I ended up not building the PC yesterday. I got home Friday night to find that the dog had knocked over the trash can and gotten into some food on the kitchen counter. I’ve had trouble with him getting into my food the last 6mo or so and I just kind of lost it and ended up smacking him a few times and screaming at him before throwing him into his crate and leaving him there all night. I had trouble sleeping after that so yesterday morning I wasn’t in much shape to do any serious work. I just took an edible and had make-up cuddles with my dog for a few hours while watching the Twilight Zone marathon. So that was my day.

Now I took an edible this morning and am cuddling with the dog while watching Seinfeld episodes on the DVR. I was thinking that you don’t even need the DVDs of that show, South Park, or The Office since they play them so constantly that you can just set your TV on record but nobody buys DVD seasons anymore. I guess you can save money on streaming.

ANYWAY I did e-mail MSI back – yeah, they don’t tell you by default – which is another major reason I didn’t build yesterday. They replaced a USB header on the motherboard, which is unrelated to the CPU or RAM or any essential functions. The two things giving hope are that (a) there indeed was something wrong with it to be fixed; and (b) with as complex a set of circuits as a motherboard, a short in an unrelated part might cause seemingly incongruous problems. Beyond that, once the computer is back assembled removing the CPU and RAM for service (and putting them back in) if needed is very easily done, so it’s really just a matter of doing it. But it’s hard to get motivated when you have to deal with that mess of loose cables and connectors just for it probably not to work. I need to do it while I still remember which wires are which.