Ever since I bought my latest PC, it has been very rarely, but annoyingly susceptible to random power-shutdowns. The PC then reboots fine, although when it is in the mood to do so, it may then power off after a few seconds (or minutes), and basically be unusable until I get grumpy and leave it for a good few hours, or overnight. It’s very rare, but very frustrating when it happens, and I don’t like the worry that one day this could actually nuke the hard drives or graphics card.

(I’ve pretty much ruled out any other cause of the shutdowns also, it’s definitely hardware, and definitely inside the box)

The PC cost £1,000 mostly because I had a big RAID array and an SSD and a meaty video card put in there. It never occurred to me that the PSU might suck. It’s apparently a ‘powercool pc-650auba-m’, which doesn’t mean much to me, except that it’s a brand nobody has heard of, which is a bad sign.

I finally lost patience with it this morning and ordered a new corsair PSU, which I will bravely try and fit myself. I used to actually work as a PC hardware engineer, so you might imagine I wouldn’t give this a second thought, but that was long ago, when PCI was a fascinating new technology, and USB was still a cutting edge feature. PSU’s now look nothing like the ones I remember. That’s reason #1. Reason #2 is that inside the case it’s cable city Arizona, and fairly squashed. I’m probably going to have to work out how the SSD is attached to the case, and remove it in order to get the PSU out, and re-running the mess of cables will be a pain. I think I should use all new cables, so I can rule out that as a potential cause. (kinda scary because the SSD is the boot drive)

Theoretically, the whole PC is under warranty, but I’ve done the PC hardware job myself, and I don’t rate much the chances of them actually caring, or agreeing to swap it out, and certainly not swapping it out on site (even if I pay), because I can’t be without a PC for any period. Plus, they will likely only do a like-for-like swap with another cheap PSU anyway…

So right now I am staring at a depressing progress bar while an agonizingly slow backup copy of all my source code (to an external drive) takes place. I have it all backed up online anyway, but the art assets are only local (and with the artists as original files) and haven’t been fully backed up for a while, so I’m going the extra mile. Realistically, the chances of really screwing up a PSU swap-out are pretty minimal, but this is my work PC…

In future, I shall be buying PC’s with really good PSU’s. It’s a silly thing to skimp on, and given current PC prices, and positechs sales, it’s madness for me to think about economy when buying a PC for my job. You live and learn etc….

I never go away from positech towers for very long normally, but circumstances are such that I will be away for three weeks. That’s a very long time for me, and I will have to find a way to check email at least once to watch out for any “have a billion dollars if you reply today!” emails from wealthy and delusional publishers.

I am like a hungry animal wanting to work on games at the best of times, but I’ll probably be even worse by the time I make it back, at which point my calendar tells me all manner of things that have been brewing for ages start happening and it will be work,work,work and busy,busy,busy.

Unlike most geeks, I never take a laptop or ipad on holiday with me, and even my phones net capability is something I never use, it being frankly more hassle and annoyance than use anyway. I think it’s good to switch off now and then. Hopefully positech will still exist when I get back in three weeks time. That’s the beauty of internet companies, you don’t have to physically close a store or turn away business. I anticipate some angry emails from people who ask for download links re-sending who don’t get a reply for three weeks but I bet that’s a quicker response time than EA/Activision anyway :D

See you next month.

Soooo… there I am innocently watching an episode of star trek:deep space nine (I think it was called rapture), and ok, I’d had a single glass of wine…but…

There is this scene where kassidy yates, ex maquis supporter, and recently released from a six month prison sentence as a result, comes back to visit the station commander Captain Sisko, who is the ‘hero’ of the episode. She says she has nowhere to stay and he says ‘you can have your old quarters back, they are just as you left them. I have some pull with the station commander’.

What the hell?

So much for a wonderful utopian post-scarcity federation future. Why are the bajorans trusting these mobsters? One might reasonably assume that ideally the allocation of sleeping quarters on the most strategically (and quite possibly economically) important star bases in the galaxy would be taken very seriously, and allocated on a basis of need. But oh no. The station commander has reserved a suite for his ex-girlfriend and convicted terrorist.

Now replace ‘sisko’ with ‘berlusconi’ and ask how acceptable this sort of thing is. What next? the captain hosting bunga-bunga parties in the holosuites?

Something is rotten in the state of Bajor.

I bet this is the only google hit for that phrase.

Wow there is a lot going on. Redshirt, the game I’m publishing but developed by a different company, is heading onwards, with some final art in place here and there (hurrah!) I am working today on the trailer for the ‘outcasts’ expansion for Gratuitous Space Battles, and also grabbing the opportunity now and then to work on my next game.

Between all this, somehow I really badly hurt my shoulder, not by doing anything manly like archery or log-splitting (I am SO outdoorsy, I am), but by painting a ceiling. How annoying.

For a while i had a single sentence written in huge letters on the chalkboard behind my office chair which said

ONE THING AT A TIME

Because that makes a HUGE difference to my productivity and it’s a lesson I keep forgetting. I have taken to using google calendar to set aside some days to work on some projects, and try heavily not to be distracted by other stuff, which rarely works. Normally, I wouldn’t be too bothered, it’s nearly Christmas! there are presents to wrap and mince pies to eat etc, but my calendar AFTER Christmas looks like I’m in charge of the Olympics, or some-such, with a huge crush of things all about to hit my desk all at once. I need to get ahead of myself a bit now so I don’t get crushed then.

As a result of all this, I have not been gaming as much as I would like. I’ve totally changed my Battlefield 3 strategy to be playing only in Rush games, rather than conquest. I also eagerly await the opportunity to buy the aftermath DLC, despite me not owning the ‘premium’ membership, which I’m not really a big fan of. Oh, and the next two days are likely to be interrupted by flooring guys coming in and replacing the attic floor, which isn’t likely to result in long periods of uninterrupted programming.

Arggghhhh.