My blog saved me $450

So I was talking with my Dad on the phone the other day. We were making plans to go up to Tahoe and then he mentions that's he's sorry my computer died. He suggested that maybe it was just the power supply and not the whole computer that was broken. I'm like, "Huh? How'd you know my computer was broken?" Turns out that my dad reads my blog. I think my whole family reads my blog. Hi Mom! Hi Kira and Kailey! Hi Aunt Connie!

 

Anyway, so I looked around and tried to find another computer that has a matching power supply. The size of power supplies hasn't changed recently but it seems that every few years they change the plugs on the mother board. They recently added a square 2x2 plug which supplies extra power to the video card. All the new snazzy video cards take so much power they need a special extra power cable on the mother board. The last two video cards I got also need a direct connection to the power supply because the juice from the bus wasn't enough. Seems like this issue is getting solved in two ways. But the point is that most of my older computers that I would have liked to swipe the power supply from don't have the right connectors. Luckily my second Wow box had the correct plugs so I could test if it really was the power supply that was broken.

 

I was able to get the computers close enough so that I could plug the power supply into the broken computer without taking everything apart and sure enough the computer turned on. That made me happy. Thanks Dad! Now I only needed to buy a $50 power supply and not a $500 computer. So today I went to Fry's and picked up a power supply and my computer is all good again.

 

I priced computers on Dell when I though that I might need to buy one. You can get a reasonable computer without a monitor and a non-gaming video card for $500. Man computers keep falling in price. I figured I could move the video card, monitor and memory from my dead computer over to get a WoW class machine. But turns out I don't need to do that.

 

So with all that newly saved money I played Texas hold-em. We had a poker tournament here last night. I got cleaned out. I lost all 4 four games. I was down $9 for the night. $2 dollars for each game I lost and $1 for my bet with Jeff. Jeff bet me 10 to 1 odds that Jason wouldn't show up. I didn't think he's show up either, but 10 to 1 odds? I couldn't pass that up. I even offered Jason $5 to come, but he wouldn't do it. Turns out Jason is a father now and well, fathers pretty much can't go out to poker nights. Don't they make baby sitters and wives anymore? We had 6 people last night of which 0 had kids even though most of the people we invited have kids now. Maybe we should have a poker/kid's play night...