My new computer has been working great but it seems like I always want more. Tis the nature of quickly advancing technology. On Monday I ordered two more case fans and a Western Digital hard drive. 80GB, 7200 rpm, 8 MB cache. She a beauty. And now I need to order some rounded ide and floppy cables so my case gets better airflow. But if I add too many case fans I'll need a bigger power supply. And I could really use a dual monitor setup for when I'm working on html and flash. And the video card I bought isn't going to be good enough for the new high end games coming out soon. My DVD burner is working great but I've already gone through about 50 blank DVD's so I need more of those. It's never going to end. I'm going to be stuck in this cycle until I die. Hey, at least it's a fun cycle.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

I had a great weekend. Saturday morning we actually got about two inches of snow. I know a lot of you get snow all the time but I live in Central Texas. This was the most snow we'd seen in almost 20 years.

Then Saturday night I took my wife to Bass Concert Hall and we saw The Phantom of the Opera. It was a great show. My wife saw it about eight years ago on Broadway but I hadn't ever seen it before. I was thoroughly impressed.

Sunday we slept in a little bit. That afternoon we babysat my nephew, Haden. He only cried for about 5 minutes the whole time. He's a very well manered baby. Then we went home, watched Woody Allen's Anything Else, and then finished the day up watching Arrested Development.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

Since 9am we haven't had cell phones, email, our network, the print server or our database program. It's been terrible. And all of it going down at the same time isn't related. If I didn't have my sidekick I would have been really bored today.

On a better note I now have 18 DVD's that I didn't before. I got a bunch from a friend of mine for free. The main ones are Simpsons Season 1 & 2, Family Guy Season 3 (I already have 1 & 2) and Futurama Seasons 1 & 2. I'm going to be entertained for weeks! My friends rule!

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

It's been almost a month but I finally updated lonerisks.com. I really need to spend more time on it. I've been putting it off recently because I made my new computer and I've been spending a lot of time just playing with it. I'm going to try to start thinking creative thoughts and come up with some more multimedia content and animations. Hopefully it'll be updated again in less than a month this time.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

Last night at about 11:00pm my wife decided that we needed to take the doors off some of the kitchen cabinets so the kitchen looks more open. She also decided we needed to put everything from the office into the bedroom and vice versa. So we stayed up until almost 1:00am moving things all over the place. I'm sure our neighbors in the apartment below us hate us now.

Normally my wife goes to bed by 10:30 so this was a little strange for her. It's one of the things I like about her though. She's normally very constant but every once in a while she goes off. It keeps me on my toes.

The only bad part is that we only got about halfway done. Now our living room looks terrible. But we'll fix it all tonight. It should be fun.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

Today we're visiting the great city of San Antonio. My wife, Molly, is getting her haircut by Ron. He's supposed to be the best. He did a really good job last time. We also had lunch with her family at The Cheesecake Factory. I had the Spicy Crispy Chicken Sandwich. It was alright.

Hopefully we'll get to drop by my grandparents house. Some of my family is visiting them and I want to stop in to say hi and maybe help out a little. It seems like everytime we go by we end up helping them move or fix something. I enjoy helping them out though.

If it's possible my brother and I will squeeze in a movie too. I heard The Big Bounce isn't very good but it's based on a Elmore Leonard book and I like those. And the extremely stupid looking The Perfect Score came out as well. It's hard to believe that Scarlett Johansson could be in a movie that stupid looking after Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring.

And tomorrow if Jason is back from visiting his family he may come over and check out my new computer. Maybe we'll have a mini-LAN party if there's time. That is, if I can find my Counter Strike disk.

Well, that's enough for now. PEACE!

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

It sounds most likely that your motherboard is grounded by the case. When the motherboard is facing down gravity is probably pulling it away from the case. If it's an old computer that's been in that case a long time then that might not be the case. Check all your spacers, screws and washer(if you're using washers)

Another thing to try is to disconnect the drives and fans one at a time. Do the hard drive last because it might not boot at all without it connected. If you, or a friend, have a spare HD you could toss in there that would work too.

If none of that works check back and I'll keep trying.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

I finally did it. I completed my first pc build from scratch. It only took me about 6 hours. I know that's a lot but that includes taking a break for dinner, installing the operating system, my wife and her friend distracting me, and a lot of troubleshooting because I had the power plug off by one little prong. Figuring out that plug took me over an hour but it was the only major mistake I made.

I think I did really good for my first build. I did it start to finish all by myself, only made one tiny mistake and I taught myself how to do it all. I did end up staying up until 3:00am putting stuff on the hard drive and installing programs. I'm beat this morning. And there's a good chance I'll stay up again tonight because my copy of Enter the Matrix should be getting to me today. And now I have a computer that I can actually play it on!

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

I'm pretty proud of myself right now. I've been haggling with a co-worker for over a week now and it finally paid off. I just bought a brand new DVD Burner from him for $50. It retails for $200 so I think I did alright. It's going to go very nicely with my new system that's coming in the mail soon.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou

I almost forgot to mention that I'm finally upgrading my computer. I've been using an old 533MHz computer with 96MB of RAM for the past 4 years. Today I placed my order with newegg.com for my new parts. I'm going to build my first computer. It's actually just a midrange PC but for me it's going to be a HUGE improvement. It'll be about four times as fast as my old one. Here are the highlights:

AMD 2500 (1.83 GHz)

Asus A7VX-X Motherboard

512MB of PC-2700 RAM

Aspire Black case with LED fans and window

Radeon 9200SE 128MB DDR video card with TV out

Free newegg.com T-Shirt

In a few days it's going to feel like Christmas all over again! Actually better than Christmas as far as gifts are concerned but not quite as good in the area of family, friends, and celebration because everyone I know isn't coming over to the house to watch me open my computer parts. And I don't blame them or anything, it's not like I think my computer is a more important thing to celebrate than the birth of Christ. Geez, what kind of person do you think I am? It's just a computer, calm down people. There. That's better.

lonerisks.com AIM - sorenlikesyou