Ow.

The flip side to insomnia is finally getting a full 'night's sleep, and waking up with a throbbing migraine. Have taken pills, and am drinking coffee, but I don't know if I got to it fast enough. I may just be incapacitated for the rest of my day.

I need the power.

Lately my computer has been crashing all the time. Its been happening with greater and greater frequency, ever since I put a new graphic card into the system a few months back. One person I know opined that it sounded like I had overloaded my old power supply, and it was slowly burning out under the strain.

Considering the kind of juice a graphics card can pull, and the fact that this machine is 8 years old (well, except for the motherboard which was replaced a few years ago) I tend to believe this. Crashes seem to happen most often when I am doing something intensely graphic, like playing a 3D game. Lately its also been happening when I'm watching a movie on my computer, or even watching YouTube videos. They also seem to happen when I do anything that exercises the hard drives a bunch. Running a virus scan, downloading several movies at once, or the like.

Now, a new power supply only costs around $50 if I go for something hefty like a 450 watt unit, but that's been money I couldn't spare. Well, now my Mom just sent me $100 for my Birthday, so I seem to have that covered (Thanks Mom!)

Here's the problem: I know nothing about power supplies and have never replaced one before. I do know they come in various flavours depending on what motherboard you have, but I don't even know the names of the flavours. I can't really afford to have someone, who knows what they're doing, do the work for me, and the actual replacement should be (I'm assuming) fairly straightforward.

So, I'm hoping folks on my f-list can point me to some good articles on replacing power supplies, or can give me some tips on what I should buy, how to know if I have enough power, etc, etc. Any advice you can give at this point would be appreciated.

Need to kill fading, fading,...

Migraines aren't good things, but they can make you feel remarkably good in comparison once they finally start fading away.

Deja-Ow

The damn migraine is back. I guess my declaration of victory was premature.

Name that short story.

I'm trying to remember the name and author of a short story I read years ago. It takes place somewhere outside our solar system (I think its in some sort of space station). The main character is from Earth, which is a new member of some sort of interstellar federation, and is at the lowest possible point on the totem pole.

The only claim to fame that Earth has is that it has produced an 'Ethical' a person who is competent to adjudicate disputes between aliens with vastly differing philosophical and legal systems. Most planets never produce an Ethical, and doing so is considered a major coup.

Sound familiar to anyone?

Fall Down, Go Boom.

ARGH!! While I was typing that last post, one of the legs snapped off of my office chair, and threw me over onto my back. I bought that chair with my birthday money from Mom two or three years ago, and now it looks like I need to buy a replacement. (I'll check the warantee, but its probably long expired).

So much for my plans of fixing my computer. Its no good having a working system, if I don't have a comfortable chair to sit in.