Rogue

This week sees the continuance of my ongoing polar effect on electronic equipment and household appliances.

Follow up:

Around the time of MonsterLAN XIV I had just purchased a heater to prevent me losing feeling in my fingers during long nights in the desert cold. All was well and I was enjoying the return of dexterity immensely, however it appears that despite my best efforts to avoid it I still ended up with the heater and my TV on the same power circuit. Imagine my surprise several minutes later when I attempted to turn on my TV and a distinct 'bang' sound was heard followed by a very brief flash on the screen.

The TV no longer turns on. The curse has claimed another victim.

Then a couple of days ago I wanted to roast myself something edible for dinner. So I approached my oven, flicked on the gas, ignited it and... BOOM. One small fireball later I had a smoke filled kitchen, and an oven that looked like it had seen better days (including days where it hadn't had half the metal inside it bent outwards). It would appear I had just managed to also blow up my oven. One takeout meal later that leaves us at about;

• Curse: 3549
• Rogue: 0

In an effort to salvage some semblance of civilisation back into my life; today I finally got around to replacing the soundcard in my PC. For those playing at home, you might recall that at MLXIV I was bemoaning a lack of sound on my PC. That was because I use the onboard sound of my motherboard which was rather excellent with EAX, 5.1 and all the bells and whistles I needed. And my onboard sound was one of the only two devices available to test the audio feeds during setup.

CherryPopper attempted to explain later just why and how it's a bad thing to plug in a sound feed when I'm on a certain circuit, but I think I was busy crying on the inside about being now unable to play in BF2. It had something to do with a power feedback loop I think. Or maybe we needed a lightning bolt to the clocktower, I'm a little hazy which. The end result however, was a suspicious 'bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz' coming through the feed. After removing it and plugging my headphones back in - nothing. I (or rather, the people setting up the sound deck) had managed to destroy the onboard sound controller on my motherboard. Toasted.

So I've gone and bought one of these;

It's the first time I've actually bought a 'real' soundcard in all these years. Previously the AU$40.00 jobbie from the local computer store usually did the trick, and recently with better and better motherboards being on the market the onboard sound has been quite adequate. Now though, I'm going for something shiny. Hopefully it won't destroy my PC upon being installed - that'd be just rude.

Also I've picked up a digital TV tuner card to replace the smoking remains of my TV. I'm sick of not knowing what's happening in the world and being unable to say there is nothing on TV. Also now I'll be able to record shows to watch later automatically. It'll be neato.

that's all. peace out.