Month: October 2008

6 Weeks

For the last 6 weeks, my main computer has been broken.  In that time, I think I have spent a lot more time with my wife than normal.  It has been a good thing, but we do spend entirely way too much time together.

I finally got my computer fully running last night, and what a mess that has been.  Let me outline what happened:

My motherboard crapped out – cooling fans failed leaving too much heat inside the case, a few capacitors failed.

While in the shop; power supply failed – still under warranty, they had to send it to the manufacturer and wait for another to come in – this in itself took 4 weeks.

Main hard drive failed – When I finally got the computer back, my main drive with all music and pictures crapped out.  I couldn’t access it.  Took it in and they were able to recover the data.  The drive still works and is in use now.  Nobody knows what happened exactly.

Then starts the issues I had to deal with once I got the machine back:

This new motherboard an ASUS model A8V-X would not recognize one set of IDE devices I had connected.  No matter which port.  I finally found out that both items were jumper-ed to be master devices, moving the jumpers to “cable select” fixed this issue.

My SATA drive, which is 500gigs seemed to be invisible to this system.  It would recognize it in the BIOS, but not in Windows.  When I looked further I saw that many people have had this same problem with ASUS motherboards.

It seems that ASUS has taken the cheap approach to using new technologies.  There is no SATA controller, it has been combined into the IDE controller.  The BIOS sees all SATA devices as IDE devices.  If you’re trying to use a SATA-II device, you’re out of luck.  This is what I was originally trying to do, and the system would hang at boot and if I enabled it in Windows, the system would freeze.

All documentation states that this is SATA-II compatible, but it isn’t.  I had to “jumper” the drive to change it to a SATA-I device.

Needless to say, I’m never buying an ASUS product again.  The only reason I strayed from Gigabyte, who made the motherboards on every computer I’ve had is because I couldn’t get another one for my AMD socket 939 processor.

I have one other problem to contend with, I’m getting some sort of interference in my sound card.  It comes out whenever my processor is performing tasks.  A minor problem, but still it’s an issue.

I have been working diligently to get everything back on my computer, but it will take me some time (about a week) to get everything back to the way it used to be.

Happy 200th! Not.

On a weird statistical note, this is my 200th post to this blog.  I really thought I had written more than that, but not.

The troubling part is the reason why I’m writing this entry.  Rachel and I have been trying to be closer, as we’ve been going through a spell where we are more like roomies than spouses.  It’s really bugged me, and I think it has bugged her too.  We have made some strides in our relationship, but as my dad famously says “almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

I’ve been having some serious problems in the intimate department of our relationship.  It’s not that I don’t desire my wife anymore, I just can’t perform.  Basically at all.  It makes it hard to be close (in that way) when you know you don’t even have a chance to perform the duties you were designed to do.

I had my yearly appointment with my neurologist this week and I asked him several questions about possible side effects of the two anti-convulsant medications I take, Keppra and Carbatrol.  He told me that those two medications do indeed have sexual side effects and almost instantly offered to prescribe me my pick of something for “ED.”

It was almost like a knee-jerk reaction, and it kind of scared me.  I guess his adrenaline levels finally got in check and he ordered some labs for me.  Mainly my testosterone and thyroid levels.

I found out today that my testosterone levels are, “extremely low for a person of my age” according to my neurologist.  This has put me into a tailspin of feelings and emotions regarding my health.

Should a otherwise healthy 28 year old be taking Viagra?  It’s excluded by my insurance, which makes it almost non reachable financially.  I called the pharmacy to see what the cost of this would be, $144 for 12 pills.  With all of lifes’ expenses, this is one we can do without.

I then called to make an appointment with my General Physician, Dr. Bannec.  He’s a great guy, and I’ve seen him since I was 17.  Hopefully he knows of or can find a better financially suited treatment for me than these $12 a shot “happy pills.”

I’m not complaining about my neurologist as this isn’t really his field.  I’m actually happy he ordered the lab work so we could find the root of the problem.

I just hope life, especially my intimate life can get back to normal as soon as possible.