3 Days and 40 Frickin' Dollars

The last few months, I've been referring to my computer as "the worst computer I've ever owned."

About a year-and-a-half ago, I ordered a new computer from Mwave.com. Using that particular site as my purchase-point was off of the recommendation of a friend, and that same friend helped me pick out a selection of parts that would work properly together. I am, as I always say, not a "hardware guy." I can read through a pre-packaged computer's stats and look for the important bits, but picking what processor to go with what motherboard is a whole different ball of wax.

So I picked out a bunch of parts, paid $75 to have Mwave assemble and test the machine, and they sent it on over. Man, it was sweeeeeet. I went from playing EQ2 on the absolute minimum settings to being able to run comfortably on medium, or even on high if I wanted to push it for screenshots (mostly I kept my settings lower than I had to so as to not overwork my hardware, in theory making the computer last longer).

I've owned a number of computers in my life, going all the way back to my Laser 128 EX (Apple II compatible), which never once gave me hardware trouble. I don't think I've ever had a computer that showed signs of distress before its second birthday, and I'll even include my wife's computers in that list (she's had 3 since I met her, but never got rid of one because it stopped working).

This computer lasted a whopping 7.5 months before trouble hit. One day, the computer wouldn't turn on. After a little experimentation, I found that if I flipped the switch on the back of the power supply, waited a few seconds, and then flipped it back on, the computer would allow me to turn it on again.

Within a couple weeks, however, this problem degraded - requiring longer rest periods when switched off - eventually reaching a point where that trick no longer worked. I had contacted Mwave before the computer absolutely died, and got information on where to send it for repair. By having them assemble the machine, it came with a 1 year warranty. Hooray?

I had my computer boxed up and sent it to the Mwave service center for about $40, between packaging and shipping.

About 3 weeks later, I was told that after extensive testing of various parts, my computer's failure to turn on was due to a bad video card.

Yes, I said video card.

Even with my limited hardware knowledge, this sounded really strange. When I told my more hardware-savvy friends of problem, we all agreed it was either a bad power supply or a broken motherboard. This solution puzzled them, too.

I was wary when the computer arrived back at my house, but I hooked everything up and was pleasantly surprised to find it was fully operational. I guess, somehow, the video card was SO broken, that it was keeping my entire computer from working!

Little did I know, at the time, that the particular model of video card I had purchased was rife with bad memory chips that caused severe artifacting issues. My original card was seemingly one of the few that didn't have that particular problem. My new one did.

At first, the artifacting was too minor to be a hassle. Once in a while I'd log into EQ2 and my cloak would be doing strange things, but the next time I zoned it would be back to normal.

Later, I started getting stuck pixels on my monitor. It was my first LCD monitor, and I knew this was a risk, so I took it to Best Buy and had them look it over, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it. I didn't realize that the stuck pixels were from my video card.

When a friend gifted me a copy of Lord of the Rings Online, the artifacting became slightly more-pronounced. I found odd white bars occasionally sitting on my screen, but refreshing the display by toggling between full-screen and windowed mode would make it go away.

It turns out that EQ2 isn't coded to rely much on video cards, and a newer engine like LotRO is. I might have noticed the bad video card much sooner otherwise.

The problems got worse and worse until I couldn't ignore it anymore. Limbs would veer off in random directions, the landscape would display in a seizure-inducing, flickering checkerboard pattern, and in time, the display-toggle/refresh trick stopped working.

I tried reformatting the entire PC, updating drivers, and so on, but nothing made it better. I started researching the artifacting issue and that's when I became aware that my particular video card was known to be a troublemaker.

...And then...
...In the midst all the other bad news...
...The power problem returned!

The exact same goddamn issue reared its ugly head again! Well, this was too much, so I contacted Mwave and informed them of both of current problems.

Their response? Since my computer was now more than 1 year old, it was no longer covered under warranty, and I had to deal with it all on my own.

Fuck. That.

Firstly, they gave me a bad video card only a few months ago, and they won't support it. Secondly, the original problem I had was clearly never fixed properly DURING the warranty period, and now they won't show some integrity and do the job right!

I was pisssssssed. Hell, I still am.

I entered a process with Gigabyte (the video card manufacturer) that - all told between emails and actual service - took nearly 3 months. They let me send the video card back, couldn't repair it, and sent me a new one, thankfully of a different model.

Not-too-surprisingly, when I did the work myself, replacing the video card did NOT solve the power problem! I can almost hear you gasping in surprise.

But, a couple days after installing the new video card, I started getting messages that the video card performance was being downscaled due to a lack of power.

I went to Newegg.com, bought a new CoolerMaster ATX power supply for $40 (after rebate), waited 3 business days for shipping, and then fumbled my way through a successful power supply switch-out (it looked a lot scarier than it really was).

Guess what the results were? Anyone? Bueller?

1) My computer turns on and off reliably every time!
2) My video card works wonderfully!

I can't believe that I could have saved myself almost a year of headaches just by buying a new power supply. Had I spent $40 on the new power supply THEN, I would have held onto the original, working video card, not suffered two stints of extended downtime (which played no small part in the slow death of my awesome EQ2 guild), AND saved a goodly chunk of money on shipping costs to Mwave and Gigabyte!

I hate you, Mwave. I hate you as much as any gamer can hate a hardware supplier.

In case it wasn't clear, I won't be ordering from you assclowns ever again!!!!

if(house && kid+=1 >= 2) money == 0

Well...gosh. It's only been 5 months since my last post?

You see, right after my last post, life started getting BUSY. Good things in real life, not-so-good for gaming. Obviously, real life is more important, so let's start there!

Good Thing #1: I is now a homeowner!

For the first time in my life, I own real estate...for as much as anyone with a mortgage "owns" anything, that is. Stalkers beware, my house looks a helluva lot like every other house in the neighborhood, so I feel safe in saying that I'm now a resident of Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, living in this house:

I wish my lawn looked like the picture above. Both front and back yards have a number of dead-spots, but it'll come together in time. I have a lot to learn about yardwork! My younger days involved tons of lawnmowing for my dad, but that's about as far as I ever went.

The previous owners were also nice enough to leave 8 metric shittons of trash behind, but a dumpster, a maid, and a carpet cleaner later, the house is quite comfortable :)

The new layout has also shrunken my living room, but more than doubled the size of the master bedroom, making it the best place to house the computers. All I need is a mini-fridge and I could go a week or two at a time without leaving my bedroom!

Good Thing #2: Jonathan Dorian Schuster

Of course, the above doesn't apply when you have kids to take care of. And yes, I said kids - as in more than one! I think I mentioned here at least once before that my wife was preggers, and on July 11th, my son found his escape route and joined the rest of the family.

The above picture is posted because it's super-cute; the outfit "joke" won't make any sense unless you work at my company. Was a nice gift from them, in any case :)

Bad Thing #1: Death of a Computer

Mid-pregnancy and mid-house-hunt isn't a great time for one's computer to take a great big shit.

Trying to get it fixed by the responsible parties has been an utter nightmare. I'll be writing all about it when the saga is finally over, but for now just know that I haven't had a decent gaming machine for many months.

Bad Thing #2: Death of a Guild

Well, no point in paying for games I can't play, right? My EQ2 account expired recently. I had decided I needed to cancel months ago, but I was on a 3-month sub that had just come due, so my account has been quietly bleeding to death.

I'll admit that the death of Circle of Shadows was set in motion before this. In preparing for all the real-life good things to come, I began to distance myself and attempted to find someone to take up the mantle of guild leader.

This...didn't go well.

Perhaps I'll expand on this in the future, but for now suffice to say that my once-great, 150+ member, top casual guild of Permafrost is now a ghost town. I'm none-too happy about it, but there's really nothing I can do about it anymore. And if I ever do get back online, I highly doubt I'll have the time or energy to try to rebuild.

I've found myself resorting to the "casual game" world, since they tend not to have robust video hardware requirements. I'll definitely be writing about my travels through this sometimes-frightful land in posts to come!

We're only going to score 17 points?

There's a great many reasons I haven't had time to write in nearly two months. The distractions of this year's NFL awfulness was only a minor part of that, but a part nonetheless. Football isn't a game I play, but it's a game I watch as much as possible!

For my part, my team is the Philadelphia Eagles, and I actually do owe that to being a gamer. I grew up in Wisconsin but HATE HATE HATE the Green Bay Packers (hate), so I didn't watch much football. Playing Sega Genesis at my friend's house, however, I fell in (guy-)love with one Mr. Randall Cunningham while using his digial representation in the Madden Football '93 video game. I've been an avid football watcher and Eagles fan ever since.

This season kinda sucked for us Eagles fans. Last season was full of drama, but it was drama that led to a playoff berth. This season...not so much. The only drama this year was the Patriots and their trek for "perfection."

A lot has been made of the cheating controversy from early this season, even though, as many have pointed out, what was done was only barely breaking rules compared to what other (all?) teams videotape from different locales. HOWEVER - cheating is still cheating, and the murmurs around the league are that this piddly crap Bill Belichick got caught for is only a scratch on the surface. I, for one, totally believe that. When you do "whatever it takes" to get another tick in the win column, there's probably a whole helluva lot you aren't getting caught at.

For the last three weeks (leading up to the Green Bay game - did I mention I hate the Packers?), I've been rooting for the Giants. Sometime within the next week or two, this will wear off and I will go back to hating them in favor of my division-rival Eagles, but for now....well, for now, life is pretty sweet.

That game last night was AMAZING. Mouth-breathing man-child Eli Manning put together just enough brilliant plays (most notably THIS ONE) to outscore the Patriots, but the game MVP really should have been a shared award to the Giants' defensive line. I've never seen Tom Brady get hit so much, and it was beautiful!!!

Why would I take such delight in Brady's downfall? I really didn't care much about Brady before this game. At worst, throughout most of the season I had a sneaking suspicion that most of his success was due to his offensive line, and that he wouldn't be such a hotshot under pressure. That proved correct once the Eagles' own Jim Johnson showed the whole NFL the way with his awesome blitzing schemes. Still, my dislike of the Patriots was all about Belichick...until...

THIS HAPPENED. When asked his prediction for the game, Plaxico Burress responded, "23-17." Tom Brady hears this and is shocked and offended. "We're only going to score 17 points?" a surprised Brady said Wednesday. "OK. Is Plax playing defense? I wish he had said 45-42 and gave us a little credit for scoring more points."

That's enough for me - he needed to go down. I'm happy to find that the forces of Karma agreed with me. And wowie-wow-wow, down he went.

As for other Patriots...

Some of them I feel at least a little bad for. They played hard all season, and lost the big game. I'm sure most of them are perfectly decent people undeserving of my scorn.

Some of them already won 1 to 3 Superbowls in recent seasons, so I hardly care if a non-Eagles team wins repeated championships.

But I'd like to call out a couple special friends:

1) Randy Moss. With the Vikings my 2nd-favorite team, I used to cheer for you. A lot. Then you went to Oakland and blah blah whatever. But that's actually the problem, isn't it? No matter what else went on during your time there, commentators all over the place had you figured for a has-been. You stopped caring - you stopped trying. We all thought you had lost your spark that made you a great receiver. Suddenly you show up in New England and you have all your speed and skill back that you were missing the last couple years. Randy Moss, you give up when things aren't going your way. You quit on your old team. You deserve no titles; no rings.

2) Junior Seau. You never won the big game in your long career, and despite have received all sorts of other fame and accolades, you just couldn't let it go. You "retired" from football, only to hop right back in when a seeming sure-thing offered you a chance. Sorry if it sounds cruel, but to me that's not deserving of fame. Not that you can't still throw a good tackle, but hopping onto the bandwagon when you were otherwise ready to retire is kinda pathetic.

That's about it, really. All the rest of my hate is for Big Billy Belichick. I was actually afraid for Tom Coughlin for a few minutes there. When Belichick stormed across the field to meet him, I was sure that he had a shiv tucked away in the front pocket of his hoodie and was about to stick Coughlin like a pig. I guess he figured that was a bad idea with the cameras watching. I pity whomever was the first person or otherwise punchable object he saw when he got into the locker room.

What a night. A "perfect" season turns into meaningless overhype in the last two minutes of one of the most intense football games I've ever watched. Of course, a lot of that intensity was due to the overhype, but what I feel is important is that the overhyped team lost, and their rat-bastard coach finally got the comeuppance he deserved. I do love me some justice.

Busy busy busy!

Sure, I hoped to get a little traffic boost following my last post, but it's really been quite incredible. Thank you all! :)

As an aside, "Lightballoon's" real (character) name was leaked (NOT by me) on a large, unofficial EQ2 message forum. I guess this led to a few people around the community sending him tells to inform him that he's a complete dipshit. He has since accused me of writing his name on my blog and asked me to remove it. I even did a text search just to make sure I didn't slip up, and sure enough, I have not. So yeah...that happened.

I hate to slack off after all this, just in case I get some return visitors, but it's going to be a short while before I make another normal post here. I have two major* writings in the works - one to be posted eventually here when allowed, and one to be displayed in a place TBA once it's all set in stone. I haven't finished either item yet, so I doubt I'll have time to write much here until I clean up this to-do list.

I'll be in touch!





*full of loquaciosity (tm)