Yay Compy!

After much frustration, blood, sweat, and tears ... okay maybe not tears, but I was definitely sweating at one point while hauling this damn computer up and down the stairs and I sliced open three different fingers during the installation this week ... MY COMPUTER IS FINALLY WORKING.

The new mo'bo?  Awesome.  This CPU is fantastic.  I'm very pleased with the aftermarket heatsink and fan as well.  The RAM?  Nice, but I think I have to change a setting in the bios on the mo'bo to force it to use 1600 speed as opposed to just 1066.

My video card is as good as it gets.  These solid state drives are baller.  I'm going to have to get one more though because 150GB of space is just not enough; too many programs and games!

I have yet to actually set up the "music box".  Thursday night I was up until midnight trying to finalize the installation of the new motherboard and get everything else set up.  But I ran in to a little bit of trouble with installing Windows 7.  So the product key I have is only for an "upgrade".  I had originally installed it from the Windows 7 RC1 back in October '09, and it worked fine.

Well it turns out that to use an "upgrade key" you have to run the installer from an existing OS.  Long story short, the resolution is to install Windows 7, don't enter a product key and go in to the OS under the free 30-day trial, run the setup.exe for Windows 7 again from inside the newly installed OS and then enter the product key during the second install (after selecting "Upgrade" instead of "Custom").

It took me four hours to figure that out Thursday night.  I didn't get to bed until midnight.

Friday during the day I was able to install World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, and RIFT.  WoW and RIFT look fantastic; I thoroughly love getting 100 FPS in WoW and a whopping 50 fps in RIFT.  RIFT's requirements (and then to play at "ultra" graphic settings)  are super high.

The features of the BIOS on this Gigabyte board are fantastic.  Motherboard BIOS has improved exponentially since the last board I had.

After I'm done doing these achievements tonight, I'm going to run 3DMark and get a score, see how high it is.  Should be pretty good now.

Aside from all the frustrations, the cuts on my fingers, and the time wasted, I am extremely pleased with the results.  And I still had enough time to finish the Noblegarden achievements in WoW before the event finishes tonight at midnight.  Then tomorrow starts Children's Week.  As soon as I finish that, I'll have finished the giagantic meta achievement What A Long Strange Trip It's Been and I will have my Violet Proto-Drake mount!

Weeee ... *spins in circles*.

And today we managed to get through 12 sets of our opening tune in Minnesota Brass (drum and bugle corps).  Our first outdoor camp was today, in pouring rain.  In a matter of minutes my jeans were soaked.  Thankfully, my core wasn't very cold as I wore my snowboarding jacket.  Kept me nice and dry, kept my head warm.  But my hands were freezing cold.

Before rehearsal, I checked my email and found out that my Kahlan corset for my costume was finished!  I sent the maker the second (and final) payment shortly after I got home and she said she'd send it early next week.  I should have it within another week!  OMG I'm so excited.  Here's a pseudo final picture:

She said she has one more coat of ... I'm not sure what ... to rub in to the leather yet and then it'll be done.  I hope it turns out as dark as it supposed to, because, while it is gorgeous in these pictures, it should be a dark forest green.  Either way, I'm still super pleased with the outcome.  I'll take pictures when I get it.  My dress is still at the tailoring shop.  I will be calling them Monday to find out how things went since February.

So not really a tech post, more so a general life update today while I wait for a friend to come out to Un'Goro crater to help turn me into a bunny so I can finish this achievement.