The new computer






As stated in the comic, the awesome fan hax0r jax sent me a message in facebook shortly after my computer died, saying he had an extra that he was using as a Minecraft server. I actually had several offers for various computer parts from others (thanks guys, you know who you are), but Joshua here offered first, and a full computer at that! A bit of messaging later, and a large, heavily dented, cut-open-by-customs box had arrived. Naturally, the cat decided to "help" me with the box. Or attack the Metroid Joshua taped to it, I'm not sure which. The cardboard box, that has a printout of a metroid taped to it, sitting in Kabutroid's living room. The sidecut is a picture of our cat Nikita sitting on the box.
Pictures unfortunately don't depict it that well, but trust me, it was well and truly banged up. Tons of dents or bent sections of the case, the front cover was pulled off and... yeah, it was just one of those 'shake your head in disbelief' type situations. Customs in their infinite wisdom decided to cut open the box, remove most of the packing, unsurprisingly find nothing illicit (assumingly tearing the shit out of everything in the process), then just... not bother putting any of the packing material inside to keep the computer safe. Thanks guys. A closeup of the computer, with the face removed. The outer casing is bent away from the corner.
As you can see, the CPU fan and heat sink was torn off, the bottom of the DVD drive either fell, snapped, or was pulled off by Customs, and the video card was no longer in its slot. The clips for the heat sink/fan were broken, so I replaced that. One of the sticks of RAM is also not working, but even with 1 gig of ram, this thing still beats the everloving piss out of my old computer. Said RAM however will eventually be replaced, but I can quite easily work with what I've got for the time being. Just... just a mess of wire and parts. The inside of a computer, with some parts generally not being where they're supposed to be.
However, some swapping needed to be done, since a DVD drive is still kinda useful. Due to the fact that there was only one IDE slot, and bizarrely my 5 1/4" drive, 3.5" drive, and zip drive weren't SATA. I did however cram all of those into there without hooking them up, if not only to fill in the holes in the front of the case. The IDE slot went to the hard drive and DVD drive. I plan to get a second hard drive to once again have a dual-boot system (although Steam is available in Linux now, Audiosurf... and pretty much any other games I have or want to play, are not). Naturally, anything else I get for the computer will be SATA. The two computers beside eachother and opened up. Several hard drives are sitting on one of the casing sides.
And here we have the re-assembled computer in all its glory. I was for a short time contemplating swapping the cases too, however after discovering how much of a pain in the ass it was to try to pull the motherboard out of the old case (and keep track of the million cables plugged into everything from all directions), I decided that the banged up case is good enough. At the bare minimum, it gives it character. I neatened up all the cables, got everything hooked up, and we had a new (to me), working computer that did indeed chew up my old computer and spit it out like it was being paid to do so. The computer set up neatly with all the wires and parts back in their place.
With the computer back in its rightful place (you can probably ignore the giant M16 ammo box down there... that's both empty, and in the process of becoming a geocache container. Or any of the rest of the crap, the computer room doubles as the storage room), I can once again go back to making comic strips, or just... using the computer. I actually came to the conclusion a while ago that DUE to the fact that my old computer was so very, very terrible and dying (I literally was unable to even watch a youtube video... I'd get maybe 3 frames a second. And that wasn't due to the internet speed), I was starting to just drift away from computer use in general. With an actual WORKING computer, I'm sure that trend will be turning itself right the hell around. And I can watch videos, or play games, or actually DO things again! WOOOOOH! Thanks a million again Joshua. You may well have saved Planet Zebeth. The computer setup, a brown wooden corner desk with two monitors, some general scatter on the desk, and the computer with a taped up faceplate is sitting under the desk.



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Doo de doo de doo... I like computering, I like computering, that's something I like, doo de doo de doo. Time to turn this sucker on and make some Zebethian progress.
Doo de dum de doo... pay no attention... to my scythe hands... I'm a .GOD... that's how this works... doo de doo de doo.
Now, I just need to wait for it to power... up? Peculiar, it's doing exactly NOT that. That's... problematic.
*clack*
*click*
Hours later
Well... it looks like the hard drives decided to kill eachother AGAIN... despite the fact that the RAID 1 setup was supposed to avoid EXACTLY that situation. Looks like it's completely dead this time. That's going to hinder... everything.
Eh, probably for the best... that stupid black case blended in under the table so much I kept kicking the damned thing, which is totally not a half-assed explanation as to why it's never been visible. Guess I should post to the site from Daemona's computer that it finally up and died.

Several days later
Dum de dum de doo... totally not stabbing through the laptop... this is possible... doo de dum de dum... Oh hey, someone messaged me. Man, who'd message ME? Let's see what we've got here...
hax0r jax
Your crap computer is crap, and you should be ashamed to have owned it. I will trade you one response with your address for one computer which will chew up and spit out your old one like it was being paid to do so.
Dramatization: Message may not have been exactly as depicted
One horrendous mail service and severely dented, but thankfully still functional computer later...
Well... evidently he was being literal. Mental note, never piss off the computer.
*crunch* *munch*
Dramatization: Computer may not have been an evil, sentient being bent on destruction
But seriously, an absolutely crazy amount of thanks goes out to Joshua, aka hax0r jax. I honestly couldn't tell you when I would have been able to cobble together a replacement computer, and he goes and offers to send me a replacement. Now THAT'S what I call a Zebeth fan! THANKS MAN!





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