Category: Uncategorized

Actual progress:
I finally reported the leak from behind my refrigerator to the apartment office. Duston (the maintenance guy) came and promptly pulled the refrigerator away from the wall (which caused the spigot where the ice machine connects to the wall to start spraying water), commented that it was loose, and tightened it. Problem solved hopefully, and if it happens again I’ll try that fix. I figured the valve wasn’t seated properly and expected it to be a somewhat more involved fix, but if this works that’s excellent. Now I should probably get around to mopping up the water/dissolved kitty litter marks in the utility room.

It also appears that Dustin was the one who installed the carbon monoxide detector with Talore in the room. As soon as the door opened and she saw him Talore hissed and started edging towards something she could hide behind, so I shut her in the bedroom.

The reason for the ‘?’ in the title:
I hoped I had resolved the pink screen of death (PSoD?) when I switched power cables to my video card a week or two ago, but it got worse last night. Now when I log into windows it does it, and last night it did it multiple times before it loaded my desktop. Further reading suggests that it’s a possible hardware problem (like I burnt out something with the hairy fan). I was hoping to wait for the next generation of video cards before upgrading, but it looks like I may be prompted to upgrade sooner. Alternately I could switch to my old video card (nvidia 7950 down from a gtx 280), but that’s probably not anywhere near to up to the level of performance I’m used to.

Dusting my video card didn’t do anything to keep it from freezing apparently. It didn’t slow it down, and now it’s happening twice a day if my computer is on long enough. Usually the first is on login before I even load anything graphics intensive.

Windows once let me search for fixes to a problem, but it didn’t find anything and didn’t actually tell me anything about the problem so it wasn’t exactly helpful.

A quick search on google found a youtube video of (apparently) my exact problem. Looks like next time it happens I’ll be poking around in my power supply wires. I can’t remember if I have more of the type wire that goes to my video card than I used, but if that’s it hopefully switching cables will fix it.

It also sounds like the series my video card is in sometimes have an issue that sounds like this, and since I was strongly considering upgrading my video card sometime soon this might be more incentive for getting around to that.

I clearly survived the night, though when I checked and saw that it was supposed to get down to freezing or at least near it last night I only left the windows open by a crack. I did sleep next to the balcony door though. That makes 12 hours and no headache yet, and from the labels on the detector it sounds like it’s supposed to be quiet when you hit the reset button so you can call emergency services. Guess I’ll take it over to the apartment office and see what they have to say about it.

Actually, reading more closely it says specifically that it’s supposed to beep 4 times then pause for 5 seconds, not whine constantly for 12 hours. I got a replacement one from the apartment office, and it chirped upon being plugged in and has been silent since.