I haven’t been around much lately. I’ve taken a break from my normal blog-reading/blog-writing ways to do some housekeeping.
First order of business, finish portfolio. (And I’m done. Now I can breathe again!)
Second order of business, figure out my thesis (Yep, I decided to switch to the thesis option. Now I need to get my thesis topic finalized, select my committee, and turn in my MOC. Joy!)
Third order of business, figure out this assistantship thing. (Cleaned the labs today, had a quick meeting. Will be teaching my first lab on Monday!)
And then there’s the “extra-curricular” cleaning.
I decided one day that my computer was getting frustrating and it might be time for an upgrade. So I chatted with my dad about what I might need, and got some input from my brothers (which I decided to ignore ;-)). Then, motherboard manual in hand, I went window shopping at NewEgg. Thanks to a decent insurance settlement for the accident in February, I finally had a bit of money–and so I put in my order for a new hard drive, two new memory chips, a new keyboard, and an optical mouse.
Meanwhile, I’ve been “cleaning” my website–trying to get all my various and sundry web stuff into the same format. It’ll be nice when it’s done. The final format is set up to allow for easy changes via CSS (cascading style sheets.) Once I’ve got everything in the same format, I’ll be able to make changes to my whole website by just making changes to a single file (instead of having to open every file and tweak each file’s code individually.) I’ve decreased my sidebar links down to just the updated ones–and I’ll be re-adding the other links as they are updated. So that’s kept me pretty busy.
But then, my computer parts arrived. I opened them up to discover—I’d bought the wrong hard drive. Instead of purchasing an IDE drive like I knew I had intended, I purchased a SATA drive. GAH! So I repackaged the hard drive, printed a return label, and dropped it off at the UPS store this afternoon. And then I went back to NewEgg and ordered the right hard drive.
I was done with cleaning (the labs) earlier than I’d expected today–so I figured I’d go ahead and install my new memory. After all, hard drives aren’t everything.
But when I opened my computer case, I discovered that I had quite a task ahead of me. The entire thing, inside and out was CAKED with dust. I ended up taking out my CD drive, my DVD drive, my floppy disk drive (I know, ridiculous that I have one of those, right?), and my hard drive and wiped the dust off the exterior portions. I inverted the computer and shook (gently) to leave my carpet flaked with dark grey dust. I removed the case fan and wiped the dust from its blades. I removed the CPU fan–and discovered a MAT of dust. Imagine dryer lint, only composed entirely of dust. That’s what the top of my CPU looked like. I picked the stuff up and it was almost a half a centimeter thick! Disgusting!
So pretty much, I ended up removing every component of my computer, blowing or shaking or wiping it off (depending on whether it was an exposed or enclosed component) and reinserting it after cleaning the case space surrounding it. I use old nylon stockings as dust rags–and I went through three pair on my computer today.
But once I was done cleaning, I installed my two brand new 1 GB (gigabyte) memory cards and my new keyboard and mouse.
I started the computer, and boy does she hum. It’s like she let out a big exhale. “I can breathe again–or maybe even RUN!” And run she does. It takes less than a quarter the “normal” time to load web pages. How did I ever live without all this memory (and a clean computer)?