Day three? Four? Something like that of tech issues. This time, it’s completely self-inflicted, which doesn’t make it any less frustrating. In fact, it’s more frustrating because why the hell did I do that? If only I hadn’t done that! Here’s what happened.
A couple days ago, I accidentally kicked my PC tower. Hard. It was fine, but I had to make sure all the cables were plugged in firmly. They seemed to be, and all was well. Today, suddenly, my PC stopped working. Just out of the blue. I immediately deduced that it had something to do with the accidental kick I had given the PC tower a few days ago.
I checked cables. All seemed fine. I checked the power strip. Also seemed fine. I unplugged it and replugged it in, and then I turned it off and on again. It was all fine. It was late at night (for normies), so I didn’t want to call my brother. I knew that he went to bed by eleven/midnight, and I didn’t know how long it would take me to fix the issue. Though I had a hunch that he would know what it was.
I did some more hunting around to see what I might have missed. I finally realized that I was looking at the wrong cord when I was checking out the power cord. The actual power cord had come unplugged on the PC tower side, so I plugged it back in. Did that take care of the problem? Yes! My computer booted up, and it was fine. Except.
Why wasn’t my second monitor working? I futzed with the settings, but my computer said that the second monitor was not available. What the hell? I was mad at myself for kicking my PC, even though it was an accident.
I checked the cable on the back of my second monitor, and the other end was unplugged. I knew it had to go into my PC tower, but I had no idea where. By the shape of the cable, I only seemed to have one option. I plugged it in, but it wasn’t the one. I Googled it, and it said not to plug into the HDMI at the top of the PC tower, but to use the port that was lower. I could not see another HDMI port, but I knew there had to be one.
I got onto the ground with my phone (as my flashlight), and I found the right HDMI port. Finally! Everything was back to the way it should be. Except. About five minutes later, several YouTube videos started playing at the same time. I had about a hundred tabs open in roughly thirty different bunches. I had to quickly go through them to find the ones that were playing. Of course, it was nearly the last bunch that was the culprit, so I got rid of almost all my YouTube tabs. It doesn’t bother me because I’m sure I’ll have a hundred open again in no time flat.
This took me about an hour to do. So, for those following along, I’ve spent about three hours in three days fixing tech issues. Today was on me, but the other two issues were not my fault. I would be very happy not to have to deal with tech issues for quite some time. Oh, and I spilled water on my laptop. It’s fine except for the USB ports that I use to charge my phone. So now I have to do that on my PC tower. You see another reason why I was not happy that my PC tower wasn’t working.
By the way, there was a discussion in the Discord I’m in about graphic fidelity versus performance. There was discussion of ray tracing and other graphic enhancers. I will admit that my brain goes, “Wah wah wah”, much like Peanuts grownups when people start nattering on about ray tracing and whatnot.
My maybe unpopular opinion? I don’t give a shit about graphic fidelity past a certain point. Games look really good, but it’s starting to cross into uncanny valley for me. Also, I don’t notice things like if the blades of grass are waving naturally in the wind. I just don’t care. Also, I literally don’t see shit like that because of my eye/perception issues.
As long as I get 60 fps, very minor stuttering, and no missing sprites, I’m good. In the thousands of hours I’ve played Elden Ring, I’ve had maybe a handful of crashes. Perhaps twenty times of noticeable stuttering. And the only time it absolutely wouldn’t start was when an update introduced ray tracing and for some unfathomable reason, From did not make it opt in rather than opt out.
Hey! That was another tech issue. How about that.
Let’s see if I can make a tortured comparison to dating.
In a relationship, I don’t mind putting in the work. In fact, I’m often the one putting in the most work. What I don’t like, however, is when I don’t know what I need to work on. Or why my parnter was suddenly cold to me (like a monitor not working).
I remember a woman I was dating was the queen of mind games. She expected me to know what she was thinking without her having to say anything. She said it was cultural (she was Japanese), but she took it to an extreme.
Here’s an example. One time, I was supposed to take her to Target the next day. We were chatting on the phone and I mentioned I was going dancing with my bestie that night. Which I did, and we had a terrific time. The next day, I noticed I had a message from the woman I was dating. In a very frosty tone, she said that she did not need me to take her to Target, so I could forget about it.
I heaved a deep sigh because I could tell that she was pissed at me. I could also tell that she wanted me to either ask her about it or beg her forgiveness. I did not want to do either, but I knew that I had to fall on that sword.
I called her up and begrudgingly asked what was wrong. She said the most infuriating sentence known to humankind. “You know.” No, I fucking don’t know! That’s why I’m fucking asking you! I wanted to reach through the phone and shake her by the shoulders. I took a deep breath and told her, “No, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
We wrangled for a bit longer with her obfuscating all the way. Finally, I got it out of her that she was mad I had told her I was going dancing with my bestie without asking if she wanted to go with us. Did she want to? No. But she was mad that I didn’t ask her. In her mind, since we were dating (of sorts. It was complicated), I should automatically ask her to do anything I was going to do. I most emphatically did not feel that way. I liked doing things with my friends without a partner involved. Besiedes, she had never met my bestie, so why would I ask her to dance with us?
I learned something that day. I tended to do the same thing (expecting my partners to read my mind), and after feeling so infuriated at her doing it to me, I vowed not to do it any longer. And I didn’t.