Capacitor Crisis

So I recently bought a new computer. A really nice thing with an i7-920 in it, a GTX260 and an ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard. It had been working fine for about a month, without a single issue. That is, until last night. I was playing wow,just minding my own business, and at times it would shut down, just out of the blue. I didn't think more of it, so I just rebooted and continued playing. About one our later it happened again. This time I opened my case to see what the problem was, but my initial inspection revealed nothing. It wouldn't let me power back on, so I had to disconnect and reconnect the power cord, and flip the PSU switch. After this it would let me power back up, but almost as soon as it did (a couple of seconds later), I saw a blue flash of light and my computer started emitting smoke. This may sound like a bad joke, but this is actually what happened. Blue flash of light and then smoke.

Needless to say, something had just broken terribly. My initial suspicion was the PSU, which I started removing from the case. Because it was the middle of the night, however, and my girlfriend was sleeping, I didn't want to continue with the racket, so I let it rest for this this morning. When I woke up this morning, I proceeded to remove the PSU. As luck would have it, though, I can't remove the PSU without removing the motherboard, and this would prove to be serendipitous, as it turned out that it was not in fact my PSU that had broken, but rather a capacitor on my motherboard. I found scorch marks on my motherboard plate, and the burned underside of a component with some copper sticking out. This was clearly the fault, and also the flash I had seen when my case was open.

I had been lamenting the potential (if outside warranty) cost of a new PSU, but this was even worse! Anyway, I take it to the store, hoping that they'll say something like "Ohh, this is a warranty issue, we'll just take your card and give you a new one." Unfortunately, as you might have guessed already, that was not the case. It sounded more like this "Ohh, I don't think this is a warranty issue. I'll have to check with ASUS, in any case it'll take at least 3 weeks". How this can now be a warranty issue is beyond me, but warranty or not, the "at least 3 weeks" easily turns in to "more like 2 months, if you're lucky", I know from previous warranty issues. The concept of being without a working computer for that long was not something I liked, so in the end I bought a brand new motherboard. In my best case scenario I get a new motherboard from asus which I can resell for some money. In the worst case I'd have to buy another one anyway, in which case I'd be out of the money anyway, AND have had to wait several weeks. Hopefully I'll get a new one form them, but you never know. I'd like to think that burning capacitors might be covered by warranty, but you never know.

There's no snazzy end to this. I realize, as I'm writing, that there's no way to sow this bag up neatly, so I'll just leave you with this: fuck...

Othello

We went to the theater tonight to see some Shakespeare. Othello to be precise. It was performed by the BSS, or Brussels Shakespeare Society. It was here in Brussels, and it was in English. The whole thing took just over 3 hours, I think, and the performances by the lead roles were absolutely amazing. I don't remember the names of the actors, but the two leads, Othello and Iago, were great. The supporting cast, however, I'm sad to say, were very bad. There were some acceptable performances, but I don't know their characters' names'. The biggest problem, I think, was the fact that most of the supporting cast did not have English as their first language, or even their second. Their delivery was also very bad. Othello however, and Iago, and to some extent Iago's wife, who only really got to speak properly in the second half, were very good. Excellent delivery, lots of passion, and inlevelse, to use a Swedish word. It was all very dramatic and extravagant, but then again it's Shakespeare, so it is supposed to be. Unfortunately I'm quite tired, otherwise I would ave written a proper review, but I'm sure you can wikipedia the play to see what it was about. It's also too bad that I don't know the names of the actors. I doubt that my site ranks highly in theater circuits, but they'd at least get one more hit on google...

Crazy Awesome

Factories are cool

http://www.bouncingredball.com/2009/02/10/12-fantastic-photos-of-factories-in-japan/