Today’s Tune: Orpheus by Ash
There are two things that have been running through my mind this month:
1.) That all creative types emit a field that causes technology to spontaneously fail around them, and that at a certain point they become aware of this field. This causes the effect to become ten times worse. (A friend shared a comic with me ages ago that described this, and unfortunately I can’t find it.)
2.) Knowing how to build a PC gives you the blessing of knowing exactly what’s wrong when something doesn’t work, the curse of being 97% sure you know how to fix it the first time, and the 100% chance that your fix, when applied, was the wrong one.
In short, what should have been a pretty simple upgrade over an afternoon once the parts arrived has taken up most of my month in terms of replacing parts, returning things, and buying new things. I’ve gone through a PC case, three – possibly four – defective mainboards, a power supply that was bad out of the box, ended up buying a completely new processor, and somehow through it all built a second PC out of spare parts. And I’m still not quite done yet due to USB issues on the mainboard I have for what I guess is now my “main” PC.
A friend of mine said the other day “after a certain point, building a PC goes from a cost saving measure to a hobby”, and they’re certainly right about that. Funnily enough, the way this all started was because I wanted to add an internal capture card to my PC, but didn’t have an extra slot for it. (If you know the difference between a Mini-ITX board, a Micro-ATX board, and an ATX board, you know this struggle.) The end result has resulted in such a massive amount of stress and frustration that it’s dunked a lot of my creative drive, and every time I start to feel like I’m recovering, something else happens that kind of tips me back in the other direction.
But… I’m also a stubborn old ox. As much as I want to wail and complain, I’m also determined not to let these sorts of things bury me, and I’ve been continuing to look for creative outlets. If my tablet doesn’t work, I go back to my roots and sketch things out on paper just to keep my pen moving. My one regret is that all of this mess has slowed down my artistic output considerably, but it hasn’t stopped me entirely. It’s slowed, but it’ll come back with a vengeance soon.
This is to say nothing of the greater problems in the world, but… that’s a discussion for another time. I want to keep this update simple.
In the meantime, you can still catch regular updates of Terraform, which I hope to increase the pace on once the dust settles on this PC rebuild, and I hope to have more regular art uploads soon.
Until next time. Black Lives Matter. Stop AAPI Hate. Trans Rights are Human Rights. Support your community. Peace and chicken grease.
