celticdragonfly

I'm currently posting this from selenite's computer, as mine is ... unavailable. fordprfct has been doing surgery on Agatha, and is currently seeing if the patient can regain consciousness.

I remember back when he built it for me, looking at components with him in Frye's, and having him tell me pros and cons of various options. "Oh, it's not like I'm going to want a high-end gaming system," I said.

*headdesk* I have eaten those words repeatedly since then. Yeah, nowadays, I most definitely DO want a high-end gaming system. I have a level 80 fairly-well-geared frostfire mage who likes to raid, and I've been intensively working up my priest - she's up to 72 - to become a raid healer, because darn, we need more of those. Freezing up in Dalaran, sometimes crashing on loading into the zone, and intense lag on trying to fly up to Naxx? Unacceptable.

So we went out today and bought more RAM and a new and improved CPU. Hopefully it will help a lot.

Once it works again. The salesman suggested a new higher end CPU than the one fordprfct planned on after updating the motherboard's bios. fordprfct did confirm that the motherboard could handle that one. Allegedly it can. But it's not coming up yet. We'll see.

So it has been decided that since Maggie is doing a lot more household work and helping with her baby sister, she's now getting a small allowance every week. Since we're concerned that she'd either lose it or that Jamie would take it, not knowing what it really was, we're not actually handing her cash. Instead, selenite has set up a spreadsheet on his computer with her account, and will add money to it every Saturday.

She's VERY excited about this. We're trying to teach her about savings. Right now, at the end of each month she'll get 10% interest on what she saves.

We've talked about saving up for something she wants. Mostly, she wants to save up for her own computer. She's so excited at the idea. I told her that will take a LONG time to save up for. Fortunately, fordprfct can build computers from components, so it won't be as long a wait as if she had to save for a prebuilt one. I don't know if she'll be up to the wait or not. I expect there will eventually be some parental matching, if she does a good job saving.

So yesterday we went out shopping for more parts for Agatha. fordprfct said the next most likely thing to have been fried was the motherboard, and maybe the CPU and RAM were okay, and we'd see if we could buy one that would use the same ones, and hopefully be able to make that work.

Nope. They're not available. No motherboard was found that could handle that CPU. Or that RAM. Or that VIDEO card.

So we had to buy new of all of those. And the only motherboard that would handle the CDRom and 2 IDE drives was really expensive - it was actually cheaper to buy the less expensive one and a new larger drive of the other kind for my 2nd storage drive. And I needed to replace the keyboard that was recently spilled on. (Alanna's making it darned hard for me to have water at all)

All in all - it was EXPENSIVE. But then, we're basically having to replace all of Agatha's internal organs. Darn it - the last few months have been entirely too expensive.

The next try at putting it all together happens today.

Or I think it does - it occurs to me to wonder did we get the CPU cooling fan he'd said we should get? I don't remember that being in there... oh dear.

We went out this morning and bought a new power supply. fordprfct is now beginning surgery to attempt to reanimate Agatha, my computer.

Quote from him so far: "You know, I believe Agatha had been infested by a small colony of dust-jackalopes"

Oh please let this work.

Also bought a corded wallphone with speaker phone, for by my desk, since cordless phones on the same wall as the computers and microwave get terrible interference, and I don't want to go super expensive to try to beat that. And some desk organization stuff for me. Yes, we're pimping my workspace.

I want to get a new keyboard. I'd borrowed Karl's when mine died, and then when using his computer realized the temporary cheapie we'd given him was AWFUL. So he has his back. I want a nice ergonomic keyboard. There was 1 singleton wired ergonomic keyboard, but it was the totally split kind - I've used that before but then I get unaccustomed to regular keyboards. There was a nice curved one - but it was wireless and came as a "desktop" with a mouse. I'm unsure about wireless keyboards - mostly due to using up batteries - but I don't want a wireless mouse, with these kids it'd vanish, and I *like* my current mouse. Grrr.

Okay, so there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that my incision continues healing. I need to make sure to sit on the firm wooden chair - fortunately Karl has a really good one, and has been so kind about moving it around the house for me to wherever it works best. That chair even is a reasonable height to sit at the table I used for a computer desk.

My computer used to be there, but when the coccyx problems got worse, we put Karl's computer Anvil there, and moved Agatha and her monitor over to the edge of the counter that divides the kitchen and living room, so I can work standing up. Trouble is that gets tiring and I get sore feet and legs.

So this morning we set me up to use Anvil, and put the chair at that table.

This is how I found out the bad news.

Agatha's monitor is old and rather fuzzy, and I typically increase the text size to be able to read things. I thought it was mostly my eyes getting old. Then I spent a couple of weeks on the loaned laptop (Bless you, Gerry Tyra!) upstairs in bed, and realized that hey, I wasn't increasing text size. When a somewhat older laptop screen is significantly better than your regular monitor, that says something.

The bad news is that Anvil's monitor is waaayyyy worse than Agatha. Which is why he has it, as he only works on it part time and I'm the one editing pictures and such. I hadn't realized how bad it was, and it must have gotten worse. Working on it this morning, I developed a really bad splitting-pains headache in the back of my head. I realized it was an eyestrain headache, and got one of the Big Pain Pills. When I went back to work on it later, I realized I could feel the eyestrain increasing.

So even though it was *working* for me to sit at the computer there, I can't do it any more. I feel dizzy and nauseated. I really really want to go shop for a new monitor - at least one, then we could have Agatha's handed down for Anvil - TODAY. Don't know if we can, but oh I want to.