before i forget, to all my malaysian muslim friends and family and colleagues and acquaintances, selamat hari raya aidilfitri, maaf zahir dan batin!
to the rest of the muslim world, happy eid mubarak.
altho i said i wouldn’t clean up my room, here i am cleaning it. at least make it decent for any visitors. 😀 i’ve yet to start packing for my trip to the south. guess i’ll do that later.
my computer has been very steady at 3.6 GHz. the more i think about it, the more i felt that i should’ve refrained myself from my past impulsive buys. the [northbridge] coolers in particular.
the first one i bought, the a normal coolermaster heatsink, was a nice silver aluminum thing. RM 30. came home, realised that the motherboard already has a stock heatsink that’s even BIGGER than the one i bought.
*doh*
the 2nd one i bought, a coolermaster blue ice thingie, was a funky looking thing. looked like an [arcology] from [SimCity]. RM 60. came home, realised that the thing could barely fit onto the motherboard (see previous post).
*doh*
that’s just the beginning though. was playing doom 3 a while ago when i hear a distinct pop sound from the computer. immediately i thought something blew, but the game did not halt or jerk or show whatever sign of a burnt component. well, i had to investigate it anyway, so i saved the game, and exited to windows. only then did the expected blue-screen appear.
restarted the pc. nothing. checked the memory sticks. nothing. after looking here and there and sniffing about for any metallic smell, i finally found the cause: one of the hooks holding the heatsink down had snapped, lifting the heatsink from the surface of the chip. so basically, the chip overheated, and forced the system to shut down. thank Intel for all the internal failsafe mechanisms!
*sigh* i knew i shouldn’t have tightened those mounting clips too much. the thing is already wedged beneath the CPU heatsink, so it was only a matter of holding it in place. the pc is running fine now, but i’ve yet to secure the heatsink properly. hope i don’t break any more clips!
to all my indian friends and colleagues, happy deepavali!
and tomorrow, another greeting for all my muslim acquantances! 😀
not to forget the others, whom i hope are having a good holiday!
woke up super early today to go food shopping in Kelana Jaya. the rendang and the lemang there are excellent. normally, the kelana jaya pasar tani opens every saturday morning, but they’d also be there the day before raya for those raya goods that don’t last long (like meats, fermented rice, etc).
just finished cleaning one of the bathrooms. need a rest before we go out again. mom wants to drop by an aunt’s place, as well as make a short stop at her office to check her email. then we’ll be heading back to the PKNS complex in shah alam to get some serunding.
then after that, more cleaning. floor remains to be swept and mopped. don’t think i’ll bother with my room.
*phew* who said holidays were supposed to be relaxing?
tonight, will most likely spend time with relative in PJ, particularly in the Kg. Tunku area, where a group of neighbors will visit most Malay houses and recite do’a. very light refreshments are served at each house, but one can’t stay too long or be left behind by the group. the kids, get to collect duit raya along the way. if only i started doing this years earlier! maybe i can pass off as a college student. 😀
yesterday:
woke up at 11. did some simple cleaning in the living room. had plans to go to town, but before that: raya shopping! the bro needs his raya suit and shoes. since i’m no longer growing, i don’t really need anything. besides, i already have my super-cool clark’s sandals from tiff’s shop. 😀
before we took off, i took some time to look at my pc again. wanted to redo the application of thermal paste on the [cpu] because i probably put too much the last time. i was happily prying the heatsink off when i realised that the chip was stuck to it. and to my horror: bent pins! about 8 of them. it was a panicky time. after cleaning off the grease, i had to meticulously straighten each pin, first with my fingers and when things got a little too tight, with a pushpin. it became more horrifying when i couldn’t set the chip back into the socket. it took a little work before i managed to do it.
needless to say i won’t be taking that off again. at least not without heating the heatsink first. fortunately nothing broke. 😛
so my mom, my bro, and i headed down to subang parade to look for some clothes for the kid. my sister could have used some as well, but her measurements aren’t normal so we couldn’t actually buy anything. we did however find some designs that would’ve looked gorgeous on her.
spent a few hours there. left with nothing in hand. so we stop by 1U instead. mom got some kuih, but that was about it. we parked at the old wing, and i lacked the energy to follow her to the new wing, so i seated myself on one of the benches outside and dozed off for a bit. the weather at the time was rather hot, but the strong wind was very cooling. altho the arm i rested on ached a bit when i got up.
cheap quality sandals are hard to find these days. so where do you go? tiff’s shop! 😀 got my bro some clearance sandals, which looked, altho slightly old-fashioned, rather comfy. he wears size 9 by the way. tsk. got some cloth from nearby binwani’s too.
so that’s done! but not without a short stop at metrojaya. nothing much there. poor service and lack of interesting things.
zoom zoom! dropped the family off at home and rushed off to get wan yee. low yat was the destination! wan yee picked up a new 200GB [SATA]-II drive! i planned to return my fan-which-did-not-fit and [northbridge]-[heatsink]-which-was-smaller-than-stock to Robyncom, but they were doing stock check. i’d only be able to go back next wednesday, so i thought might as well get a replacement cpu fan and an alternative northbridge cooler. so at cycom, as i was contemplating which fan to buy, Liu, one of the familiar salespeople came up to us and pointed out this huge coolermaster northbridge heatsink. i was mesmerized.
since it was running late, we broke fast at shokudo, a restaurant selling fusion jap/thai food. well, i did at least. i knew i had stuff to do at home, so we parted ways after that. i got home, took out that big heatsink and was all set to plunk it onto my [motherboard] when i discovered that it didn’t fit. normally it would’ve, but the huge heatsink used for my CPU was in the way. tried to stick it in from the left, from the right, even tried dismantling the plastic covering the heatsink, but to no avail. in the end, i just forced the thing in and crossed my fingers. it worked at the time, got myself two gold medals in BF2 😛 had a problem with it later on, but you can read that in my next post.
