2011 — 5 December: Monday
As usual, it's a case of "Early to bed, early to rise"1 as I chill out with my orange juice.
And reboot my ADSL modem. And admire the Maxfield Parrish sunrise. While half-watching (on iPlayer) the BBC programme about Facebook (whose myriad attractions still somehow manage to leave me2 stone cold). Depressingly trivial ("Lady Gaga versus Michael Jackson", online games with timed penalties to keep you playing), but mixed with some truly fascinating potential. Not all of which strikes me as benevolent (though some of the issues were touched on in the SF I was reading back in the 1970s).
Some supplies shopping, and visits to Brian and dear Mama await what's left of my attention. But not before breakfast.
My speedy...
... nieces. Just as Big Bro sends me some photos of niece #2 driving a Lamborghini, and niece #3 capturing her sister clambering out (notice the nice red Ferrari in the background)...
... Len sends me a link to what's being billed as the world's most expensive car crash. Is this "instant carma"? :-)
Chill factor
The CPU cooler (which is huge) was waiting patiently for me on my front door mat when I got back from Brian. So, although I (of course) forgot to bring back the little syringe of thermal grease he'd dug out for me I was pleased to note that Zalman includes one in their box of bits. However, before I tackle its installation into BlackBeast there's the pressing matter of some lunch (at 13:21, I could now use some) and my visit to the care-home to see what (if anything) dear Mama can tell me about her tumble yesterday morning. I suspect "Nothing. What tumble?" will be all I hear.
It's really quite chilly out there so far today, and my atomic clock suggests it's only 19C here in my mole hole. Ever onward.
[Pause]
Just back from a not-at-all-well dear Mama, who has a chest infection. It may be selfish of me, but I didn't hang around very long. Since she still wants "to go home to Mum" on (as far as I can gather) the spurious grounds that she will then be properly looked after, and since she has no recollection of yesterday's fall, and since the antiobotics that she's now on haven't yet kicked in, what else is a chap supposed to do?
Mike sent me a YouTube link to an incredible advert for a brand of pickup truck. Actually all the better for not involving CGI :-)
Right. Time to shut down BlackBeast and start the surgery on him.
[Long, very painful, and very frustrating, pause]
Oh dear. Basically, having sliced into the patient to assess the lie of the land, the surgeon (me) has had to close him up again3 and send him back into battle (as it were) with his original cooler. As I said, the new CPU cooler is indeed large. Too large, in truth, for me to manoeuvre it into position without removing at least one — and probably two — of my four sticks of DRAM (permanently) and, even then, I doubt that the power cable cluster to the furthest corner of the motherboard would have enough "give" in it to get out of the way.
How annoying. Though not as annoying as it will be if I've not managed to get the chip back into its socket. There are one helluva lot of tiny pins on these six-core processors...
Deep unjoy
I'm predicting a trip down to Novatech in Portsmouth in the not-too-distant future. BlackBeast is now basically dead in the water. Not only was the operation not a success, but the blasted patient died :-(
Tea, Mrs Landingham. I demand tea.