$270 later my computer is fixed. I can’t believe what the problem was either! It ended up being my memory. That sort of pisses me off since I attempted to do a memory scan, but felt that it wasn’t working since it seemed to run too long. The guy at the shop told me that it took him 45 minutes to run the scan. Damn. I could’ve saved myself some cash. Not all of it since part of that was replacing (and upgrading) my RAM. I now have 1G of RAM to run my Sims2 on. Since I’ve got the system back I have successfully restored my backup (thank goodness!). I really wasn’t sure that it had backed up properly since I kept getting error messages, but everything seems fine. In the mean time I have been madly downloading new files. New houses, furniture, hair…you name it really. Too bad I didn’t manage to get everything fixed at the beginning of the summer.

On that note, I am back to work on Monday. It would be hard for anyone going back to work after 5 weeks off, but I really don’t have the mindset for work. I am seriously not looking forward to going back. In fact I keep thinking I need to check the new postings when I get back and see if there’s anywhere centrally I can apply. I do love the kids and the staff are great, but I think it’s time to go in search of more cash.

My mood lately is another contributing to my dread of going back to work. If I stay behind the walls of my apartment I don’t have to worry about insulting anyone or playing well with others. Strangely enough I spent 3 days and 2 nights with my Mum last week and we had a really nice time. I felt calm and unbothered unlike how I feel now that I’m home. First there’s my financial situation. We are in serious debt that we are working on paying back. It just doesn’t leave us with much of anything after paying all the bills. Then there’s him. I can’t stop yelling at him. He’s driving me crazy. He doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a budget and he won’t get anything done that I ask him to. It’s a hugely long story I won’t get into, but I can’t stand being around him lately and the alternatives keep going through my mind and I don’t really like those either. Why won’t he just shape up?! Not like we haven’t discussed everything. I mean he agrees that he’s the problem and he won’t let me down anymore, then the next day it’s the same old shit. Part of this dark mood I’m in seems to be a great apathy. I don’t feel like doing anything I usually take great interest in. I just want to curl up into a little ball and go away.

In fact I really can’t believe I’m blogging at all. Go figure.

Okay so I was really hoping to come back to blog with good news, but no. I have 2 computers. One I am currently typing on has basically everything I use on a daily basis. My older one I turned into my gaming (sims2) computer, but is also where I burn my DVDs. Everything was going along fine until I got the expansion pack Nightlife for Christmas as requested. After installing the add-on I wasn’t able to play anymore and upon further inspection noticed that I no longer had the proper requirements to play the game. So me being the true do-it-yourselfer decided to upgrade my graphics card. Sounds all fine and dandy except that when I got it home and installed it, I hadn’t taken into account that the mobo was too old to accomodate the new vid card. grrr Back to the store to also purchase a new motherboard (thank goodness for xmas $$). After I got everything installed (my first time replacing my motherboard), I found the computer glitchy so I took the whole computer back to the store to see if maybe I hadn’t connected something correctly. Glitch remedied I got home to excitedly play my game. No dice. I wasn’t able to play for more than a few minutes without it crashing. Plus the sound disappeared after a while. wtf?!

So the beast has sat taunting me for the last number of months until my birthday rolled around. I asked my dad for my birthday to get my computer fixed properly. I am super picky about who fixes my computer. Hence the length of time it’s taken me to finally take it anywhere. I want to discuss the problem with the actual technician. I mean what’s the point in trying to tell the guy behind the counter what the problem is when he probably has no idea what I’m even saying in the first place? So against my better judgement I let my dad take me to a place around the corner from our place. I printed off the specs for the game (at this point I’m questioning the graphics replacement card I ended up buying) and also wrote down the problems I was experiencing. The list was:

• no sound
• sims crashes without warning
• won’t always shut down – it only beeps at me
• restarts for no reason

Since it was written in that order I was somewhat surprised that he jumped straight to the restart issue. I listed it last because that’s not really a huge problem. I find that if I leave it on for extended periods (like overnight) it will have restarted itself when I come back to it. I hate when people don’t listen. This guy was no exception. I kept telling him that my main problem was with the sims and maybe he’d have to switch out the graphics card. He kept telling me that there was nothing he could do, that I’d have to contact the game company to get a list of specs. I yelled at him for the 3rd time it was in his hand! Then he went over to the cards he had and picked one out and put it with my computer. I told him that it didn’t match the specs. He asked me how I knew. BECAUSE DUMBFUCK THE LIST IS IN YOUR HAND! DOES IT MATCH? NO, THEN WTF?! God I can’t stand stupid people. There was a LOT more of the bickering back and forth that I just won’t bore you with. His bright idea was to just wipe out both my hard drives and start all over. That was supposed to fix the restart problem that he was fixated on. At this point I was so worn down…whatever guy, just fix it! On the drive home after leaving it for shmuck to fix I had serious misgivings about the whole thing.
The next morning I got a call from stupid to say that he couldn’t figure out how I had configured my OS since it seemed to be running off both drives. If I could take the computer back backup the information I didn’t want to lose, erase both hard drives then when I brought it back he could install the OS for me. Umm. Okay I do all the work for you, and you’ll charge me $45/hr to install a freaking operating system? Yeah, like I’m coming back here you dumbfuck. Oh and to boot, the guy called at 10:30 in the morning to tell me all this and that he’s going to buy a car at 11:00 so I’ll have to pick the computer up before then. … [breathe, just breathe]

So anyway to finally cut this short, I’ve had the thing home, managed to after much frustration to successfully (I hope) backup my files, write zeros to my hard drives, reinstall windows xp, update drivers, get my internet up and running, blah blah blah. Does it work now? NOPE. I’m so exasperated I don’t even know what to do anymore. I’ve done so much research to try to fix this thing myself that I feel like I can’t give up, but I’m just so tired of it all. I think I’m going to call the place I wanted to take it to in the first place tomorrow. They’re just a lot farther away. Wish me luck. *fingers crossed*