1.) Walked this morning. Don't recall my after-walk heart reading. It was something like 96/63 83.

2.) Early afternoon. Continued a project started several days ago (not mentioned here) of taking pumice sticks to the commode and trying to remove an accumulation of hardened filth. Between today's session and the one before I used up two new sticks. Have most of the bowl done except for the very bottom where it is difficult to get to. I've gotten enough cleared down there to realize that the reason excrement flushes hang maybe twice a week is likely due to the passageway having become too narrow from filth buildup. I can go only a bit further into that passageway. That'll have to wait until I buy more pumice this coming Monday, assuming I remember.

3.) Mid afternoon. Mowed the lawn. I originally planned to hold off several days. But the forecast now shows too many rain/storm days beginning tomorrow with not enough clear days in between for the ground to dry. Heart reading within five minutes following the mow: Blood Pressure 97/64, Pulse 90. I don't consider that bad at all. Come Summer I'll be singing another tune.

Went for an exercise-walk just after lunch. Muggy and warm as it was/is, I hope the walk does me good rather than harm. Were it not for a forecast that predicts rains and/or storms almost every day for over a week I might well have not gone out at all today.

Heart reading within 5min of returning home: Blood Pressure 93/63, Pulse 92.

Have now worked my way through the tractor road with the Cavator, removing rocks on my way to the end of the road where a final rock will have to go. Haven't had much problem until I just now hit one major rock which I can't get rid of. It's way too big and tucked in so I'm currently trying to bypass it which of course led me to other big rocks.


*sigh*



-UPDATE-

The task is done! I was able to circumvent the unremoveable obstacle by filling an alternate route with dirt and now the cavator stands on the other side! Now I can begin working on the final stretch!

This post has been edited by mirocu: May 29 2017, 03:50 PM

Ordered three more parts for my upcoming PC build. Two are different from the parts list I displayed here some time ago:

1) RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V series, DDR4 3000, CAS 15, 16gb (2x8gb), silver. This is the best I could do within my price range at time of purchase. At one time RAM was cheap enough to make 32gb a realistic option. No more. This will be my third build using G.Skill modules. I trust them to deliver decent quality RAM at a good price.

2) PSU: EVGA SuperNova G3 850 watt. I planned to buy the EVGA SuperNova G2 750 watt, but the G3 was/is on sale at NewEgg for only a bit more than the G2 750. 850 watts is more power than I'm likely to ever need, but so what?

3) Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus - z270x Gaming 7. This too was on sale at time of purchase. Never used a Gigabyte MB before so am a bit apprehensive.

I've still a ways to go before actually assembly. I don't even have the CPU yet, for goodness sake. Or what will be my boot drive (prolly a Samsung nvme M.2 SSD, though I debate between it and another M.2 SSD). I'll need another couple of storage devices but can hold off a them if need be. Oh yeah, I'll need another copy of Windows 10 (or at least a new license/key). I hope to be able to order enough of what I need this coming month to get the thing built to the point Windows and a few essential programs are up and running. Gotta admit that I do worry that when the current administration's FCC ruins the internet-as-we-know-it later this year, as is likely to happen, I'll regret upgrading, so much of my computing time being spent online.

ADDENDUM: Walked at around 0700. Heart reading within 5min of return: Blood Pressure 96/63, Pulse 79. Reading following yesterday's walk: Blood Pressure 90/63, Pulse 81.

Received a notice from NewEgg saying my new PSU should arrive Jun 1. The other items will be sent in a separate package. No word on those yet.

ADDENDUM 2: further projects today...

4) Prepared forms to submit state tax due on internet purchases made throughout the month, minus the one from Amazon, which now automatically adds tax to orders from my state.

5) Balanced my checking and savings accounts to the penny with newly arrived Bank Statement.

6) Prepared a $10 rebate form for the Phanteks PC case I bought earlier this month. (Almost forgot the purchased included a rebate.) I'll mail it tomorrow.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 30 2017, 10:02 PM

Today's projects, such as they are...

1) Finalized State internet purchases tax form, wrote out check for $49.72, stuffed form and check in envelop, put envelop in mail box.

2) Put already prepared Phanteks rebate paperwork in mailbox.


PC parts update: All three recently ordered parts are scheduled to arrive either today or tomorrow. That's one thing I like a lot about NewEgg. Even using its slowest / free delivery option, as I always do, orders tend to arrive super fast. On the other hand, NewEgg purchases do not include state sales tax, leaving me to figure it out and submit payment to the state on my own, a major hassle fraught with pitfalls.

Now that everything in life has calmed down, I finally took a crack at getting a wire upstairs from the basement. Success!

Mirocu - Glad you and Cavatator managed to forge open the rocky path!

Decrepit - Good luck as you gradually assemble your new puter.

Cain - Finally managed to thread that wire!

Walked circa 0700. Heart reading within minutes of return: Blood Pressure 90/63, Pulse 78.

The package slated to arrive yesterday didn't. No biggie. I suspected that might be the case. It's now scheduled for today, more realistic but still not certain. The second package is also slated for today. My guess is tomorrow at the soonest.

Been reading the Gigabyte motherboard's manual (downloaded). It's prolly an age thing, but boy does some of it seems confusing. Admittedly, this MB is more complex than those I've used in the past, but still...

The only project planned for the day is possibly installing the PSU into my new PC case, depending on if and when the package arrives. Which remains me I need to consider and research the possibility of buying an extra case fan to install above the CPU. I'd rather hold off, but such a fan might prove difficult to install once the rather large Noctua CPU cooler is in place.

Your PC is sounding good Decrepit! Hope all goes well with that. Khajiit is very pleased with the pc he put together. When he was done building his, he was like "is that really all there is to it?" and "Why didn't I do this sooner?!", lol

Update on the hard apple cider project Khajiit posted about starting a few weeks ago:
Welp, this one transferred the cider to a new bottle for its secondary fermentation today, two weeks later than he probably should have (due to laziness, mainly). Hopefully it didn't pick up a yeasty taste from the spent yeast cell sludge that gathers on the bottom of the bottle when you do a primary fermentation. Now we play the waiting game for about 2 months then we'll see if it's any good.

Both packages arrived during lunch! Besides opening shipping boxes to insure they consisted of more than bricks, I...

1) Installed the PSU. This proved more difficult that anticipated due to the MB two of the MB PSU holes not quite lining up with corresponding PSU screw holes. After much finagling I managed to properly secure the blasted thing.

2) Tested the PSU with an EVGA provided device. The fan turns on. That's always a good sign. I must say the fan is darn quiet! Additionally, the PSU offers an operating mode where the fan doesn't spin up unless it surpasses and certain temperature threshold. I'll be using that.

3) Installed the motherboard IO shield in the case. For once I had relatively little trouble getting it to snap in place.

That's as far as I want to go before other, not yet ordered, parts arrive. I thought about installing the MB but don't want it exposed to danger any great length of time. Which reminds me I need to put the side panels back on the case.

Projects thus far today...

1) Walked circa 0700. Heart reading almost immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 115/71 (high for me), Pulse 83.

2) Prepared and mailed rebate materials for Gigabyte motherboard.

3) Partly prepared rebate materials for EVGA PSU rebate. (Gonna have to call the their help center to ask exactly what they will accept for one of the needed documents, as provided instructions aren't clear (to me).

I planned to mow the lawn today. Only, we had unpredicted rain move through the area sometime between sundown and sunrise. It might have saturated the ground enough to force postponement. Hope not. We've more days of predicted rains and storms coming up pronto. I'll check outside after lunch, and again after supper if need be, before throwing in the towel.

Post lunch projects...

4) Checked lawn. Too much underwater for now.

5) Called EVGA rebate center. Received the answer I expected (and hoped for) but couldn't be certain of.

6) Finalized and prepared EVGA rebate paperwork for mailing.

7) Filed copies of recently prepared rebate materials (EVGA, Phanteks, Gigabyte).

8) Prepared payment for newly arrived Electricity and City Utilities bills.

Pondered more on storage for my ongoing PC build. I know I want an M2.nvme SSD for the boot drive, but can't decide between two makes/models, and even question size. I'll prolly settle for a 240-256gb drive due to cost, but wouldn't mind jumping to 500gb.) Problem with a 256gb drive is that storage space is too limited to allow me to install all the games I want. I'll solve that by buying an additional traditional SSD, but that's at least a month away, again due to budget. I figure the most I can pay for is one storage device, the CPU, an optical drive (dirt cheap, thank goodness), and another copy of *couch* Windows 10 *couch*, along with maybe a few super inexpensive accessories such as a couple of USB memory sticks. (I've needed more of those for some time.)

mid-afternoon projects...

9) Cleaned the kitchen table. Placed new motherboard on table. Set Noctua CPU cooler atop MB CPU socket guard to judge how much it will get in the way. The good...it should not interfere with memory modules. The iffy...looks as if the upper M2.SSD slot "might" be reachable with the cooler in place. It is almost certainly usable so long as the SSD is installed before the cooler. The bad...it's gonna be had to reach certain areas of the board, which means I gotta make sure I attach certain things before the cooler.

10) Read more of the MB manual and Quick Install Guide. The Install Guide seems decidedly wrongheaded. I'd never assemble a computer in the order it recommends. For instance. It saves the PSU until last (or almost last). For my money it should be secured in place first. The graphics card, which save until the end, is an early install in the Guide. I do agree with the guide that the CPU and cooler can be installed BEFORE the MB goes into the case. However, this depends on case CPU cutout and cooler. In my case, installing the cooler with the MB already in the case is pretty much mandatory.

Still deciding on which M.2 nvme SSD (and size) to start out with. Hope to have it worked out by the end of this weekend.



This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 2 2017, 11:26 PM

Carryover from yesterday...

Mowed the lawn after supper, except for a not insignificant portion of the backyard which was too waterlogged.

Today...

1) Ordered i7 7700k CPU, Samsung M.2 nvme SSD 500gb, cheap Corsair 16gb USB memory stick, and an el cheapo ASUS DVD burner off NewEgg. This at last gives me enough parts to assemble the computer. You might have noticed that I have not yet ordered an OS. What I plan to do is install Win10 from the copy I bought to replace Vista on my secondary (soon to be third) PC, but not use its license key. That'll give me a bit of flexibility to maybe catch Win10 on sales (yeah right).

I still need to buy, besides Win10, another SSD and an old-style hard drive. I thought about transferring a hard drive from my current PC and still might, but due to age of current drives and the fact that decent high capacity HDs are nowadays dirt cheap I'll likely order a 1-2tb model off NewEgg or Amazon. I'm talking next month at the soonest, not right away.

2) Walked a bit after 0700. Heart reading at circa 0800: Blood Pressure 95/62, Pulse 73.

Yeah, Khajiit uses a Samsung 250 gb SSD as his boot drive with a Western Digital Black 1tb HDD for extra storage. Love the SSD!

Yeah, the HDDs in both my already assembled computers are WD Blacks. Solid drives, though I did buy one that was defective on arrival. Thankfully either WD or whoever I ordered from replaced it pronto.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Walked circa 0620 this morning, a bit early but I needed to beat rains that will supposedly move in within a few hours. Heart reading almost immediately afterward: Blood Pressure 97/64, Pulse 83.

I forgot to figure in something when choosing computer parts...my weak back. Moving the case around while installing the PSU triggered lower back pain that lingered several days. Just imagine what might happen once the super heavy Noctua air cooler and Gigabyte GPU are added!!!! Too late it dawns on me that I largely avoided the issue last time by buying a case that includes optional casters. Boy are those nice!

It also dawns on me that I might be able to jerry rig my own platform-with-casters to sit beneath the new case. Maybe. I'm not good at that sort of thing. Still, it might be worth it. Doesn't have to look good, just get the job done. Shouldn't cost very much either. One smallish piece of wood. Four inexpensive casters. A small bit of "trim" to hold the case in place. A can of paint. That should do it.

So.

Project Removing rocks from tractor road continues and it's pretty smooth sailing now. Well, it least it has been since I passed that difficult spot

Operation: Master Bedroom is in full swing. Smashing walls open is good fun.

No projects to speak of today other than my weekly grocery run. Weekly weigh-in prior to this morning's shower: 140-41 lbs. I tend to fluctuate between 141 and 145 these days, helped by daily walks. (I didn't walk today due to rain.) In younger days I felt my best between 128 and 135, but need to do more stringent exercise than I am now able to achieve and maintain that. (I last did so for around six months in 2008, ending when my knees went bad following a jog several days prior to Thanksgiving.)

Just found out my NewEgg PC parts package has shipped. Expected delivery date this Thursday. My guess is either then or Friday.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 6 2017, 12:01 AM

Another nothing day, not that there's anything wrong with that. Walked circa 0730. Heart Reading soon after: Blood Pressure 97/62, Pulse 78.

Latest update on my computer parts shipment. It's in Oklahoma, are was not too long ago. Package is still scheduled to arrive tomorrow. It's possible, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 8 2017, 12:46 AM

As of now it looks as if my PC parts are close enough to arrive today! Still not a definite, but looking good.

Prolly won't walk until after lunch due to it being a cooler than usual day. Won't hit 70F until then. I don't do well below 70F. (It's 70 in the house right now. I need to wear sweats and a toboggan to keep from shivering.)

ADDENDUM:
As of 0652 my package is showed as having arrived at the local FedEx facility 18min ago.

Almost soiled myself when a new NewEgg add appeared in my inbox showing the CPU due to arrive today on sale for significantly less than I paid. I closer look revealed the the sales item to be a i7 7700 rather than my i7 700k.

By coincident that same sales shows what at first glance seems to be my Gigabyte motherboard for dramatically less than I paid. This time, a close look shows the sales item to be the Gigabyte z170 Gaming 7 rather than my Gigabyte z270 Gaming 7.

ADDENDUM 2:
My package is "out for delivery".

Walked in sweats but no toboggan rather than wait until after lunch.

Trimmed a bush next to the porch entrance to make it easier for the deliveryman to reach my front door. Heart reading after trim: Blood Pressure 88/61, Pulse 70.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Jun 8 2017, 02:38 PM

I've seen that a lot. You just bought something, so the companies expect you to want to buy another right away. Not something related, but another of the same thing. It's the equivalent of the waiter at a restaurant offering you a second entree, instead of dessert.