Thanks, everyone.
I had a nice time on my birthday but still ended up going to bed early (damn you, Friday night), but today has been another story.
I got a new stick of RAM for my birthday, and I went to install it. I was trying to do it quickly, and didn't want to remove my video card in the process. So, I felt for which way the current RAM went in, turned the new RAM to what I thought was the same way, and put it in. When I turned the power on, the fans started, but the comp didn't boot. There weren't any beeps or anything. There was a bit of an odd sound, not mechanical but something different, that I couldn't identify.
I unplugged everything and plugged it back in. I also took out the new RAM. Still nothing. I noticed that the video card fan wasn't spinning, and since I had bent the video card a bit to get the memory in, I thought that might be the problem. But, when I swapped in another card, it still didn't work. Also, my video card works fine in another computer (except that the video card fan is apparently not working. I guess it's good that I caught that in time).
I called my techie friend (I do try not to overdo that), and he thought the electrical current in the backwards RAM might have damaged the DIMM slot. He suggested that I take my current RAM stick and put it in DIMM3, which until that point hadn't had anything in it. I did, but still no luck, Apparently, the backwards RAM shorted out my entire mobo.
Of course, my motherboard has been discontinued. No local stores carry any motherboard for the same chipset. It looks like I can order a similar board (hopefully this won't upset windows too much), but in the mean time I am computerless. I think I'm going to go with ground shipping, because even the price of the motherboard isn't something we budgeted for (heh, all my computer parts break right after a money-spending holiday). It looks a bit smaller, so hopefully that means it will fit in the same case.
Did I mention that my other presents were a new keyboard, a printer, and Pirates? They're all sitting in their boxes. :mad: Mr Gris says I should have just told him I needed a new motherboard, and he would have gotten that for me instead.
Oh, and my car was in the shop today. We've always had a window that didn't like to stay up, but it's a 20-year old car, and we could get the window closed far enough that we could live with it as long as we never opened it. Well, another window decided to fall down. It couldn't go up at all, and it was raining. So, we took it in to the shop last week. It was there all day, and they didn't get it done. I had to drive it to work the next day, so I picked it up and told them I'd return it on Saturday. On the first day, they got the windows up, but the motor that would let them move still wasn't working. Also, they had taken the door panel off, and that plus all of the hardware has been sitting in the car all week.
Well, the car was in the shop again all day today. At the end of the day, it still wasn't fixed. Apparently they replaced the motor, but the windows still didn't work. Why it took them all day to put in one part (they had already ordered it the last time we were in), I don't know, because they certainly didn't let me know it wasn't working until I called them late in the day. So, we've paid $300, spent two full days, and the door is still apart plus the windows still aren't working, and we will have to throw more money at it if we want them to work. I think I could have bought another 20-year old car for the price of fixing the windows.
Anyway, I just mentally shut down at that point. Let's just say that I wasn't any fun to be near for a few hours. Little Gris seems to have given up and gone to sleep.
When I'm up for it, I'll try to post about the cake and all the happy stuff. Just not now. :mad:
2:
