phew, it's over
I've heard of a run of bad luck, but this has been insane.
Sunday night I decided to upgrade the RAM in my server. I have old RAM chips laying around all over, and although I don't _need_ the extra RAM, I have it collecting dust, so why not put it to use. I powered down the server, grabbed some chips, and discovered none of them fit. All different kinds and sizes, none fit. Oh well, time to start the server and go back on with life.
I power on the server and it is dead. I mean dead dead. No BIOS. I poke around a little but I know where this is going. My main computer died in almost the exact same way (powered down to upgrade a hard disk) about a month earlier. It is almost certainly the motherboard.
Ok, so the server holds our e-mail and our blogs. It also stores the backup of all our photos. Those should be fine as long as I get the computer to boot again. It is also the link to the internet. Troubleshooting without the internet isn't fun, and Hadley loves playing on her computer on the internet. This can't wait forever... Must fix now.
"No big deal," I think. The computer that we use to play movies on the TV is almost identical. I can just use its hardware. We can go without downloaded shows and movies for a while. I'd like to get a new device for that with menus and things so Hadley can drive it herself in a year or less.
I back up everything off the server and head to bed. Next morning I shut it down, cannibalize the motherboard, power up the new server, and, err, dead. Dead dead. Same as the other one. Another fried motherboard. #2.
Time to break out the mulitmeter and check what is going on here. Everything seems fine. Volts and Amps out of the power bar is fine, Volts out of the power supply is fine. What-the.
Ok, now I have two dead computers. I plug my work laptop in to my modem directly so I am back on the internet a little. No game for Hadley or blogs or mail, but something.
I order some replacement parts from NCIX. Wednesday now, I install the parts, and oh, wait, no. I don't have RAM for this motherboard either. sheesh. Silly me. I should have known everything is DDR3 now. Back to NCIX. Get RAM, install.
Then my work laptop dies. Yup, "no hard disk detected". 3'rd major failure.
Phew, things happen in threes. Should be clear now. I'm loading a new kernel to regain control over my server late last night while Leanne is watching the TV and "POP". There goes the bulb on our DLP TV. Dead. Dead dead. FML.
Today I got a new bulb, fixed the TV. Got the new kernel (and GRUB) working on the server, and have regained access to the internet for the house! Woo Hoo (oh ya, and blogs are back). Finally, things are starting to move in the right direction.
Now if that odd banging sound the fridge is making could just settle down until after Christmas, I'd feel a lot better.