Graphically speaking....

The SUL (Secret Underground Lair) has been in a bit of turmoil. This past year, in the space of a month, two of my computers have died. In your world, perhaps, this might not be a disaster. Then again, in your world, you might be off to the Apple Store, weeping inconsolably. If the latter is you, this blog is not for you.

So, a PC died several months ago. No biggie-- I put a spare in as a replacement (note to Apple fans: how many of you have 2-3 in spares?)

Unfortunately, my spare died as well.

To be honest, it didn't really die- it just lost internet connectivity.  So. I was living off of my laptop, and Mr. T. and I have decided we're going to build a new desktop. For me.

I started writing this several months ago, and not long after that, my laptop battery gave in. Not a big deal- just another kick in the shins.

In the interim, I pulled another PC out and swapped out the hard drive. In short order, it, too, gave up. Mind you, both of these desktops were originally XP boxes which had been upgraded to Win7; that should give a hint as to their age.

Fast forward several months and I am running on Great White, a massive box with a tiny non-Ryzen AMD mobo. How tiny is the mobo? Well, the case is so large and the mobo is so tiny that the front case usb cable does not reach the usb header on the mobo. The specs of the board unsurprisingly are fairly underwhelming, as one might expect: 16GB (2 sticks) of DDR3, for starters- and this is maxed out.. Well, it does have a 550 watt 80+ EVGA platinum certified modular PSU, 120GB flash boot drive, 2TB internal HDD (with room for five more HDD's) and a 5 channel fan controller. Other than that, 3 external USB HDD's and... well, the graphics are on the CPU (AMD APU). On the bright side, the APU graphics are much better than I experienced on the previous APU-supported mobo.

Fast forward....

So, I was on amazon.com Wednesday and saw a graphics card that seemed pretty decent for the price. I mentioned it to Mr.T, and he was at first unimpressed. After a few cups of tea, though, it looked like a better deal, and then he looked into some cards. Now, truth be told, I do not absolutely need a graphics card right now, but the graphics card will probably be the next upgrade to this system as it is the only other stand-alone component which can be added before upgrading to a Ryzen.

Interestingly enough, it's now the wee hours of Tuesday morning and I'm *finally* getting around to finishing this. Among other things, I got some work done on 42 (in case you are new to this blog or have forgotten, 42 is my personal database project). Progress has been predictably slow, as my keyboarding skills are not really skills; I think I'd say I'm more familiar with a keyboard than skilled. J and I got new keyboards in November, and I'm loving my new mechanical keyboard. Cherry MX blue switches are absolutely to wonderful to type on, and for some reason I find myself making fewer mistakes on this keyboard.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you  don't have to.

...and I THOUGHT I was a basement A+ man....

It seems that my Dad and I, even though he passed away several years ago, share an affinity for hardware. The difference is that while his hardware was measured in cubic inches, MPH and RPMs, mine is measured CPU, GHz and FLOPS.

He was a back alley mechanic that learned it on the fly, and became a master of the craft. Me? Not so much of an expert, although I've built enough computers, spreadsheets and databases from scratch to be quite confident when opening something up, and I couldn't say how many PCs I've upgraded, rebuilt, etc.

Last Sunday night, though, I ran into something I'd never experienced before.

I'm quite familiar with the care and feeding (and installing) of hard drives (HDD's), and I had one that was way overdue for installing in Great White- my computer, not the 80's hair band. The project  started, though, with speakers. I had decided a while ago to do a peripheral upgrade to the PC prior to the (ouch) MOBO + processor + memory upgrade, so a few peripherals trickled in over the course of several months- HDD, mechanical keyboard, and finally speakers. The keyboard went on the weekend before last, although I still need drivers. I untangled all of the wires, prepared a place and installed the speakers; and cut some antiskid foam to keep everything from sliding all over the place. Mr. T had actually installed the HDD a few weeks ago, so I was all set to visit R-Stats and download the latest version of R, and then download Processing for the Arduino, and maybe start copying a clean- no dupes- version of my music library.

But, first I had to initialize my HDD... initialize? Yup, that was a new one on me. I've wiped, partitioned, formatted, repartitioned, reformatted and even used a hacksaw to remove a HDD from an oddly-configured case. But, I'm not certain that I've ever initialized a drive.

So on a Sunday night, I initialized a drive. Mind you, it wasn't difficult. Just new. Next, the printer. I finally got around to getting a fairly old HP all-in one tested and running again. Well- it prints every color EXCEPT cyan, and wouldn't you JUST know that I'm fresh out of cyan. I empathize with Rowdy Roddy Piper, as I came to print, and chew bubblegum, but I'm all out of ink... yes, yes the reference is pretty weak, but this is a mostly G-rated blog. I also got my social media accounts which had been in hibernation for some time back up and running, but the really big news is...

I found a Lego Master database. It's quite good, but not 100% complete. Then again, even Lego does not have a complete database of their own parts. However, I can get back to the inventory and database.

Now all I have to do is find and organize all of my Lego elements.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.