It was kind of a lazy day, but I did manage to unbox Blastoise’s mobo, CPU and RAM and got those seated. One thing’s for sure… you remember when I got the Yoshi Car and it was very very blue? Well, Blastoise outdoes THAT. His motherboard pieces are blue. His RAM sticks are blue. The box his CPU came in is blue, as is the one for his video card… and, of course, he’ll be packing a Blu Ray drive and his case has blue lights UP THE NOSE. Save for the case selection, this was all unintentional but stupidly hilarious– yeah, blue’s my favorite color, but it’s not like I went and picked the parts based on coloration.

Also, Asus wins the effing universe. They bundle this widget with their motherboards, a “Q Connector.” Fellow system builders will know what I mean when I say that front panel wiring is a BITCH, especially if you have big fingers: you poke and stub them trying to push those stupid front panel wire heads into place and risk bending the pins and it’s just… the least fun part about building boxes because if you don’t boot the first time you have to rip it out and… yeah, it’s just not fun. The Q Connector pretty much renders that moot, as it’s a detachable widget that lets you attach the front panel wire heads much more easily and then you drop the thing where it’s supposed to go, like the consolidated USB wire heads. I’d wanted things like this for YEARS, and, well… let’s just say I’ll be using Asus motherboards for future builds. :) Seriously, that widget just eliminated the most frustrating part of system building, and if Blastoise doesn’t boot on the first go, I must really suck! XD

Oh yeah… as much as I’ve historically hated Intel-based systems because their heatsinks are jerkfaces and don’t install nicely? This has to be the easiest Intel heatsink install EVER. Well, this IS Blastoise, after all… he has always been easy when it comes to these things.

I ran out of daylight, so I’ma do the rest tomorrow. Looks like that’s where all the “heavy lifting” parts come in– the PSU, the video card, the drives… and that damned I/O panel, though I heard that’s been fixed, too. Hopefully I’m not too lazy, ’cause I really would like to have Blastoise back. I have Snowschemes to do!

…

…you know… now that I think about it, didn’t I build my first box around this time? That’s right… Synergy 1.0 for brendala in ’06. Part of it was a “take that” at mother, who didn’t think I could actually build a box, and the rest was to save Bren from a crappy old computer. And, uh… this was also how I learned that I have crap for temperature shift tolerance, as I got a nasty head cold after everything was finished (because of going back and forth between my cold house and Bren’s heated house several times in the span of a couple days). :P

Part 1 of Blastoise’s gear came today (mobo, CPU, RAM, SSD and PSU) arrived today… and there was something extra in there: RAM for Dinah! Amazingly, it’s far easier (as in, doesn’t stub up my hands so much) to upgrade RAM on a MacBook than it is on a Windows laptop. Go ninja go ninja go~

Dinah now packs 4GB, the limit of what she can handle. How much more awesome that makes her remains to be seen, but for what it’s worth, said RAM was super-cheap. Really, it costs me more to order my pizza on raid nights. :P

Next up is Blastoise’s case. Yes, this sexy-ass thing. I don’t say this often about, well, anything, but I would totally hit that. All the more fitting that Blastoise gets to wear it. It’s practically his Maximillian. >:D It just left the Arizona warehouse this morning, and odds are it will probably hit tomorrow. That just leaves his video card and then I can make with the building. :3 Let’s just hope the video card doesn’t take too long to get here, or else Yggdrasil will have to step in for Thursday’s raid– as I saw on Sunday, old man Iggy can hold his weight, but he sometimes has a senior moment in which his framerate just goes to crap for a few minutes. (It IS, however, hilarious to imagine Iggy borrowing Blastoise’s helmet and spear to fight in his place. XD)

Now, something for the builders among us and/or who buy into this computers-as-characters: How does it register for you when you do a rebuild or a large-scale upgrade? To make it easier, let’s phrase this in RPG terms:

Is it like FF4, when Cecil becomes a paladin? Basically, a level reset but with better stats and stat growth. (I suppose Disgaea’s transmigration system falls under this, too.)

Or is it more like FF1, where you keep your levels but you get a huge stat infusion and improved stat growth henceforth?

I would think the latter is more plausible if you reuse many parts from the previous body, but the former would apply if you don’t reuse anything (or only use, like, one or two things).

—

Games. I has them. After seeing Skyrim spammed all over the internets and podcast streams, it was my brother who finally sold me on it when he brought the PS3 version over for Thanksgiving. I caved and looted the PC version, slapping it on Yggdrasil first (but I imagine it will look ten billion kinds of sexy on Blastoise). In a drastic change from my usual practice for RPGs with build-your-own-avatars, I rolled Hynderia (who made her first appearance in my character pile as a Draenei Warrior in WoW and was intended to stand in for Hikaru as the latter would have been impossible to adapt for WoW). Females represent, dood! I mean, all the gameplay I’ve seen has been one ginormous sausage party save for the scantily-clad NPC ally chick, let’s get some armored ladies in here. >:D

I also finally popped in Disgaea 4. And, uh… you know you’re in for a boatload of win if the first thing you hear is Troy Baker (as Valvatorez, who veers closer to the Ghaleon end of the scale rather than Snow) joygasming over a sardine. XD
The “HD” sprites are made of awesome, too, though with my crappy glasses I can’t tell all that much. (Yeah, that’s how badly I need a new pair.) As usual, my generics are clones of Across/RT doods where possible. :D

Add me on the PSN (Ayarane) if you want to laugh at my tiny Trophy connection or something… if your username isn’t something immediately recognizable, just make sure you indicate who you are or you get ignored as a random creeper.

—

On a more frivolous final note… I don’t have a title/prefix to use for Blastoise’s next form. Maybe I’ll just go with a version number. This is his 4th body, so…

It’s officially Black Friday. Time to order me some parts for Blastoise’s next body!

And holy crap, waiting until Black Friday paid off indeed. Lookie!

CPU: Core i7-2600k ($300, DOWN from $315) replaces the Core i5 I had picked earlier
Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V Pro ($180, DOWN from $210)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB ($85, DOWN from $93)
Video: MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II ($200) uh… this one’s sold out, dood. Wondering if I should wait, or get the 560Ti that I was originally looking at., or something else entirely..?
HDD:
- System: Crucial 128GB SSD ($210)
Optical: LG Super Multi Blue ($0, Reused from previous body)
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast TX750M ($115, UP from $110…? sure, okay)
Case: Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 ($145)

I have everything but the video card sitting in my cart… and, hell, during the process of loading up, I saw the CPU’s price take a small dip! I think I’ll let things sit until later today just in case anything else takes another price dip (and if there’s any input re: the video card) but so far so good.

Current total minus the video card is $1035. I’m also adding on a stupidly-cheap RAM upgrade for Dinah to cap her out at 4GB– stupidly cheap as in it would cost me less than $30 to do it, so why not? Even ninjas can have loot, too. So the grand total for my little Black Friday party’s sitting on $1060, and I’ll officially put in the order later today.

And now I snooze.

Ah, Blastoise. Even death by viral headshot can’t keep a badass down. Next week I’ll be looting the parts to resurrect him in a new body. I mean, I was going to do it anyway, but, you know, him getting torpedo’d makes it a bit more urgent that he gets revived…. yeah.

The parts list again for those who are interested, this time with Amazon links (no tax + Prime-level shipping = do want):

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 ($210)
Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V Pro ($210)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB ($93)
Video: MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II ($200)
HDD:
- System: Crucial 128GB SSD ($210)
Optical: LG Super Multi Blue ($0, Reused from previous body)
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast TX750M ($110)

Case, if needed: Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 ($145)

Dropped the secondary HDD because… holy crap, I heard non-SSD drives got a price hike due to flooding in Thailand, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I can pipe in what I need over the LAN from Yggdrasil for the time being, as I’ve been doing since my old secondary tanked.

It would be nice if these parts got some sort of price drop as of Black Friday, but otherwise… looks like about $933 (without the case) / $1078 (with). Not bad. I’ll see what I can dig up as far as rewards points via Wells Fargo to spawn any Amazon eCerts but I’m not expecting much there.
Of course, if anyone has any last-moment tweaks they’d like to recommend, by all means. :)

Um… what the crap? Something just WTFtorpedoed Blastoise. W32/Blaster worm. (Dude, isn’t that super old?) Apparently it was that hardcore that it just… grew out of my recycle bin, bypassed AVG and gave poor Blastoise an epic headshot, enough to shut off everything he had running and for Windows Security Center to activate and throw an epic tantrum.

I wasn’t doing anything weird, either. Just playing WoW (levelling Kophilionel via LFD, specifically) and watching Gurren Lagann while waiting for the dungeon finder to do its thing. Then when I went to check TweetDeck, Blastoise froze up and… yeah.

Mother is NOT helping. When I sent down the alert to scan all active Windows machines immediately, she claims I did something to open up Blastoise. Yeah, um, no. I take reasonable measures to protect the network and my machines while avoiding unnecessary redundancies; Blastoise and Iggy run their virus scanners daily, and I’ve pretty much stopped torrenting as of late. Sometimes you can be as careful as you can, cross your T’s and dot your I’s and freak accidents like this happen anyway. Why doesn’t she get it? Of course, she HAD to bring up my one failed repair job as an excuse to make me second-guess my ability to build things… really? I do her the due diligence of warning her about a virus attack and she throws it back at me like that? Screw that noise.

(For the record, everyone else is in the clear. I don’t know if what Blastoise got was network-aware and could have jumped to other machines, but that’s not going to happen now.)

*sigh*

Blastoise is not coming back in his current body. Yes, there’s the “reinstall Windows” option but, if you’ve been reading previous posts, he’s up for a rebuild this month (specifically, looting his new parts on/after Black Friday) so it’s not worthwhile to reload him only to do it AGAIN in a new body a little over a week after. Mother is completely baffled as to why I’m not running around like a headless chicken all the same, as she would do in a similar situation. -_-

Now, as awful as all this sounds, it could have been way, way worse. Blow-ups like this is exactly why Yggdrasil exists– dood has the mission-critical stuff like Instant Ramen and the Ragnarok TWILIGHT work folders backed up (PLUS they’re additionally mirrored via Dropbox and Ayarane Project).

UPDATE: It’s not Blaster, but rather a fake antivirus disguised as a Blaster infection. Freaking virus writers. It doesn’t make Blastoise any less dead, but that’s what took him out. I thought it was weird since Blaster supposedly can’t infect Windows 7 machines…