Das Computer ist kaput!

I do have a good reason - partially - for not updating the blog. Right before we left for Oregon my computer decided it did not want to turn on any more. Lucky me. Fortunately I work for a high tech company and one of my good friends is a design engineer. When I told him my computer wouldn't turn on he came right over and we tested each component trying to isolate the problem.
Unfortunately the motherboard was the problem - meaning I was better off getting a whole new machine. Well Ben could hardly contain his excitement as I decided it was time to build a new computer. So after Christmas break I set out with Ben's help to gather all the needed components for this new computer.

This is Ben. Look how excited he is. When we discovered the motherboard was the problem his exact words were - "This is totally Awesome!" - or something like that anyway.

After a week or so of researching parts and waiting for them to be shipped, we got to work one evening. Motherboard? Check. Memory? Check. New Graphics card? Check. Processor? Yep got one of those too thanks to my employer. Power supply? Uh-huh. New case, cooling fans, DVD drive, card reader, hard drive??? Yep. All that stuff got crammed in.
We re-installed Windows and much to my surprise and delight, everything worked. Putting together a computer isn't as hard as it used to be apparently. Got a nice new bigger monitor too.

This is really dumb I know, but my computer glows blue and has a see-through panel on the side.

All turned out well and we are back to surfing the web and updating blogs.

Actually a few days later Ben came back over insisting that we needed to test the machine and make sure the temperatures were right and that everything was working properly. After the tests he still wasn't satisfied and decided the best way to test it was to download a demo and play it on the new machine. Let's just say it worked, and we beat the game. Thanks Ben!