Saturday (25 Dec) - Merry Christmas!

Saturday (25 Dec) - Merry Christmas!

When we last met Wild was 45% of the way to level 84 and fighting for time to at least keep up with Sis, who had recently DINGED! to 84 and still had the lead on the race to 85. That was on Wednesday after maintenance ended.

On Thursday Wild had the whole morning to push to level 84, but his game time was cut short by yet another obstacle. While questing in Uldum my UPS suddenly yelped and started battering my ears with the high pitched whine that meant "Power Surge!" Instantly, everything connected to the UPS (and it was studded with the maximum number of power cables it could handle - ten) went dead. My first thought was that power went out over the entire area - we were getting an insane amount of rain for our sunny locale and there were streets underwater and potential mudslides. But it wasn't an area blackout. It wasn't even a blackout of my house, as everything except the equipment connected to the UPS was still powered. No problem with the circuit box. Ok, so this was caused by something attached to the UPS. Was the UPS itself the culprit? The steady whine could also be a dead UPS battery. I unplugged everything. I cleared the warning whine and turned the UPS back on. It worked fine and reported that the battery was fine as well.

So, I started plugging things back in. First, the modem and router and other associated network/internet stuff. All working, as confirmed through the Mrs computer, which is in another room. My older backup computer also powered up and gave me the thumbs up.

My main computer was dead. Couldn't get a peep out of it. Changed the power cord, hoping against hope. Nope, still no power. I popped open the side panel, not knowing what to expect. Nothing looked obviously fried; nothing was burning or smelled like it had been. Best guess was that the power supply was toast. What it might have taken with it when it died I wouldn't know until I tried a new power supply. Only I was fresh out of power supplies. Well, almost. I thought about swapping in the power supply from the older computer. There was a risk that all that would accomplish was me blowing up another power supply - if there was some other electrical issue besides the power supply. Then I wouldn't have either computer running. The other issue was that the main computer needed a power supply rated for at least 600w to keep the CPU cooled, and the older computer was only rated to 450w. Even if it worked, I would be risking frying my CPU. No deal.

My main computer is over two years old, but has never had any trouble running WoW. I really couldn't afford a new one, so I had to know what could be salvaged from this one. I had had the computer built for me by a local computer store. Non-chain computer businesses come and go here - great deals, but rarely do they last long. This store, though, was still (amazingly) in business. Of course the computer was out of warranty, but I knew the people there and knew they would do a good job checking everything out.

I took the computer to them and they told me they were (of course) rushing to get orders out before Christmas and that it would be a couple of days until they could get to it. Uh, I reminded him, a "couple of days" is Saturday - I got a blank look - Christmas day? Oh! Right. It'll be early next week. I left the computer with them.

Back at home, I considered my older computer. It's two years older than my dead one, which makes it four years old. The CD/DVD drive only works when it feels up to it, and sometimes the external connections forget to work. But the innards were still sound, even though the components were dated. I don't run anything more strenuous on it than letting Happy check the Auction House, though. The addons hadn't been updated and there were probably two maintenance patches that weren't yet loaded. Well, let's see what it will do.

Well, it worked. Kinda sorta, anyway. Loading times were long. Transitioning through a portal or a phased area (which is essentially a portal) could hang up the game. Once in game it would play smoothly for decent periods, and then lag would kick in and everything took twice as long to do. Wild did his best to persevere. Sis was in game with Wild on occasion and we'd keep each other amused while we plowed through our separate quest lines. Sometime on Thursday night Wild finally made it to level 84. Sis finished her evening without dinging to level 85 and was would be off visiting for the weekend.

There was more plowing to do on Friday morning, with Wild making it 28% of the way to level 85. We had visitors of our own coming Friday afternoon, and that ended Wild's sojourn.

Wild got a call early in the afternoon on Friday to say that they'd had a chance to check out my PC. Yes, they said, the power supply was in fact dead. The cause of the power supply to fail, though, was the CPU fan. It had failed, and the heat generated had apparently set something off which torched the power supply. The good news was that everything else seemed to have escaped damage and was working fine. The great news was that they could have it fixed that same day.

I was able to slip away and retrieve the fixed PC before our quests arrived, but I did not have time to get it hooked back up. Time for some Christmas Eve partying and Christmas morning ... more to follow.