My take

So. There have been some rumblings recently about the nature of this beast that is called live journal. There have been some thoughtful and interesting posts written about it, and everyone certainly has the right to feel the way they wish to about it.

But I thought I’d throw in my two cents…

…until I realized that I’ve said it all before and would be repeating myself. In fact, the post I started to write was almost identical to what I am pasting below. Go figure. My position hasn’t changed.

Ah, speaking of taking offense over live journal things (see what I mean???)!

I don’t understand the whole Friends List Amnesty thing. I have stated from the beginning that I loathe the fact that Live Journal calls the list of people who you read on a daily basis your “Friends List.” The are a lot of implications in that name and none of them are any good. My list included journals of people whose journals I enjoy reading. Some of them I know. Some of them I met online. Some of them I found through other journals. Some of them found me and did me the honor of adding me to the list of journals that they read, so I have returned the favor in kind.

This does not mean that they are my friends.

It also doesn’t mean that they are NOT.

It just means they read my journal, and I read theirs.

If they decide, at any point, that they no longer wish to read what I write here they can remove me and I will not take offense. I mean, really. Half of what I write here makes no sense if you don’t know me personally, and I have been known to get excessively whiney or dramatic here. Will I remove someone who takes me off of their list? It is likely, but it doesn’t mean I hate that person. It is truly silly that we have to have anxiety over removing another person from our friends list because they will make a big stink about it and get their feelings hurt.

But people are strange, and I’m certainly not excluded from that crowd.

I used to get bent over things that happened here on Live Journal, but after so many hours of my actual life utterly and completely wasted over inane, meaningless, and ultimately insignificant bullshit I’ve left it all behind. I still like this service, but I’m not losing sleep anymore over it.

I'm an Uncle again.

Or maybe a Grandfather.

Suppose it depends on how you look at it.

I’ll stick with Uncle, thank you very much.

Madison Foltz was born at 3:47 AM this morning. She is perfectly healthy and well developed. Kimmie has a curvature in her spine, so the epidural didn’t take. She did it all natural, and then immediately fed the baby as well.

Aww yeah, that’s my girl.

One other thing…

My ex-wife stayed the whole time. She is a nurse on that floor, and she was supposed to get off at 11. She stayed. She even stayed afterward to make sure they didn’t try to give the baby a bottle in the nursery after Kim passed out. She stayed longer than my older sister did.

And people wonder why I don’t hate her. Dislike her sometimes? Oh yeah. Hate what I went through in our marriage? Oh yeah. But regardless of what has ever happened between us, she is wonderful to my kids. That is all that matters.

So…

I’ll bet you are all waiting with baited breath to hear about what’s going on with the computer, aren’t you?

Heh.

It still doesn’t work.

I went out and got yet another power supply today, as I was pretty well chastised for buying one of the ones that was not strictly reccomended on the Hardware Analysis forum. I’ll be taking the Mad Dog back. I’m also sending back the power supply that I bought from newegg, and taking a $8.40 hit on that (as well as the cost of shipping).

At this point I am, surprisingly, calm about all of this. It’s gotten to a point where if I don’t laugh it off I’ll become an utter and complete raging asshole, and my family doesn’t deserve that.

So I’m taking one last stab at it with the equipment I have here at the house. As per the reccomendations of one person on the forums, I have removed absolutely everything from the motherboard. I will attempt to hook it up tomorrow morning with NOTHING attached, and see if I get a POST. If I do, I’ll connect the processor. So on and so forth.

I’m not suspecting that I will get any results, but I’m going to try.

If it doesn’t work I’m going to call ASUS again and arrange to send the motherboard back to them. I can’t get my money back for it at this point, so I’m going to stop getting boards from newegg and get one straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. I figure if I send it to them they can tell me if the board is defective or not and either fix it or replace it. I don’t care which. I just want a motherboard and processor that work.

So I’ll have a new computer…sometime. Even if I have to eat the cost of the motherboard and order a completely different one (at which point I’ll probably have an extra PCI-Express video card for sale…heh).

But it’s all good. There are too many good things in my life to be worried about something like this anymore, and far too many bad things that make this seem petty.

The post that netgoth made earlier today is an example of the good.

The fact that R. is not doing well at this point is an example of the bad.

Mom has her brave face on, but she’s cracking…and R. seems to have given up any hope of recovery.

So it’s just a matter of time.

That’s a reason to be depressed.

Not the fact that some hunk of metal isn’t doing what I want it to.

Oh…and while he’s shown an amazing amount of restraint after his initial comment, I know that ross_winn is out there having some kind of Macgasm over this. I have but one thing to say. There are two people on my friends list who, at this very moment, do not have their iBooks because the hard drive failed. Two of them. I know three people on my friends list who have iBooks.

That’s not a healthy percentage.

I’m not saying that Mac’s aren’t all that and a bag of chips. I know they are. But they aren’t perfect, and making the decision to buy one would not have suddenly made all my computer woes disappear forever, and when my shit breaks I can fix it myself.

So there.

Yep. I give.

That didn’t do it.

I’ve sent an email to etcet. I surrender. I can’t get it to work, and I don’t have the fortitude to try anymore.

I’m this close to just ordering a different motherboard and giving up on the whole SLI thing.