Wishing you and yours a blessed Christmas!
Category: IRL
Merry Christmas!
Happy Thanksgiving – 2018
I hope that if you’re celebrating Turkey Day this year, I hope it’s a good one for you and everyone you celebrate with!
I have some personal stuff to talk about this year, below the break.
Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving – 2018”
Happy Halloween!
Wishing you and yours a safe and happy Halloween!
Hurricane Florence Passes
It’s going to be a busy week for me with a trip coming up in two days, but I wanted to drop an update about seeing the other side of Hurricane Florence pass on through. I tell you what, that was a slow-moving storm! Even though it got down-graded in power once it made landfall, it really did wreck up some stuff because it just lingered so long.
Folks north of us got the brunt of things, so to be quite honest, I can’t really complain at all. We did lose power over Friday night for a little over 12 hours. I was completely shocked when it came back on Saturday afternoon — I didn’t even expect the power crews to be out there while the storm was still going. Granted, it had lessened to an extent that it wasn’t super dangerous by that time, but still.
Flooding is going to be the major thing from here on out as this storm dumped a whole lot of rain in the area. We’ve still to see the total effect of this where I’m at, so hoping people keep safe and don’t take any chances.
Aside from that, I’ll be on a plane on Wednesday, as long as everything at the airport is sorted. I’ll be back in town late on the 23rd, so I probably won’t be posting a whole lot here until I’m home. Just wanted to let folks know we weathered the storm and didn’t take anywhere near as much damage as I was afraid we would… at least, where I’m at.
Hurricane Incoming
I’d wanted to write a bit about The Rising event in FFXIV this week, but never quite got around to it. People in my area have been bracing for the incoming storm, and it’s really been first and foremost in people’s minds right now.
I don’t usually get concerned about hurricanes because quite often, they lurk around, make all sorts off people fret, but don’t usually hit us. This one may be different. It’s still hard to tell, but pretty stressful, especially since the forecast says that the storm will remain in our area for three days (and of course, it would be over a weekend).
This means we’ll be without power and possibly water for days, possibly longer. That’s not including the kind of damage a storm of this magnitude is going to do. And as much as I’d like to be preparing, I’m stuck at work until the last possible moment… which is also stressful.
On top of that, my vacation trip was supposed to be next week. And who knows what’s going to happen with that.
So, basically, I’m probably going to go dark for a while. I hope I’ll be updating sooner rather than later, but nothing promised. Please keep all the folks in the storm’s path in your thoughts and prayers.
When the Night’s on Fire
Yes, that’s a photo of the inside of my PC. 🙂
Anyhow, I enthusiastically took a 3 day weekend for the launch of Sims 4 Seasons, and just to have a little time off. I’d planned on coming back to this week with lots of Sim stories to share. That’s almost what happened until yesterday.
On Sunday, I was trying to slide in a little quick Ninja leveling in FFXIV. While running a Leveling dungeon with Syn, I noticed that I was having crippling lag spikes. Anyone who plays Ninja knows that lag is that job’s worst enemy.
At first, I just thought it was the game or connection. But this wasn’t the normal kind of lag spike. It felt like when you’d left a Steam game to download in the background, or something else running that was working your PC heavily. It was this kind of stuttering lag that I felt was coming from me and not my connection.
When we finished the run, Syn asked, “What’s the temps on your PC?”
I hadn’t been monitoring anything like that lately (though I should), and it’s been super hot outside (and inside) due to the summer. So I installed HWMonitor, and saw that my CPU was running at 105 C!!
I was basically boiling my poor machine and it couldn’t run straight! I had no idea!
I shut it down and opened it up. I cleaned the insides out and tested that the fans were running. Everything looked okay, though the fan on the CPU really did need a cleaning.
At first, I thought that would fix it. But when I fired up FFXIV or Sims 4 and put it under load again, it was still running at 90-100C, even with the case open and a fan pointed inside.
Bummer.
After troubleshooting it a bit and getting no fix, Syn sent me the link to a good replacement fan on Amazon. It wasn’t too expensive, and is supposed to be better than my existing fan, so I’m waiting for that to come in tomorrow. Hoping that will fix the issue.
In the meantime, no gaming on my PC. 😦
Thankfully, I have a gaming laptop.
Though it’s nowhere near as gutsy as my PC, it can still run basic Sims and FFXIV. Just no major raids or anything too taxing. I hooked it up to my monitor, mouse and gaming keyboard, and aside from the difference in system speeds, it does more or less what I need it to in the interim.
The sad thing is that Sims is PC dependent, so the family I was building up for the previous two days are off on the main PC. All my saves, custom content and stuff are also over there. I’ve been keeping my Sims install on my laptop completely CC and mod free, so moving it all over is not much of an option.
Thankfully, the new fan has already shipped and should be here tomorrow. Hopefully that fixes the situation.
UPDATE: Replacing the fan fixed it! Woot!
Aside: I have no idea why I decided to title this post after an old Mike Oldfield song. I was trying to think up a title, and When the Night’s on Fire popped in my head. It has nothing to do with overheating PCs (When the PC’s on Fire?), so go figure.
