Castle Magus

Just spent like an hour or two trying to diagnose and fix my sister's iPhone, because it wasn't making or receiving calls (unless WiFi Calling was turned on and the phone was within range of a recognized WiFi network, such as the home network here, in which case it could make and receive calls). You want to know how I finally "fixed" it? It randomly occurred to me to just try turning the damn thing off and back on again. And when it did occur to me, I said that it should have been the first thing we tried. And, indeed, that's what "fixed" the phone. It's something that my sister (and my other sister and my brother) didn't think to try at all, and it's something that I didn't think to try until an hour or two into futilely going through settings and shit.

We still have no idea what caused the phone to not be working properly for the past half a week or so now (and today was the first I'd heard of it), but we do know that rebooting it somehow magically made those problems go away.

So, note to self, for future reference: if you're having phone/computer/electronic problems, step #1, before trying any damn thing else, is literally "try turning it off and back on again."

This is mostly just a note to self, for the next time I feel like I have to do this, so that I'll know when I did it previously.

The previous time I did this was not quite a year and a half ago, which seems... a bit more recently than it should have been... ¬_¬ All I know is that some stuff beyond just Minecraft Java version was starting to cause my CPU to overheat, so I went ahead and replaced the paste. It did kind of look shitty and worn down or whatever when I pulled the heatsink off of it. We'll see if replacing it helps any, I guess.

Finally got around to buying a new CMOS battery today. Four of them, actually. Got a 4-pack for about $8 at Walmart, which should last roughly 40 years, assuming the other three batteries don't lose charge while just sitting in the pack, and they all last as long as the original battery did when in use. The only issue with replacing it was that I had to remove the video card to get at the battery, because some big-brain decided it would be a good idea to put the CMOS battery slot right next to the PCIe port for some reason.

In any case, glad it's done, because I actually didn't want my computer booting through the default Quick EZ boot or whatever the hell it's called, because A) that skips the pre-boot memory checks and such, which I didn't want it skipping, and B) it takes about as long for the router and modem to power up and get fully connected as it does for computer to go through the normal, non-"Quick EZ whatever" boot, and there's not much point for the computer to blitz through and be ready to go if the Internet isn't there yet.

Anyway, yeah, that's another problem solved, fairly simply.

The game's executable immediately exits out when I try to start it, as I watched happen in Task Manager. No loading screen, no error message, nothing. It simply doesn't run and immediately closes. I was not able to find any means of remedying this situation on Google or Steam forums or whatever.

(EDIT) Apparently may have something to do with requiring AVX, which I'm pretty sure my 10+ year old CPU doesn't support. Even so, you'd think they would at least have something that detects this condition and pops up an error message letting the user know that that's the case, if that's the case, rather than just have the goddamned thing instantly crash to desktop, but what do I know.

In any case, I guess that's just yet another thing to have to keep an eye out for before buying games in the future. What a load of horseshit. (/EDIT)

And I know Steam has that bullshit "less than two hours and less than 14 days from purchase" policy, so I might not get a refund. Probably won't. I'm certainly within the less than two hours bit, as Steam says I have 1 minute of runtime for the game. However, I bought the game back in June, even though I only just today tried to install it and play it for the first time. I'm not very hopeful that the refund will go through, because, you know, Steam customer support and all that, but I figured I might as well try anyway, regardless. I guess we'll see how this goes. If it doesn't go through, then oh well. I should still have the game on my account, in that case, and I can maybe try to play it again someday in the nebulous future, if I ever upgrade my computer or buy/build a new one at some point. *weary sigh* (EDIT 2) Or, you know, I may not even bother, actually. Death Stranding was already on thin ice with me when they initially included that Denuvo dogshit, and now this... I might just write Death Stranding off as a loss entirely, and (assuming the refund fails) have it end up as one of the many other games on my Steam game list that I'll probably never get around to playing, for whatever reasons. (/EDIT 2)

(EDIT 3)

"Hello Kane_Magus

We will not be granting a refund at this time. The date of the purchase exceeds 2 weeks (our refund policy maximum)."

And that's that. Wasn't expecting much. Oh well. At least I bought the game at a pretty steep sale, so I'm not out much.

Also, damn, they were pretty quick on that denial, there. I would bet that a human's eyes never even saw the refund request.

(/EDIT 3)

Spectrum doubled our Internet speed from 100Mbps to 200Mbps for free, which is great.

However, the wireless router we have now only goes up to 100Mbps download speeds for wired connection, which is not so great. I.e. if I run a speed test on my computer, which is wired into the router, I get roughly 80-90Mbps download speed. When I unhooked the computer from the router and plugged it directly into the modem itself, I got something crazy like 235Mbps (over the advertised 200Mbps, even, though granted I only did one such test so far).

Wireless speeds are much lower, of course. (I got something like 10-12Mbps download speed on my [admittedly old as fuck] Samsung Galaxy S3, and that was sitting in a chair right next to the router.)

So, basically, if I want a higher connection speed on my computer while wired into the router, I need to get a new router altogether. It probably wouldn't hurt the wireless speeds any to get a new router, too.

Current router is an ASUS RT-N12D1, which has WAN/LAN of 10/100M only (as that is apparently the bottleneck, even though the specs on that particular router otherwise claim "up to 300Mbps" which is apparently bullshit). I'll need to research this more tomorrow.

Well, I've already removed the CPU fan, cleaned off the old thermal paste, and reapplied the new stuff, and my computer booted up properly afterward, so I know that that much, at least, still works.

Now, I am just waiting on the Windows Media Creation Tool to finish downloading and installing itself on my USB thumb drive. After that, I will be beginning the adventure of removing my two old HDD drives and installing the one new adapter thing which contains my two new SSD drives.

And then, assuming those work as expected, it will be the task of installing Windows 10, booting into that successfully, then reinstalling everything else I have/had installed on this machine. I wasn't able to find my actual Windows 7 install disks, so if simply using the key from the version of Windows 7 I had previously doesn't work, for whatever reason, I did find an old Windows XP installer disc, so if push comes to shove, I'll fucking install Windows XP first, and then upgrade from that, if need be. Hopefully it won't need be.

(EDIT Update 8:30pm)

Windows 10 installed much faster than I expected (and had no problem using my Windows 7 key), even taking into account that SSD drives are faster than old-style HDDs.

I've gotten Avast Premium Security, AMD Radeon drivers, Firefox, Chrome, and Thunderbird all installed (along with profiles transferred from the previous stuff). Now it's just a matter of copying everything back over from the external drive and reinstalling Steam and Origin and Galaxy and whatever.

(/EDIT Update 8:30pm)

Looks like my stuff is supposed to be delivered today ("by 9:00pm"), but the most recent updates (via both the UPS tracking and the USPS tracking websites), says it's still sitting in New Jersey. The most recent UPS tracking update, from December 31, says "12/31/2020 4:25 A.M. - Avenel, NJ, United States - Package transferred to destination UPS Mail Innovations facility," and the most recent USPS tracking update, from December 30, just says "December 30, 2020, 12:59 am - Arrived Shipping Partner Facility, USPS Awaiting Item - AVENEL, NJ 07001 - Shipping Partner: UPS MAIL INNOVATIONS - Your item arrived at a shipping partner facility at 12:59 am on December 30, 2020 in AVENEL, NJ 07001. This does not indicate receipt by the USPS or the actual mailing date."

So, as such, I have absolutely no idea where my shit is or when (or if) I'll actually get it. *weary goddamn sigh*

(Huh... interesting that I already have a ups sucks tag.)

(EDIT)

I should note, too, that the other part of my order (which NewEgg split into two separate orders, for whatever reason), was shipped via FedEx, not UPS or USPS, and it was delivered at my sister's place of work on December 31 at 10:05am. That, however, was merely the converter thing. The delivery that is griping my ass now, the one that was shipped via UPS, is the one with the actual SSD drives themselves.

I note, also, that I do not have a similar "fedex sucks" tag.

Granted, both UPS and USPS have some blah blah blah on their tracking sites about how COVID-19 is fucking everything up so there may be delays yadda yadda yadda, so I'm not too awfully butt-griped about this, or at least not as much as I'd likely otherwise be.

(/EDIT)

I think that my recent computer troubles may be the result of something "just" as "simple" as a loose connection.

Namely, the SATA connection going into my D: drive (the older drive).

That is to say, the one that I broke off literally two weeks shy of 11 years ago, but which still worked after that, when I kind of shoved the loose metal connector pieces up into the broken off plastic piece that was shoved into the end of the SATA cable itself, even though the plastic piece that broke used to be part of the HDD. And I've still been using that same drive for the past ten years now, and it has worked just fine until now. I might have just bumped that cable somehow by accident without realizing it. My computer has been acting like a piece of fuck all day today, even worse than the previous several days, and on a whim, I reached over and wiggled that cable (while the PC was running, risking electrocution and all that good shit) and viola, the computer magically started working normally again. Right now, I've got a fucking twist-tie around the SATA cable, attaching it to a cable above it, which is holding it up "in position." How long that kludge may work, I have no idea. Fucking thing might work for another 10 years, for all I know.

Still... yeah... ...I really think I'm gonna get a couple of new SSD drives anyway, and probably sooner than later. ¬_¬

(EDIT) And it looks like the CPU might be starting to run hot again, as well. Guess I'll be redoing the thermal paste shit on that before too long, again. Seems like I have to do it every two or three years or so. Might go ahead and do it over the weekend or something. (/EDIT)

Making a post using a smartphone because my desktop computer is/was having issues, and I'm currently running a full-ass chkdsk scan on both C: and D: drives (C: scan is at 75% complete, after around 2 hours or so, with supposedly 30ish more minutes left, or so says the newfangled Win10 boot-time chkdsk, haven't started D: scan yet). In any case, I hope this is just some temporary wonkiness and not something more sinister.

(EDIT, 10:40pm) Just finished running the D: chkdsk (or autochk or whatever it is the boot-time thing is called). For some reason, that one took about 5 hours, even though the drives are the same size and the D: drive has less stuff on it. It is a several years older drive, though. In any case, nothing came up on either drives' scans, and sfc and such didn't find anything wrong either. In any case, at least for right now, the computer seems to be acting normally again, so I have no idea what was up with it this morning. Just sucks to have wasted pretty much the whole day sitting around waiting on that shit. On the other hand, I finished "Apt Pupil" in Stephen King's Different Seasons book of novellas, serendipitously within about 30 seconds of the D: drive autochk scan finishing. (/EDIT)

I don't know if it's a Windows 10 thing or a my-specific-computer thing or what, but I've noticed that ever since I installed Windows 10 however many months ago that was, every program (or app or whatever the hell you call them these days) I open, the first time I open them after a boot, they invariably take something in the vicinity of three to five times to fully start, be it a game or a word processor or Internet browser or whatever. This is not something that occurred back when I was still running Windows 7, at least as far as I recall now. It's gotten to the point now to where I just automatically close a thing down as soon as it gets to the main menu (if it's a game) the first time I launch it, because A) I know that on all subsequent launches, it will start normally until I boot the computer again, and B) I'm actually not sure if this long-load-on-first-launch thing affects only the initial loading or if it will run more slowly the whole time on the first run. Checking Google for an attempt at more info on this issue has led to zilch for me so far.