A fun evening

r Jilly's friends, Jilly's family and Jilly's online buddies

Last night Simon was at his barn and I did several things during the evening. It began well. First I watched Eastenders which I always enjoy. It's all kicking off there as they say! Then I rang my Dad to thank him for my Slankets and Nordic slippers.  Then I attempted to take out the stupid graphics card from Joshua's old PC. The evening went down hill from that point.

I had Googled it to try and learn what to do and to be honest it did look fairly easy. (See video here) I undid the 2 screws on the side of the case and then spent 10 minutes trying to get the wretched thing off.  Ok, I was finally in.  Now the You Tube videos I had watched all said it was the bottom card.  I have to say that it didn't look anything like the bottom one that is in my machine but hey ho, that is the one they said.  Come to think of it, the one on the video didn't look like this one either.

Now on the video I watched he pointed to a tiny screw near the back of the case and said you undo that and then at the other end of the card there is a tiny lever which you flick up and then you just pull it out.  Why do Merikans pronounce that word as le- verr when in English its lee- ver?

Back to the sorry tale.......... Point 1,  mine didn't seem to have a screw, just a tiny rivet thingy. It also didn't appear to have a lever.  After much pondering I figured out that I would have to remove the 2 screws on the back panel of the case.  Bingo!   Excitement, I had it out.

It wasn't a bloody graphics card it was the doodah that you plug a phone line into!  Shows how old this machine is!  So, where is the graphics card?  There doesn't seem to be anything else. Oh wait..........  I could see some sort of card thingy tucked down the side of the very big card thingy.  Now I was guessing the big card thingy with all its blobby bits of metal is the mother board.  (Why a mother board?  Why not a father board or a parent board?)  So maybe the smaller card thingy is the graphics card?  It seemed to be fixed top and bottom by little white clips. On further investigation they flip up and down........ yee ha, I was getting excited........ I am so clever..... I can do this......yes, yes, I had it out...............

It didn't look like the one on the mans video.  It says on it, 256mb DDR that means its the memory card doesn't it? 256mb?  How old is this stupid thing?  More to the point just where is the stupid, poxy, graphics card?

I searched high and low, doesn't take long in a box approximately 18 inches tall!  I have concluded that there isn't one.  There just isn't.  Is that possible?  Did they not have graphics cards 7 years ago? 

So there you have it, half of the evening was wasted, Joshua's old computer is in bits and I don't have a graphics card to try out in mine. So I'm back to square one.  Do we buy a graphics card and attempt to fit it in my machine and hope that it cures whatever it is that ails it or do we just consign it to the dump and buy a new one?

After all that I needed some relaxation.  I knew exactly what to do. I got out the wool and the crochet hook and my plan was that I would crochet along with Dixie.  Lets start with video 1. Ok, 5 minutes down and I had managed to tie a slip knot.  Wretched thing kept ending up wrong.  Now wool around fingers to keep the tension....... and lets chain.

Twenty minutes later I had a chain.  It has big chains at the start and smaller ones in the middle, then big again.  Doesn't quite look like Dixies. Forty minutes later and I had this......

Don't frown at it. I'm not sure what it is either.  I was hot and bothered, stressed out and I needed a glass of the red stuff!  I have come to the conclusion that I don't have the required number of fingers. Maybe I will try again today.

When Simon got in at half past ten I was half way through a bottle of the red stuff and finally  felt relaxed.  I'm not a computer geek,  I'm no good at crochet, in future I'll just hit the bottle first and forget all these other stressful things.  Only joking.  

As you can see Simon was a fat lot of help with the computer.

Right I am off to start my half hour day now which hopefully will go better than yesterday.  

Note to self :-  Do not go out!

Just had a thought... I didn't use a green screw driver, didn't want it to explode, but as I hadn't got an orange one I used a black one..........I'm wondering if that is why it all went wrong?  If you don't get that you haven't watched the video.

Apologies for poor photos.