Household Changes

I re-seated the heatsink on the desktop mb this afternoon. I had wanted to do this for awhile, but since my “stuff” is in such disarray, I hadn’t looked hard enough to find my Artic Silver, which I’d be needing to do the job. So I motivated to find it today. The computer yesterday started fritzing out, not erroring, just “freezing” suddenly and not unfreezing.

It got worse today, restarts would work, but a minute or so into Win XP the freeze would hit. Then I couldn’t even work in BIOS after that, it froze immediately after entering BIOS. That told me the truth of it, HARDWARE. I wasn’t sure, since a bunch of Win XP Auto updates occurred in the last few days … and I’m suspicious of those any good old day of the year. [it was a dh “ok” on some windows message to change to automatic updates sometime in the past, I don’t like them and wouldn’t have done it, and had little to do with this desktop the last several months … so it happened when I was not on guard.] The case is though, it’s not software, so that was alright to understand.

I thought it was probably the processor. (I’m sure it was.) I took it apart and it looked awful stuff under the heatsink. So I scraped it up where it was left (yeah, it wasn’t much protected) and then reapplied some Artic Silver and put the heatsink back on top and snapped it down. Re-connected all the other hardware/cables/etc and cleared CMOS, then booted up into BIOS. The system recognized my processor and let it default into 2100+ real settings. That was way cool. I fought with it a few weeks ago when I installed new memory, and WANTED to re-apply the processor stuff right then, but wasn’t really able to, so didn’t and tried to get the system to take the better processor settings since I had more memory of much higher quality finally. Before the new memory I was never able to run the processor at full speed either. That old memory was junk to this board, abit nf7-s vs.2 We now have a GIG in dual channel mode, 2 x512mb sticks.

I’ll see how this lasts, right now I’m monitoring via MBM 5 and the temps are staying in the 40’s. It’s not a cool room, it’s Summer, and it’s a first re-application of the heatsink/processor relationship with Artic Silver since a long while. That means the temperature should decrease if the application is a good one, and in a few weeks it’ll “gel” more, fully only meaning it’ll become a good install situation and become more stable of temperature over time.

Frank’s laptop (from eBay) came on Monday, it’s a Vaio PCG-K13. It’s nice. Practically brand new, but didn’t come with recovery discs or the original factory OS stuff on the hard drive. It has Win XP Pro, but no Pro disc or license #. Only has a Win XP HOME license on the bottom of the laptop as they are sold that way. So for now I just went with the Pro install and will get the recovery CD stuff from Sony eventually, and just downloaded the drivers Sony has for the K13 online. It’s pretty nice, a Pentium 4 and that’s a full processor and needs to be watched so that the laptop doesn’t overheat, so a cooling thing underneath is fairly necessary. Different manufacturers make them, Targus being one main stream company. It’s something else we’ll get for Frank’s laptop.

I now have the Desktop to myself then. I’m glad for that. We have to get “the office” cleaned up and move stuff around, then I can have a better area to work with, in Frank’s office. It used to have the extra Queen bed in it. We just took that out recently. We put our King foundations under each twin mattress in the children’s rooms. They are really longer twin foundations (sold in pairs for King sets). We had the Queen futon on top of our King Mattress set, arranged that in January 2004, I think it was. It increased the height of the bed. We also have extender legs on the frame. So the bed was high, and had a mattress ledge on each side of the Queen futon on top, due to sizing differences between King and Queen.

We took the King Mattress out and are discarding that, it’s too not comfy, too broken down inside (why we put the futon on top of it originally). Then we made the frame smaller to fit Queen size and put the Queen set on top, and the Queen Futon on top of that. Ah, it’s better than before. I don’t have that ledge anymore, lost realestate, but I am getting used to it. We’ve been on a Queen Size for a long while now, so it’s not sleeping getting used to that we have, just the ledge missing that makes it different, a level to hop onto from the floor, a place to put a book, remote, etc.

The room has a bit more space too then. I still have to get the dustruffle washed and then resize it with pins and install it again. I use two – one made for the high leg extender size, and then another on top of that to give it “oomph” – weight, thickness to the eye looking at it, etc.

This whole thing frees up room in the office then, and it can get “re-office-ized” and be the best office area, better than it’s ever been before. I may have enough room to “scrapbook” here or maybe elsewhere, when we are done. Oh, it’s been so very way too long.

We got a bunch of ‘photo’ boxes at Michael’s the other day, on sale for 1.99 each. I am going to find ALL my photo’s and arrange them in them and get started organising them even better than that in the boxes once I start going through them. Most from when Frank and I married to current are in sleeves from processing, good little things that hold them well, but they need to be in boxes. Some are, but most are not. Then I have many loose photos from Frank’s Dad, and lots of loose photos from my past life, before Frank. I can organise many of my scrapbook stuff loose things in these boxes as well.

My stuff has been messed up, thanks to Asa, who just is into everything so much more than either of the two before him every were. He’s a piece of work, that’s for sure. I have had this sort of stuff under the bed in plastic storage boxes and they get opened, blah, blah, blah, boxes broke, stuff all over … :rolleyes:

Asa is 4 and soon enough will be 5. Time to grow up and stop messing with my stuff! I haven’t done anything with it since I’ve had no place to work with stuff. I hopefully will get to do something soon. My stuff is early scrapbooking Creative Memories stuff. I see the things in stores now, and melt. Ah, so nice! But I have plenty of my plain stuff, which is my style, to a degree any ways. So then there’s my Rubber Stamping stuff. Asa totally messed up all my ink pads and embossing powders … so to get back into that I must get new stuff. I love stamping. I love embossing! It’s been a long while since any of that too.

With area for me opening up I can get my creative juices running fuller and get going on lots of stuff. Outlets. God bless such things! With outlets I am a nicer me to everyone else. More outlets, more nice me. 🙂 I’ve been redused for too long. I hope this computer works fine for me, and that sometime I can get a laptop to fill out the niches. I have my digital Canon now, and that goes hand in hand with all this office stuff, since I can do much more with photos now with a good digital camera, and this is all part of scrapbooking and all the rest.

We still have to get the kitchen done. It’s a long way off. The paint on the cabinets that I did before, a couple of doors were sticking, and just this last week stopped that finally. Like when they are shut, open them later and you have to pull them, the corner of the door on the frame, the paint, sticks. So that’s done. Now I know it’s a better time to try to sanding and re-painting of them. So when it’s cool enough, I’ll get the paint out and see how much more I need, and get that done.

The “island” needs to be created, and a new stove bought. I want to do the countertop on that island myself, tiled, and have a manufactured countertop on the areas around the room with the wall cabinets. The base of the island we hope to make ourselfs and have no idea exactly how we want to do that. The right ideas and things will come in time. The wall cabinets are a butter yellow, and the island I see as being, most likely, dark blue below, with some nice natural colored tile on top. The butter yellow cabinets will have “we do not know” as a countertop. That’s one of the things to think over still.

We have talked about the “dining room” the wall with the fireplace on it we plan to have “book cases” flanking each side. The space is just right for that treatment, with the fireplace jutting out into the room and having equal spaces on each side then. I want a wood look, pine sheets of wood veneer facing the room, stained to be similar to how our table is, a pretty color, not light nore dark. Shelves fairly high, lighting included in the space. There may be a panel door sort of bottom to each side, that juts out to meet the fireplace depth dimensions from mantel height, or chair rail height.

We are in agreement that the “dining room” is first thing to get done, it’s easier, no moving of pluming or electric, well not much electric just a bit for lighting the bookcases. This whole thing will include the fireplace surround. We have black slate there now, and will keep that. It had ugly molding built around it to make it look “traditional”, it was put in by the builder, and we never liked it, it was a bad job of it. I ripped that off the other month. It felt good to do that. We have just the stone on the wall now, and drywall and a couple of lumber pieces that were the nailers for the old facing.

Things are shaping up a bit with Frank’s work, so these things can start up, get going again, etc. I really hope we can get that main floor, the kitchen/dining/entry area done before year end. That includes a new window and new doors in the kitchen to the backyard. The deck is not something we want to keep, and it’s not useful where it is any way, with the French doors gone. The new doors will be down the other end of the room, and that’s not the deck there at all. A better spot for the deck, so if we can get it done, well put in a new one there later, and just a stoop and steps to the yard for the time being once the doors are in. The doors are one of the last things we can do, so they will wait a bit, until other things are moved and set up in the kitchen, that’s plumbing sort of things, which mean countertop too. 🙂 All things must wait their turn, so it’s dining room first. It’s nice to be thinking of it and writing of it again, knowing we are set to do something sooner than later now. 🙂