Robbie Thomas
Computer Day
With most of the week off from my primary job, I made Tuesday ‘Computer Day.’ I had a family member pay back some money I loaned him. He paid back a chunk and gave me a deal for this computer box sans the hard drive. I bought some extra ram because putting this box together. I intended to keep my old box and hook it up to the smart TV. I did mention a few blog posts back about this deal. Beforehand, I made a copy of my documents, music, and pictures. However, I forgot to back up most of my photos from February of this year to now. Well, like 2020 was a smashing year.
I bought an 8GB stick of ram and later added the 4GB stick to this box here (I ran into troubles with that). I also ran into trouble with the box reading the HDD. So I had to do this trick to get the HDD to format as a GPT. I did backup my files, so it wasn’t a big deal (sans most of my 2020 photos). I needed some help, and after running on the Google trail, I ran into this helpful video:
With that going down, I was able to get Windows 10 installed on the HDD again. After that, I ran into trouble with the RAM when I put the 8GB Ram into the wrong slot. After quite a few attempts, I figured out which was slot one; take a look.
After many attempts, I got to work and plugged on some speakers to play some tunes via YouTube while I attempted to make the other box work. After installing Windows 10 on a spare 250GB HDD drive, I put the small box together and added a graphics card. Sadly, I failed to do so; I kept running into this screen:
That blinking cursor.
After a few attempts, I decided to say fuck it. I took the HDD, later the Graphics card out (waited a little while for that, it was hot), and the SATA wires out while breaking one accidentally (I got angry pulling that one out). Suppose I do try to get PlutoTV on my smart TV by buying a Roku. I’m also going to need an HDMI splitter because both of my HDMI inputs are occupied. HDMI-1, the Switch, HDMI 2, my DVD player. Perhaps I should consider the Roku stick. Otherwise, I don’t think that small computer could work with that graphics card warming up like a mofo in there. The box was small, and the wires were all over the place inside of it. I had my doubts, so I at least wanted to get Windows 10 in there. Sadly, that didn’t work.
This box also has SD and XD car inputs. I have an external one where I accidentally dropped Faygo Cola on it, and the mofo is sticky. So, I don’t have to use that anymore. Yay! I cannot install Quicken 2013 right at this second. I think after a couple of restarts, the .NET framework should come into play. I don’t wish to pay for Quicken by the year and keep the 2013 version I bought from Costco nearly eight years back.
As of writing this article now, I’m just adding some of the stuff from what I call the Spare Big Hard Drive, and it’s moving all the stuff I backed up from the previous items installed there. I was for 10 minutes looking for my ‘Microsoft Office 2019 Disc’ until I remembered that I bought Office 2019 online. I just had to log back into my Microsoft account to get it back. God damn, I’m fucking up! In addition to that, this was the first time in a few years that I have done any PC repair in the hardware category. I ran into frustrations and blond moments. Especially when I ripped the god damn SATA wire out of the old box. Here a picture of the old box, after all was said and done:
Additional News: The Nashville Explosion
I’ll be dedicating a post to the Nashville Explosion very soon. That shit was freaky. A guy parking his bomb/RV by the AT&T building with a computer voice making the announcement. Then, BOOM! I do have two cousins who live in Nashville, but they weren’t near that. Stay tuned for that post.