Well, today was the day I built my own computer for the very first time. ^_^ Lets just say, for all the times my blood-pressure soared, it went off without a hitch. Right now, I’m preparing to install Windows XP on it and am about 75% of the way through partitioning and formatting my new hard drive.

As you know from my previous posts, I made a list of the parts I would need a couple weeks ago and placed my order. My goal was a really nice, but not state-of-the-art gaming and graphic arts machine. Basically, I needed it a little more powerful than the standard computer you can buy from the store, but without the several thousand dollar price tag.

So, my case came today. Cue me prancing out to the street in my pajamas to grab this HUGE box from the UPS guy. (Who has actually been really nice about huge box a week thing.) After lunch and doing a little more homework I set to work.

The bulk of the parts for my new computer came in today. *dances*

So far, I’m reading through the assorted manuals to make sure I have everything in order. You couldn’t get much more OEM the way the hard drive and optical drive came wrapped together in anti-static baggies and bubble wrap. Kind of wishing I’d gone retail for the hard drive so I had the manual and disks, but it’s a little late for that.

The video card… eh, the manual leaves a little to be desired. :-P The instructions are basically: “Remove your old card, put in new card. Restart system, let Windows recognize it, then install the included driver disk.”

Kind of thinking of skipping the job fair. :-/ According to the newspaper section dedicated to the job fair, there’s not much in the way of potential employers that are going to be there that I’ll be interested in. There’s assorted military recruiters, construction, manufacturing, health care, and then several staffing places. There’s only a few employers that I might be interested in and it almost doesn’t make sense to go for three or four specific places. (And I don’t even see them on the web site for the job fair now.)

Right now, mom’s talking really highly about going out and getting the new monitor and then going clothes shopping. I might do that and just go hit the staffing places either online or on my own.

I got an internship with Second Life, working on an experiment for one of the professors at my college.

While I’m seriously geeked over the prospect of an internship in an MMO, my time over the past few days in Second Life has taken my video card to the brink of death.

So, I had two options: A.) Burn the money on a new video card or B.) Get a new computer.

Lets see…Buy a new video card when: The current video card is dying, the heat sink on the north bridge spontaneously fell off so I probably have heat damage (which is probably half the reason for the graphics problems), and now the hard drive has been clicking intermittently. Yeah, new computer it is.

Not happy with the factory-built systems I have been finding, I decided it was high time to build my own. So, $830 later, I have parts coming from Newegg.

Here’s the specs/parts:

• ASUS P5K PRO LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core 2 dual core processor, 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache
• Seagate 500GB, 7200 RPM hard drive
• SAPPHIRE Radeon 512MB 256-bit HDCP Video Card
• 700 watt power supply
• CD/DVD RW Drive
• 1 GB memory (They were out of the 2GB sticks I wanted and figured this would be enough to get me started.)
• And finally, last, but not least: The Case

And finally, since I’ll have access to XP Pro once I can get back to my programming classes, I ordered an OEM version of XP Home to tide me over.

So, in roughly three days, the poor UPS guy should be planning my homicide. *laughs* (He seems to be deathly afraid of Luna!)

Well, the mess with Mesopia went easier than I thought it would. Still no word back on my domain, well, unless you just count the receipt of them charging us $12 for the domain. *sighs*

Today was a massive grocery getting day, a quick attempt to fill up the pantry until we can get another chance to catch out breath.

Well, it didn’t last long. Apparently, mom didn’t think for the last rent check she wrote and it bounced. All of five days before she cashed her next paycheck. Since I’ll be the only one home tomorrow, I suppose it’s up to me to go talk to the landlords and beg forgiveness for the check. I don’t remember for sure, but I seem to recall seeing a note in the rules we agreed to that says we now have to pay via money order. Oh well, that’s for tomorrow.

(Waiiit… wasn’t I avoiding money matters?)

First week of college went okay, I’m pretty sure I can do this. The group project they want for this next week is a little scary, but everyone seems pretty nice. I really didn’t do anything today with it, so tomorrow I have to check the class message boards again and make myself known.

It’s hilarious, Jass and I have become lurkers on every MB on the planet… with the exception of the school boards. Thing is, since we’re not appearing in person, we have to make significant posts in order to be considered “participating.” But it’s not that hard, the instructors give you essay questions you have to answer almost every day and since everyone is so nice; chit-chat is easy too.

The academic advisors already have my summer classes picked out. I get to take Composition II, Human Relations, File Management, and Internet and the WWW. Composition II sounds okay, I’ve needed it for a while and I’m not sure what to make of Human Relations. But taking me through Files and a introduction to the internet is just, well…. funny?

Yeah, my blog isn’t pretty anymore. I HAD to upgrade wordpress. So tomorrow, after the walk to the office and then school, I’ll settle down and rework my poison layout to work with the new version. I tried to get the LiveJournal auto-update program to work with WordPress, but it’s not compatable. So, I’m still crossposting.

Much love to everyone