not quite the evening i'd planned
You scored as RiVER. River Tam: you can kill people with your mind (or so you claim).
All we really know about you is that you are hella-smart and that you were involved in some sort of Weapon-X-type program, which is usually more curse than blessing.
Some advice: beware the men with the blue hands...
RiVER
63%
Inara, the "Companion"
63%
Simon, the Doctor
63%
First Mate Zoe
50%
Kaylee, the Mechanic
50%
Jayne Cobb, resident bad-ass
50%
Captain Malcolm Reynolds
44%
Shepherd Book
38%
Wash, the Pilot
25%
FiREFLY QUIZ
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w00t.
So. Yesterday over lunch, I bought a new power supply. See, I already told you about the warning message I got, right? Well, I looked online and apparently wattage isn't quite as important as brand and amperage on the rails. And my old supply had 13A on the 12v rail, which is below the 16A that the guy (who sounded very knowledgeable, and who pretty much everyone on that forum agreed with) recommended in order to run today's hardware. So I bought this new supply. It's... er, it was (blatant foreshadowing, wahh!) an Enermax 535W supply. It met the minimums the guy gave on amperage, and while it didn't quite meet the ideals I couldn't find any within my pricerange that did. Plus, Enermax is one of the top brands, along with Antec. I was trying to decide between an Antec and an Enermax, actually, and the salesman said that he'd gotten more complaints lately about Antec lately, though it's historically a good brand, so he'd go with the Enermax. I was mostly sold... then I saw it had a 3-year warranty, and I was totally sold.
And so I took it home and put it in. Had a bit of a confusion over the CPU power connecter--you have to plug in an extender and then connect it to an 8-pin molex (while the connection is only a 4-pin) because it's made to be compatible with a dual-processor motherboard. But then I turned it on, and it was working great... for about an hour. Then, whilst playing WoW, it went BZZZZZZZZZZZZT! and shot sparks 3 feet across my living room. Towards me, as it happened, because the back of the case was facing me from where I'd been working with it. Needless to say, I unplugged it immediately, severely freaked out, called several people to exclaim my fright and confusion, then called up Fry's, where they told me I could bring in my comp and they could look at it. So that's what I did. Took it to the service desk, they said they could look at it, for a price, but that if I bought all the parts there, they could do a post test at the customer service desk for free.
I brought it over, and they tested the PSU. Dead as a doornail. Only the -5v showed as functional. Heh. The guy got permission from his manager to take out the PSU from my system, even though they're not supposed to do anything to a customer's build for liability reasons. I think he knew I wasn't going to sue him, though, so if he could get away with it, he would. Side note, I didn't catch his name, but he was incredibly helpful and very nice. Awesome guy. He deserves a raise. Anyway, they got me a replacement unit, tested it, it was fine. He also looked up my old purchases, so now I'm getting a replacement receipt for the PNY card sent in the mail. Rock! Warranty service will be had! And in looking up the old stuff, we discovered that I do, in fact, have a service package with Fry's which covers my CPU and MB for two years. Recognizing that if it was, in fact, a problem with something other than just the PSU, or if the faulty one had fried anything in the process of creating fireworks, it was pretty likely to be covered either by them or by manufacturer's warranty, I decided to just take their replacement home, put it in, and check it out.
I did so, and was on the phone with Jason as I did it (for moral support) and it worked. And is still working, so far, though I'm now very scared of my computer, don't want to stand near it, and refuse to leave it on unattended. It's like a frickin' toaster for the care I feel like I have to give it now. A person shouldn't have to be scared of their computer. Not everything's plugged in yet, either. I left my floppy drive unplugged (and will until I need it... which is, like, never), along with several USB peripherals, my CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, and the fan in the side of the case (it's just sitting open at the moment). The adjustable fan in the PSU itself is on as high as it will go, and is going to stay that way. I'm kinda wary of plugging any of these extras in, but I'll at least want to put the case back together along with that fan, plug in my optical drive, and the RF receiver for my remote. Hopefully that won't be too much extra load. If it is, I just don't understand it, because it really oughtn't to eat up that much power. I simply can't imagine my system is that power-hungry. I mean, sure it's got some fairly high-end hardware, but it doesn't have a ton of extra PCI cards (none, in fact) or anything like that. Just a lot of fans, which are only 2-3W each. I keep telling myself that it was just a faulty supply, but that doesn't stop me being rather scared of it. I suppose if it continues working normally after I plug what I need back in, I'll get over it in time.
Yeah, so, I got a reasonable night's sleep, even after all that, but I still need some de-stressing time. Maybe I'll get it tonight after Magic. And hopefully Magic will go better. If my deck doesn't start winning at least its fair share, I'll attempt to put together a new one, and maybe ask for Kurt's help. We shall see. And Blackfathom Deeps at guild night tomorrow! Something to look forward to :) Have a good day, y'all...