VeryVeryVary

Wow it's been a long time. I've been through a lot so far this year, and I'm sorry for allll those times when I didn't update you. Basically in January and February anxiety was killing me. I went to the ER twice within a couple months and they didn't really seem to think anything weird about that. After the second time, I got myself set up with a new therapist who I've been seeing about twice a month since then. My PCP also got me started on a low dose of an SSRI which helped almost immediately. We also moved house in January, during a snowstorm which was cool. We're appreciating the extra space in the new place, but more space to live also means more space to clean, which isn't something I'm good at when I'm really struggling with my mental health. I was excited for school to end and to get to hang out with my daughter all summer, but just a week or two into her summer I got some news about my health and started feeling sick all the time...

UPDATE: Newegg's deal is still rolling, but Amazon has dropped their price further to $299! That, when combined with the confirmation that 8th generation Intel core processors won't be backwards compatible with my motherboard, was enough to make me finally pull the trigger, so GAMEMURDER will be getting that upgrade. On Amazon, I always check to see if they have a "Fulfilled by Amazon" option so taxes won't be charged, and as of the time of writing this, there was one option for the exact same price with Prime shipping. Link below still works. I told you it was coming! The Intel i7 7700k processor is available for only $309.99, and this time it's at both Amazon and Newegg for that price. And, what the hell - if you want to get it from Best Buy, they'll price-match for you too. For my money, I've decided to hold out until Intel releases their new 6-core processors, but I may kick myself when the prices are announced. If you don't have my ...

Flash back to that picture in the last post of my current desktop struggling to keep up with a fifteen year old game, and it should seem pretty reasonable that I want an upgrade for my office. Please ignore the fact that I already have a low-end MacBook Air and a four year old mid-range Windows PC. Those laptops serve specific functions not served by my would-be new desktop. Like being able to game when I'm supposed to be writing. But what else do I need it to do? One of my favorite parts of building a computer is picking components. But the first thing you have to do is define your use cases. For this computer, I need to be able to do some gaming. Okay maybe "need" is an exaggeration, but that's what I intend to do. Also, as a fiction writer, I find making my characters in the Sims can be a useful experiment, especially when suffering from a block. I don't need something that can "murder" games, but I want to be able to run Sims 4 and Skyrim with...

*Tech speak is mostly eliminated or translated, except where used ironically, so please read ahead if you want to know what all the fuss is about, even if computers are not generally your thing.* I have a yen to build another computer. Building custom PCs is one of my favorite activities, but it's an expensive hobby, so since I started in 2005, I've only done it four times, and two of those were for other people. The easiest way to keep costs down is to cannibalize another computer for parts. The last one I built was a Christmas present two years ago from me to my husband and vice-versa. His part of the present was a gaming computer, and mine was getting to buy and build a new computer. We named it GAMEMURDER, which isn't terribly accurate, but we're not especially demanding since we play a lot of older games, and we're not trying to push 120+ fps to a 4K monitor. We're more like Skyrim from the couch using a game controller instead of keyboard/mouse kind ...

This is the second part of a two part series. Check out part I if you haven't already. Go start a system build on pcpartpicker right now. You can play along. I'll wait. ... Back? Good. Say you want to start with a motherboard. Because it's the part that everything else is going to connect to, it's usually a good place to start. Click "Choose a motherboard" and it will take you to a list of every motherboard in their system. Clicking the word "Motherboard" will do the same - useful if you have one chosen and want to change it. Because you haven't picked a CPU or case - or anything - yet, everything is compatible. But if you're like me and prefer something in a small form factor, you'll want to limit your search to mini-ITX. Note that micro-ATX is a good choice for a midsize build, but it's quite a bit larger than mini-ITX. That said, going tiny is not great for beginners, but this is just a demonstration. If you sort by pric...

The website pcpartpicker.com is my favorite website in the world. Besides Triple V, of course (laugh track). It allows you to browse through an obscene selection of components, compare prices at a number of online stores (including my three favorites as mentioned in the Active Deals of the Day post - Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy), and build a parts list for your computer, all while checking for incompatibilities. Check out the parts list for the gaming computer I made for my husband: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant Type Item Price CPU Intel - Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor Purchased For $192.99 CPU Cooler Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler Purchased For $19.99 Motherboard Asus - MAXIMUS VIII HERO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard Purchased For $159.99 Memory G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-...