It's my LJ and I can rant if I want to?
I guess...I mean the fire has kind of gone out of this latest rant because my computer is finally working but getting it working? ARGH! It's a new build so everything I first ordered was essential but that last piece didn't finally wend its way home until early last week. It took something like two full weeks or longer to get here for no good reason other than to thwart me. Turns out Peni's reminder was kind of prescient, about how things always manage to take longer than expected, but that was just ridiculous. A computer with no RAM is very much like being all dressed up with nowhere to go. So I didn't even tease myself, I just let the boxes stack up until I could do something with them and consoled myself by cuddling up with my old laptop. It may not be anything I could dust off and take out in public anymore but I was able to turn it on.
In the meantime, in my frustration, I actually did just go ahead and place an order for an alternative and spring for next day shipping. It arrived four days later. At the same time as the other. Genius. And yet, I went back yet again, this time for a superfluous shiny about which I didn't care when it arrived so I didn't pay to expedite it. It arrived the next day.
That's not all, of course. My Win 7 was still on my old HDD instead of an SDD because I couldn't be arsed to reinstall when there was nothing wrong, and I was so sure, despite the complete and unexpected shutdown, that there was nothing wrong with my hard drive. I had no real justification for that assurance, apart from the fact that the alternative would've broken my heart because I get a bit too cavalier about stuff and had no sufficient backup. But when I finally got the thing all here and assembled it wouldn't boot. Not even in safe mode! I feel the rant-i-ness returning so I'll spare the details about all the rigmarole I went through just to get the damned thing to load past the startup splash screen, including very tedious pruning of the registry through the C:\ prompt in the recovery environment (and I didn't realise my DVD drive was incompatible with new mobo so it's a very good thing I had a USB drive handy and finally found my old Win 7 disc) but let me just say that doing any of that without access to a mouse, having to rely solely on the keyboard? Sheesh. And in the end it turned out to be not the driver it was accusing of holding up the works but some kind of stealth switch via Windows Update that refused to recognise my SATA drives as such. I switched the one Windows was on to load as IDE and it did. @$#%#!!! Relief, yes, but at that point I was mostly just pissed. What the hell, Windows! Now, I have loved Win 7, it's been very good to me these past however many years and I still feel little inducement to upgrade to 8. Steered clear of Vista like the plague, though, (I think that's what came with ye olde laptop but I wiped it and went Ubuntu), but even XP was my buddy, despite the occasional stumble it never fell (never failed). Say what you will about Windows but 'I got, like, mad love for that bitch, yo' despite the stumbles and the slurs, 'long as she do her thing, we cool'. (Can you tell Ginger makes an appearance in the next update for Widespot? Still no actual, readable text for the Beeches yet but I pilfered a few hours yesterday and whittled down the pics to an almost acceptable number. It's going to be as long as the Newsons', if I can get rid of another 20 or so pics! And that's just part one, though it is a bit lopsided so part two should be less packed.) So, you know, just do your thing and only your thing and stop fixing stuff that wasn't broken! /rant
No more spare hours to steal for my simmies so I'm afraid the Beech update won't see the light of January. Plus side? I should be getting to the Hart update right around Val's day.
In the meantime, in my frustration, I actually did just go ahead and place an order for an alternative and spring for next day shipping. It arrived four days later. At the same time as the other. Genius. And yet, I went back yet again, this time for a superfluous shiny about which I didn't care when it arrived so I didn't pay to expedite it. It arrived the next day.
That's not all, of course. My Win 7 was still on my old HDD instead of an SDD because I couldn't be arsed to reinstall when there was nothing wrong, and I was so sure, despite the complete and unexpected shutdown, that there was nothing wrong with my hard drive. I had no real justification for that assurance, apart from the fact that the alternative would've broken my heart because I get a bit too cavalier about stuff and had no sufficient backup. But when I finally got the thing all here and assembled it wouldn't boot. Not even in safe mode! I feel the rant-i-ness returning so I'll spare the details about all the rigmarole I went through just to get the damned thing to load past the startup splash screen, including very tedious pruning of the registry through the C:\ prompt in the recovery environment (and I didn't realise my DVD drive was incompatible with new mobo so it's a very good thing I had a USB drive handy and finally found my old Win 7 disc) but let me just say that doing any of that without access to a mouse, having to rely solely on the keyboard? Sheesh. And in the end it turned out to be not the driver it was accusing of holding up the works but some kind of stealth switch via Windows Update that refused to recognise my SATA drives as such. I switched the one Windows was on to load as IDE and it did. @$#%#!!! Relief, yes, but at that point I was mostly just pissed. What the hell, Windows! Now, I have loved Win 7, it's been very good to me these past however many years and I still feel little inducement to upgrade to 8. Steered clear of Vista like the plague, though, (I think that's what came with ye olde laptop but I wiped it and went Ubuntu), but even XP was my buddy, despite the occasional stumble it never fell (never failed). Say what you will about Windows but 'I got, like, mad love for that bitch, yo' despite the stumbles and the slurs, 'long as she do her thing, we cool'. (Can you tell Ginger makes an appearance in the next update for Widespot? Still no actual, readable text for the Beeches yet but I pilfered a few hours yesterday and whittled down the pics to an almost acceptable number. It's going to be as long as the Newsons', if I can get rid of another 20 or so pics! And that's just part one, though it is a bit lopsided so part two should be less packed.) So, you know, just do your thing and only your thing and stop fixing stuff that wasn't broken! /rant
No more spare hours to steal for my simmies so I'm afraid the Beech update won't see the light of January. Plus side? I should be getting to the Hart update right around Val's day.