So, I finally put together my first computer by myself. It's not my computer, but it IS the first time that I've assembled a computer from a bunch of parts without somebody else doing most of the work for me. (i.e. Josh) And it's kind of a funny story that I'll probably always remember because it was so stressful and foolish and it shouldn't have even HAPPENED.
So, let's start with my friend Adam (not Kaneda adam, a different adam), wanting to get a new computer. He was planning on dropping $1900 on a dell rig, needless to say, it was a ripoff. I told him that he could build a computer for way cheaper, so he decided to try it out. I kind of had a little regret, because I would be the one putting the comp together, and I've never done that before. I would feel better if it was MY comp, because if I fucked it up it wouldn't matter because it's my comp. But this was somebody else's comp, and let me tell you, it's stressful doing this for somebody else when you only have a general idea of what you're doing.
Zoom forward to me coming to his house and getting all of the pieces together. First things first, I got out the mobo and the proc, stuck the proc in the little holes and took the plastic cover off the bottom of the heatsink, put the heatsink on after struggling and sweating and deeply fearing snapping the mobo in half or tearing the socket from the board. Deep sigh of relief when metal clips finally snap on.
Next point of struggle was putting the little jumper plugs in the right places. The manual generally explained where they go, but I couldn't tell where to put the positive sides and negative sides so I called up a couple people and learned that the colored wire is positive, but I still didn't know where positive goes so I just guessed and hoped it would work when I try it out.
Next was putting in the video card. I'm so familiar with doing this, but my heart jumped when the card didn't fit in the AGP slot. The little flap connector thing that does nothing on the very end of the part that plugs in just wouldn't fit. It wasn't like it barely wouldn't fit, I mean it was like there was no socket there for it to go into, and it was completely blocked. I couldn't get the card in. I sighed and panicked and read the mobo manual over to see if it supported AGP 8x, it did. Turns out, Biostar decided to make a little sliding compartment in the AGP slot that slides out and then the card fits perfectly. I could feel the weight lifting off my back when I found this out. Moving on...
Everything goes fine until I'm ready to turn on the comp and try it out. Comp turns on, nothing happens though. I have no idea what's wrong. I take out the RAM and put it in another slot. Comp starts up and boots fine. I'm so happy.
Setting up bios... don't really know what I'm doing, stuff that I know I change, stuff that I don't know I leave the same. Begin Windows XP install. Quick format the new hard drive, start setting up windows. Everything goes fine, comp restarts to continue installation. Error message immediately. So, I turn off comp, clean CD, restart. Back to windows installation. Error message pops up immediately. ARRRGH
So, I get a new windows XP cd from my friend Will's dell comp. Restart windows installation completely (reformat and everything). Yay, windows installs. Everything goes perfectly from there, except I notice that the proc is running at 1.6ghz instead of it's intended 2.1ghz. So, I go back into bios to change the FSB to 166 instead of 133. Well, I wasn't sure what FSB I was supposed to put it on, so I decided to look through some instruction manuals to see if anything says it. I check out the processor install manual. And it says something like:
Remove protective tape from thermal paste
Oh shit. I didn't do that. I didn't remove any piece of tape. I put that heatsink on without removing the tape. Oh shit oh man. By this time, it was already 12:30AM, and my friend tells me it's alright and I can fix it Tuesday since I had to work all day Monday.
So, tuesday rolls around, and we go and buy some thermal paste (arctic silver, mmm). I go and take out the mobo, and take off the heatsink. Then, I look at the instructions again. And I read this:
Remove protective plastic cover or Remove protective tape from thermal paste
Right now, without thinking, I just say "oh my god." I said this because, I didn't mess up on the proc in the first place. AMD heatsinks come in 2 varieties, they either come with the protective plastic case, or a protective tape over the thermal paste. This one had the case, and I took that off. There was no tape on the paste after all. But it was too late, I took the heatsink off already.
So anyway, I say "oh my god", and he's like "what?" so I was just like "umm, I don't really know how to get this stuff off the heatsink."
I ended up just scraping it off the heatsink with a butter knife, then cleaning it thoroughly with q-tips and alcohol. I gave the proc a good cleaning around the core as well, then I put a little bit of the paste on the heatsink and core and spread it around with an old credit card, and when I was confident that I hadn't put on too much or too little, I stuck that heatsink back on (it seemed a LOT easier the second time), and put the comp together... and it's running great now. And Adam (the guy I made the comp for) gave me 40 bucks for it. I tried to give it back but he wouldn't let me so I don't feel really bad for taking it... score city man.
So, I'm kind of proud of myself, but kind of ashamed of myself for being so dumb. I can guarantee that next time, I won't make the same mistakes and it can only get easier from there...
Special thanks to Erik and Josh for answering my jumper and thermal paste quessions
New flavor of the month.
Yeah, so I'm pretty sure I'm quitting FFXI and I'm definitely quitting AC2, since my friends from AC1 that I was playing AC2 with quit the game. Not that it really matters, AC2 cost me 12 bucks and I'm still on the free month. It's just not that much fun when you're not playing with friends.
I got into the City of Heroes beta a couple days ago, and I wasn't extremely impressed at first, but after I started grouping up with other people it became extremely fun. The game seems to have some of the best features that MMORPG's can have. First of all, it allows you to solo effectively. Grouping isn't REQUIRED to level up, which was my main turn-off for FFXI. Grouping is encouraged, though, because you get XP faster and it's just more fun grouping up with other people. Like FFXI, the game has a "party seek" flag, so you can get into a group easily or put one together. And it's not like FFXI where you put up your flag and then just sit around and wait for a group, you can actually go out and solo badguys while you wait. This just seems so great to me.
The theme of the game really intrigues me too. In pretty much every mmorpg out there, or at least every fantasy based mmorpg, the world is structured like this: You start in a town, and right outside the town gates are the weak monsters. Then further out, they're a little stronger. Further out, they're even stronger. In essence, City of Heroes is like that, except the whole world is pretty much one giant city, that's cut into different sections. When you start, you can choose between starting at the town hall Atlas Park or Galaxy City. Hunting for XP is pretty much running around the city, looking for thugs doing bad things. And usually they're stealing a purse from a woman, or next to a car stealing the car (or stealing something from the car, I don't know), or they're just standing around looking mean. After you beat all the bad guys, the citizen they were harassing runs up to and thanks you and says something like "Wait till I tell my friends about this!" and then they run away. Pretty awesome stuff, being a superhero is cool.
A handful of the missions that you get from various contacts (I'm not sure how many contacts there are in the game, but I'm sure there's a lot) involve actually going into the buildings and sewers of the city, so it's not just the outside of the city that you're running around... there's a lot of abandoned offices and sewers to go through too. And from what I've seen, pretty much all of the buildings in the city are scalable to the top, whether it be by fire escape staircases or flying. Not all of the buildings have staircases leading to the top, but I think you can fly to the top if you give your hero the flying ability. Yeah there's a flying ability and it pretty much permits you to fly freely anywhere within the boundaries of the map. Yeah, that's awesome.
So I'm pretty sure CoH is gonna be my main mmorpg, at least until WoW comes out. I really hope i get into the Wow beta so I can try the game out. I never really buy MMORPG's without trying them out first, so if I can't try out WoW then I might not even play it at all.
Oh yeah, the character creation is so awesome, you have so many choices in how you want your character to look, it's really really really hard to make a character that looks like somebody else unless you're intentionally trying to copy off of an already popular comic book hero or action hero. I made Elle Driver from Kill Bill through the character creation and I think it's pretty awesome. She even uses a katana to fight, how awesome is that? Oh I'll answer that. Very awesome.
Not really a post, just something I wanted to show off. Check out my AC2 screenshots. Not a bad looking game, especially with the new video card...
I'm not gonna quit ffxi... I'm just gonna subscribe AC2 along with FFXI. The reasoning is, knowing my short attention span, I'll probably get tired of AC2 within two or three months and I don't want square killing my content id for being unsubscribed from POL for 3 months.
So yeah... I think I might still give somebody else linkshell leadership though, somebody who plays a lot more and likes the game more than me.
I went to see hellboy today and it was alright. It wasn't great like I had heard from some reviews i've read but it wasn't terrible. I feel bad for telling people that I heard it was good though.
So I think I'm going to quit FFXI. And I'm going to subscribe to Asheron's Call 2. I have been playing the trial a lot and have been enjoying it immensely. I am playing with friends from AC1 and it's pretty fun. It probably won't be a permanent thing, I'll probably move onto a different game after AC2. For one, I downloaded the Planetside trial and I think the game is amazing. And then World of Warcraft, which I assume will kick ass. I'm not gonna quit FFXI quite yet though, I'm probably going to wait until the end of the month before I really decide to cancel it. But I dunno, maybe I'll get back into the game and not cancel it, or subscribe both AC2 and FFXI at the same time. We'll see.