T w e n t y S i d e d

So…yeah, I saw Superman this week. Conversations and observations about that movie and its implications inspired today’s thoughts. But first, an update on my PC. I swapped out the power supply to see if that was the problem. My old PC’s power supply was new enough to have all the right connections, and as far as I knew was 100% OK. Sure, it’s been sitting in a dusty garage for a year, but I blew it out and wiped it off, so I wasn’t all that worried. Swapping out the power supplies on the new case turned out to be a bigger deal than I expected. I ended up having to disassemble the 3 1/2″ drive cage to get access to the modular power jacks on the power supply. And to even get it in, honestly. After re-connecting everything, the power up failed. I was getting power; the fans would turn for a second or two, then it would shut down. I checked everything again, hit the power button, and something popped. No smoke or smell; could have just been a breaker. But the computer wouldn’t boot at all, whereas previously it would start; it just wouldn’t stay on. So right now the plan is to replace the motherboard and the power supply. I keep wanting to just build everything into my old case, a 90-degree Silverstone Raven RV03. BUT that case takes a half dozen fans just to maintain proper airflow (it’s huge) and all of them need replacing. As a reminder, most of that computer was built around 2010. The new Phanteks case isn’t as easy to work with but can be cooled with only a few fans. Although I do have some concerns about the CPU cooler. I’ve always been a big believer in setting up a case for one-intake-multiple exhaust, with the intake on the bottom. The Silverstone is built for this, but of course you could just reverse-mount the fans if you really wanted. The Phanteks case that came with this computer seems to have all the fans but one *pulling in* air. This is problematic in a dusty area. Beyond that the CPU cooler is one of those that has a heat transfer/capture plate or box on the CPU that runs to a case fan/radiator combo mounted on the back of the case. But the radiator is mounted to the outside with the fan on the inside. Now, my experience says that the fan should pull air through the radiator, which means that setup is pulling air into the case as well. In fact, there doesn’t seem to *be* an exhaust fan…*everything* is pulling air into the case. The front fans, the bottom fan, the case fan, the top fan…all pull air into the case. The top and bottom fans have external filters. The front fans don’t, and of course the radiator doesn’t (so it gets clogged with dirt, too). Any heat generated seems to be meant to be exhausted passively through various vents and holes. Not a fan. This is complicating my decision.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Superman and New Beginnings”

Paige Francis He/him

We have actually had, like most of Texas, a lot of heavy storms and flooding the past week. It honestly hasn’t been that bad, although the rain has been heavier and longer-lasting. There were worse “storms” last month. But randomly yesterday morning the power went out for about two seconds. I didn’t have anything open on my computer, but of course it was shut down because it’s not on a battery backup. I didn’t come back to it until last night for other reasons. It started right up, but shut down about five or ten minutes later. No glitches or freezes; it was like the power just got turned off. Over the next hour and a half I tried different things. At first it seemed like the problem was associated with internet usage or possibly the (new) video card, because twice the shut-down happened pretty quick after I had started a YouTube video. I was planning on going to bed before too long, so while the laptop did some updates I figured I would just watch YouTube on the main computer. After those shut-downs, I wondered if the problem was the latest Firefox update (I’ve mentioned that I have a problem with how often those updates are occurring lately) so I did a Timeshift rollback to a few days ago. After doing this the computer booted but shut-down again pretty quick after booting. I decided the installation may be corrupt and pulled out a Live USB to use to test the ability of the computer to stay on outside of a normal boot.

It didn’t work. The computer either shut-down on accessing the USB, or while trying to boot the Live USB. It was getting where just trying to boot the computer in ANY way was failing. So, I turned off the computer and let it sit. After a few minutes, I noticed the USB receiver for my controller was on, which was odd because the controller itself was NOT. Also two of my external hard drives were showing constant light activity. I, as carefully as I could, shut down the external USB hub. Because it’s powered externally, it took a few minutes for the USB drives to completely stop and power down. Later I turned the hub back on, and the USB receiver for the controller came on. That’s not too odd, actually; everything gets a shot of power when the hub comes on, but it stayed on. And the two (but not all three) USB hard drives started doing the light, constant activity again. So I shut it all down again, and left it overnight.

I’m old enough now, and have been through enough **** in my life, that when something suddenly goes south I just finish my water and sleep on it. This morning I had some other family issues to help with, so I didn’t get back to the computer until Sunday afternoon. I had been working on writing up Lara Croft Go, an interesting adaptation of the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft games for mobile devices (and PC’s through Steam). That’s the main reason I still had a controller plugged in. But, this time I left the controller’s receiver out; then booted up the computer. It went to the Linux Mint login, and I left it for an hour. It stayed running, so I logged in. And then left it for an hour. Then I started up Bitwarden…and left it for an hour. All good so far. Then I loaded ProtonVPN (I know I can do a VPN through the shell, I just like how Proton works, and I’m used to it) and thirty minutes later I loaded my USB input remapper program. It’s called InputRemapper (picture a mind being blown right now. You’ve seen the gif.) SO FAR, the computer still hasn’t shut down and has been running non-stop for around six hours. In just a bit I’ll load up Opera (it’s still installed on that PC, specifically because it does ONE thing better than Firefox) and start trying to browse the internet. If that works for an hour…I’ll try playing a video. I’ll update when I reach that point.

Oh, and you’re getting this instead of the Lara Croft Go post because A) broken computer has been on my mind all day; and B) the Lara Croft article is on the computer that’s “crashed” and I don’t want to introduce extraneous processes while I’m troubleshooting. So this is the update *for now*.

Paige Francis He/him