Anyway, my computer is working again, my files are found, and I'm currently playing WoW, while listening to close to a season's worth of episodes of The Unknown Studio back-to-back. Hmmm... I wonder if Scottybomb would consider doing an episode on Harry Potter?... Why couldn't I have thought of this sooner, when it might actually have been timely?...