Cleaned the air intakes because my GPU overheated the other day.

I don't like stripey wallpaper.

Probably about to buy a used z170 board if I don't decide to opt to do a new system using an old e5-1650 and an x79 board off of aliexpress.

Today, I reorganized the photos and the desktop on my PC.

A while back I added a 1TB NVME drive to the extra M2 slot, using it to hold games exclusively.



Now I have a 500GB NVME running at about 3GB per second for the operating system and programs.
The 1TB NVME running at about 1.5GB per second, for games only.
A 2TB HDD for pics, movies, music, and other non speed related stuff. Lots of TV shows on that drive.

Replaced my keyboard/mouse combo.

The mousewheel was giving me some issues and the keyboard was pretty beat up.


This is my first post with the new one.

A few things lately, since I haven't been on in a while...

Resurrected a second fairly modern PC so each kid has their own now. The Chromebooks were really lagging, they weren't meant to be streaming on Zoom all day. On top of that, all their schoolwork is on Google, so everything is online in addition to videoconferencing- they just couldn't handle it all. Had to download a 7 Home Premium iso for that, since that's what the COA is for and I've used all of my Pro COAs.

My main desktop entered the somewhat modern era. I now have an SSD holding the system, and 2 spinner drives (brand-new WD Blacks, nonetheless) in a RAID array for /home. Honestly, I don't notice a huge difference. LibreOffice might load up a little faster, and maybe compilation is faster since that happens on the SSD but I really don't have a comparison other than "seat of my pants (eyes?)".

Funny thing is, what kicked this off is I heard a regular ticking. That set off alarm bells of an imminent drive failure. Upon changing everything out, the ticking was still there. Turns out a wiring harness was blocking a fan for the drive bay. I guess the system kept trying to start the fan, see it not spin, then try again.

In other news, dug my laser printer out. It's been sitting so long the drum is damaged and it prints a faint ragged line across the page at regular intervals. Guess I can't use that for my resume. Oh well, I rarely print anything of any importance, so since the inkjet is out of ink I'll just use this up.

Building out a new box for pfSense (or possibly one of the clones). Ordered 2 decent NICs for it last night, since most likely any that I have on hand do not support VLAN tagging. Set up a makeshift "network lab" to experiment with before going "live" with this setup.

Also getting ready to build a ZoneMinder box for the new security cams I have. Then they can stop streaming to "the cloud", and I can stop using their crappy phone app that drains my battery. This box I dug out of a corner and it had bad cap syndrome, so put some new ones in.

Future project: find a board to fit in my Mac LCII case. Battery leaked all over it, the original board is trashed. I have an ITX mobo that I thought would fit, but it's too tall. So is every other one I've looked at, so now I"m thinking find a broken laptop and use that mainboard. Or might be more worth it to just pick up one of those ProDesk Minis.


Phew- think that's all! Amazing what can start getting done with time on my hands!

Recently installed an SSD. Boot times & Game loading are noticeably faster. I wanna get my hands on a 3080 or 3090 to do a new build... but it does not look like that will be happening anytime soon.

My wife decided she no longer needs her Asus ROG G73Sw laptop with Windows 7 on it. I therefore am currently installing Windows 10 from a free download online. Once fully upgraded, I will list it on Craigslist for $500. I think it is worth that much because it will have a fantastic case with wheels and handle, wireless mouse, 2 SSD drives: 256G and 160G, 17" HD display, I-7 4 core Processor, 8 GB RAM, nVidia display, DVD R/W drive, Power pack/charger, built in WIFI, camera and mic. etc etc.. I might take offers though..

Dusted it.
also planning on building a new pc.

Added a Verbatim travel mouse with retractable cord to my laptop. It's compact and can be carried in just about any pocket! It's a little small though for extended usage if you have larger hands.

Realized the keycaps are disintegrating on my corsair k70 mrk2
this is the second time this has happened.
(Maybe time to change keyboard brands)

Updated the graphics software after it crashed while playing Raft.




Also started looking for a new case, something like this...

Helped my brother water-cool his pc. (More like did it for him.)

Ended up taking $250 for the Asus ROG notebook today.

It was a great pc, but even new ones go for that much money, although they aren't as good or fast etc.