Crimson Blog

Now comes the battle of faith. As your components fly through the aether of trucks that is FedEx, you are left with only a few tell tale emails recording their epic journey. And though the telling is a simple one, those weak in faith may find themselves transfixed by the step by step journey of all of their packages as they trek the world on their odessy. Your packages may all arrive on time, but your faith may be tested as one or all of the packages do not arrive on the day specified. This is one of the cruelest things that the evil powers that be can do to you. A power supply is late, a component you can’t exactly leave out. You will wait and the hours will slip past at a snails pace, as each one stops to laugh at you for a few minutes as you sit atop your mountain of fragmented computer bits. Your priests will remain by your side during this time, at least for a little while.

Finally that fateful knock will ring out from your door. You may wish to use colorful language to explain to the delivery person that they were supposed to be here five hours ago, but it is likely that your joy at seeing the last piece to the puzzle will drown out any ill will for just long enough for the delivery person to sneak out and past your justified wrath.

Now you have it all, a gleaming metal case, a sparkling motherboard, a graphics card that will make you the envy of all other believers, a power supply as rugged as it is strong, an optical drive of flawless performance, two gigs of ram from your priests most trusted source, and to tie it together, a processor blessed by the demi-gods of intel themselves. Rejoice, but know that the battle is far from over. Infact, it has just begun.

Now for installation. Be delicate with your new components, and make sure your priests are handy for you to ask before you choose to be firm. Place every screw with care, and try to keep from breaking ALL of the elements of the flimsy tooless design. It is inevitable that is your computer requires screws, you will loose a few, and a few will be impossible to place without an hour of effort. You will curse the screw gods as they have surely cursed you, but you are not alone. Those with tooless designs suffer just as much. A case designed to hold its components in through friction and a few well placed pegs and snaps has a few critical flaws, first and foremost the friction itself. It is understandable that if it should be hard to remove devices because of friction, it will also be hard to insert them. Make sure you make ample use of the tools your priests have offered you: metal sheers, needle-nose pliers, screwdrivers, and creative swear words that you should use after you cut your finger on the sharp edge the metal sheers made while you were trying to widen the gap with a pair of needle-nose pliers and a screwdriver. After all, there is a slot where a 120cm fan will sit perfectly… but they didn’t think to engineer a way to put one in.

After a little tough love your machine will come together. You’ve planned for this moment. Beside you is a pile of software to be installed at least two feet high, a variable tower of babel reaching up to bring its climbers one step closer to the gods. You’ve set aside a few days to do nothing but set up, download, and install this precious software, and of course a little time at the end to enjoy the fruits of your labor, the rewards of your faith.

With obvious trepidation and anticipation, you make the first smoke test, plugging the machine into the wall. Your priests may look over your shoulder, also eager to see the end result. Now the second smoke test, flipping the switch to the power supply. ((more to be written later))

Behold my blog. Isn’t it grand in its pre-packaged little blue and white color scheme? Hmmm… I suppose I should talk about something that is mostly without application to other readers. Well in local news I have recently bought all the components needed to build a new computer. This is my first time owning a windows machine, much less building it from the ground up. Ambitious? Perhaps, but I have a team of highly trained, windows loving electrical engineers as roommates. They refused to let me buy the thing until they had stared at the components for four days. They explained to me that it was a very important ritual, an experience that I was missing out on by not staring myself.

To my roommates buying a computer is a bit like a religious practice. One must first pray to the demigods of Intel, Acer, and Nvidia. The prayer must include a single night of circular navigation through at least four websites, making careful note of price and power differences between components. This first night must be full of user supplied information on each part, which one priest will tell you to listen to them carefully, and the other will tell you to disregard completely. The position and opinions of the two priests is critical. One must have faith in one brand, and the other must have faith in another. Only by watching them battle can one find the inner peace of making a decision for himself.

The second day is one of second guessing. Again the two priests must battle, each one looking at your list of parts and then finding minute deals on other sites that will be incredibly more powerful than what you need, or incredibly cheap and not fulfilling those needs. They will make their offerings to you, but you must not stray from your path. For $260 more than what your paying… you could make your motherboard twice as awesome… but your not building the worlds greatest computer, and look at all those nasty reviews.. it doesn’t even come with a CPU fan! Behold, a bare bones model thats half the price of your computer now! Stay strong, you plan to replace more than half of the components immediately, and that power supply is going to crap out on you in a few weeks. With that in mind your paying the same amount.. and you don’t get the cool case you wanted anyways.

Day three. Day three is useful because now mistakes are caught and real deals are found. Double your HD space for $10, which is good because I found out it wasn’t SATA, oh and by the way, your case is going to be missing a fan. Now that your priests are desperate to help you to their side, they will show you the more practical options and the real flaws with your system. On this day you can reveal to your fellow belivers your plans for a new computer. View their reactions carefully. Look for the approving nod, look for the words “Good” and “Cool”. Be especially mindful of “Man I wish I had one of those.” Conversely also be aware of sudden intakes of breath and the breaking of eye contact, hidden sniggers, and outright laughter as they may alert you to bad decisions that your priests have made. If your priests are as valuable as mine are, you will get very few of the latter.

Day four, the purchasing day. This day is the second most frantic after the first. Your two priests will be joined by an army of clergy now that you have spread the word you are building a computer. You must be careful to listen to each one with a grain of salt. As you loom this close to the seperation of you and your money, you may feel inclined to listen to some of the more outrageous extremist ideas. Why don’t you just buy an Xbox360 if your just using it to play games. Are you sure you need a new computer? Wait a few weeks, I can get you a great deal! So your putting linux on it right? Remain calm. You have made it to day 3 without drastic changes, day four is no different. Before pulling out your credit card, and several times after, look over the components once more yourself and with your trusted priests. Only after you are sure that the parts will work together as a whole, make the purchase.