May 10, 2015

I read through my paper a few more times today and made a few small changes. I also had my mom and sister read it. They both agreed that it was a decent paper and sounded analytical, which is a positive because that is what I was going for. I finally submitted it around nine o'clock tonight after reading it through one last time and reading through the instructions and the rubric a couple times. I think I have all my bases covered but part of me is still worried that I completely missed the point of the assignment somehow.

I was finally able to install my new fans and graphics card today. The two small fans were replacements for the fans I had on my liquid cooler. One of them stopped working awhile ago but I never got around to replacing it. The power cords on the fans ended up being super short and I had to unplug one of the fans on the top of my case in order to plug in one of the new ones. Sometime I will need to get a cord that will convert a normal fan plug into a bigger one that I can plug in to one of my open plugs. That probably makes no sense but I don't really know what all the cords are called. Installing the big fan on the side door panel was a bit of a pain but it ended up working out.

I was worried about the size of my new graphics card because it is so much bigger than my old one. Thanks to the power cables plugging into the side of the card, though, I had plenty of room to spare. The main problem was after getting everything plugged in inside the case, and everything plugged back in outside the case, my computer would shut down after only being on a few minutes. I thought maybe it had something to do with the power cables so I tried different configurations and nothing worked. I looked through a lot of different forums and couldn't find anything that matched my situation but in one of them someone mentioned an crash report being listed in the bios. The next time I started my computer I went into the bios and couldn't find any reference to a crash report but right before my computer shut down again I just saw the CPU temperature as it went from 125 degrees Celsius to 127 degrees Celsius. I'm not to familiar with Celsius but that seemed incredibly hot, and according to Google it is. That is 260.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I believe the normal running temperature of a CPU is around 40 or 50 degrees Celsius, so my new theory was that my CPU was overheating and shutting the computer down.

I got back into my case and started checking on things related to the liquid cooler on the CPU and noticed the power cable. I had unplugged it when trying to figure out the power situation for my new fans. I remembered to plug it back in but it has three female (I guess) openings on the plug and four pins on the motherboard. I always get confused by this and apparently this time was no different because I plugged the plug into the first three pins instead of the last three pins, which meant the liquid cooler wasn't working. As soon as I fixed that and turned my computer back on I heard the liquid start to flow and everything was good with the world. Haven't had another problem since.

When I finally got everything set up I loaded up GTA5. I can't remember what my settings were with my old graphics card but I know they weren't great. I even had to play the game in 720p because it couldn't handle 1080p. Now, everything is either on High or Very High. And when I'm in the game, it looks freaking fantastic. So much better than it did before. I celebrating by driving around enjoying the scenery and adding four new cars to my collection, via a five-finger discount. I got a wood-paneled station wagon which I painted yellow with lime green rims, a big beat up pickup truck that I painted bright red, a muscle car that I left the original shiny black, and a lifted beetle that I painted light blue with light red wheel covers, or whatever those things are called that are currently eluding me. These new editions brought me up to the ten car limit of my garage. I looked and I think I may end up buying another ten-car garage. Originally I was going to buy the cheapest house that came with a ten-car garage but I discovered there are standalone garages that will fit ten cars, not just six like I originally thought. The standalone garage is also about $100,000 cheaper than the lowest price house with a ten-car garage. So whenever I get in the mood to add more cars to my collection I'll probably get that garage.

Tonight my sister and her husband came over for a Mother's Day dinner. My mom and I got pizza ourselves and my sister brought over a chili sandwich thing, which she made for her husband and herself. It looked good but my pineapple pizza with barbecue sauce was delicious. I used to get that a lot many years ago when I first became a vegetarian but I haven't gotten it in years. I need to get back on that wagon. My sister also brought over two new types of hummus for me to try, speaking of vegetarian things. One was black bean hummus and the other was cucumber hummus. I liked the black bean one because it still had the flavor of hummus but also tasted like an interesting Mexican bean dip. The cucumber hummus was different. It definitely tasted like cucumbers, with a hint of dill. It made for a very fresh taste that I imagine would be good with vegetables. My sister made pitas but she forgot them so I used one of the rolls that she made for the chili sandwiches. It was a really good roll.

After dinner we sat around and talked, my sister read my paper, and then I retired to read my paper again and finally submit it. I also started some laundry before getting back into GTA5. I mainly did a bunch of races and got my ass handed to me every single time. I was always in the bottom third or fourth. In my defense, the lobby was filled with people way out of my league, including one guy would was over level 100 and a guy over level 200. I just hit level six after one of the races. My goal at this point is just double digits. I might switch back to the singleplayer campaign next time I play because I was enjoying that but kind of lost track of it after going online for the first time.

It is now almost midnight and I'm working on about five hours of sleep, which means I have been tired since I woke up this morning, so I'm going to go to bed. There is no testing tomorrow so I can focus on normal classes in the lab and working on the various projects I am currently in the middle of. Thank goodness testing is over.