Go figure. As soon as it’s time to start work on two new SL events… my PC dies. Due to me being about a 2hr drive away from the one person I know who will fix and upgrade it for free (thank you, dear father) and me not driving, I won’t have anything until my sister comes down here to get ready to go back to law school, which is about two or three weeks away.

I’m not sure exactly what happened. I was taking a nap when I heard a noise and my computer shut off. At first I thought it was the power (our power had been out once for 5 hours the week before), but after walking into the kitchen, I noticed the clocks on the oven and microwave still working. So then I thought maybe a fuse. I went to check the box but everything seemed okay. I started to head back into my room, thinking it must be something with my PC. Then came the burning smell.

I rushed into my room and unplugged the power strip. Nothing was on fire at least, thank god. But then the realization that my PC had probably fried sunk in. I went to work opening the case and inspecting each part to find out which one was damaged and began texting my dad with details of the issue. We assumed it was the power supply, seeing as it was clearly overheating inside anytime I tried to turn it on.

My dad was able to overnight me a new PSU (thank you Amazon!) which had we been a little bit faster, I could have had it delivered in a few hours with Prime Now. They sold out before my dad could get around to ordering for me. That’s okay though, because I ended up with a 1000w PSU instead of an 850w. I won’t use all that, but as long as this one doesn’t break as well, I’ve got a piece I can use through many hardware upgrades. I had my last one for around 5 years, which I think is a pretty good run considering todays quickly changing PC standards and the frequency and stress I put my machine through.

Anyway, I received the part and installed it; there were a few cables I found I had to switch out so they would fit in the new connectors so it took a little bit longer than anticipated. Unfortunately, my PC still won’t turn on. My worst fears – the motherboard is probably fried. Good news and bad news. Bad news is obviously that I’ll be without my PC for so long AND my backup PC that I keep just for times like this is also still with my dad, as I had left it with him to upgrade it into 2016 when last I was in town. Good news: I’ll finally get a processor upgrade! I suppose I don’t ~really~ need one, processing speed isn’t too much faster than what I have now, but it’s the only piece in my rig that hasn’t been upgraded in awhile, so I just want something fresh. Plus I’m only getting my speeds because it’s overclocked. It’d be nice to have something that runs the same or better as the default.

So yes, I’m really sad about this. I won’t be able to play through all of the Overwatch Olympics event (I still need to get that Mercy skin!) and I won’t get to play No Man’s Sky on my PC. Oh and of course yeah, I can’t work. I’m just glad that due to a pretty successful summer season, I’ve got a little cushion so I can still buy things like FOOD. And even have some left over for the non essentials like No Man’s Sky and a new phone (finally!).

Plus, my store still “runs” itself. People can still buy things and I can still cash out. In the long run though, not participating in sales events hurts stores, and I may not be able to do my best performing event. It happens at the end of the month, so I’m not giving up hope that there’s still a chance I can participate.

At least I have my laptop so I can continue to work on my blog. It’s super old, from 2007, so it’s not as fast as I’d like, it’s still running Windows Vista (not even 64 bit), and I’ve only got old copies of Photoshop on it (CS4, ugh). I suppose it will do for now. Everything will be a bit more frustrating to deal with, but it’s something.

I’ve been wanting to work on a blog for awhile and now I can do it without having to stop and do work things. I’ll probably give creating a shot still, but the last time I was confined to this laptop, it didn’t work out too well. So I’ll just create content for whomever feels like reading this. It’s good to have posts queued up and ready to go anyway. Plus I still need to unpack a lot of things from the move and arrange my living room so it’s not such a mess. Suddenly glad I didn’t work with all that until now.

Time is precious, don’t ever forget that!