I am not really sure what happened. Last week my secondary computer, the workhorse, started to freeze up at seeming random times.

At first it was a once here and there every few days, then it once a day, once an hour, and finally a few seconds after windows loaded. As if that was not bad enough, while I was testing the power supply the ill fated machine decided to simply no longer power up.

This was not looking good.

I pulled out one of my retired machines and plugged in the “dead” computer’s power supply; it powered right up. Next I moved the video card over, the old reliable again powered up. Finally I pulled both drives out and plugged them into my game machine. I wanted to plug them into the old box, but she does not have SATA. Anyway, the game machine powered right up.

So that leaves me with the Memory, CPU, and motherboard (and technically the case, could be have fault in the power switch but that would not have caused the freezing), so I decided it was time for a bit of rebuilding.

Of course Instead of just buying the absolute minimum, looked into a slight upgrade. I bought a faster CPU than my game machine has along with some faster and higher capcity RAM. The plan is to install the old game machine CPU and memory into the new motherboard, along with the new video card (since the old agp ones wont work in new MBs) and new powersupply.

In the end, I hope to not only revive the workhorse, but also get a small boost in performance in games. Though I always know things are never as easy as I think they should be.

While I was at this, I also received my latest cable TV bill. *boggle* $70 for TV that is just unacceptable; something must have been wrong. Called up the cable co. and found out the rate I was paying was a one year promo offer and now I am on the full price plan. Hmmm. No.

Do I enjoy all the neat cable channels? Yes.
Do I think they are worth paying for? Yes, the ones I like I would happily pay for.
Do I think I should have to pay $20 for the same channels I can get free with an antenna? No.

What I would really like is if all local channles were included in the 5$ rental price of the cable box, and if I could pick and choose which other channels we get and pay for them individually; I think $1. per non-premium channel is acceptable. Let’s see if I could do that I would pay for:

G4, CNN headline news, TNT, ABC Family, USA, Discovery, AMC, A&E, Travel, FX, Spike, Cartoon Network, Nick, Disney, TLC, Comedy central, Sci-fi, Fox News, History, TMC, TV Land, TBS, Animal Planet,

That’s 23 channels in addition to the broadcast Free channels, and I would expect to pay ~$35 for them, and two recievers. Heck at that price I would probably go ahead and pick up another five or six other kids/educational channels and keep the price under $45. As long as my total TV +internet bill was under one hundred dollars, I would be happy.

Sadly that is only my little world and not reality.

In reality, I decided to spend $200 up front for a HDTV tuner card for my computer and a nice big antenna for the attic. Once the workhorse machine is back up and running it will have a new task. Tuning and recording free HDTV. This will allow me to take trip to the cable co. with my boxes and tell them to turn the cable off. Saving me the $70 a month they are taking now. After three months I will basically be earning money.

Yes I loose a bunch a stations, but with the proliferation of shows on the internet, I doubt we miss anything that was worth watching.

Yea technology!