Monday, December 2, 2019

how many times has my computer shut off right after i've sent something to the cops?

i was just about to get started on the next thing, and the machine went into a reboot loop. what do you do?

reboot loops are nasty things, but there's four reasons this happens:

1) your bios is fucked.
2) the circuitry in your board is fucked
3) it's overheating, turning off, overheating - that would be the least bad option
4) bad ram

i mentioned i was kind of sleepy, anyways. so, i let it cycle for a while, turned everything off and went to bed early.

when i woke up, it stopped cycling, but i was back to the pause screen i cannot see, which i must again suggest is profound in weird ways. so, i took everything back out again, and unplugged the bios.

this time, i was able to isolate the issue to a questionable stick of ram. luckily, i had a replacement stick. and, i'm back up.

i've been dealing with random restarts for quite a while now, so a bad stick of ram is not that out to lunch. i can believe that.

but, why does this always happen when it does?

it seemed for a while like they (read: the cops) were to trying to take me out by breaking my boot sector, but when they realized i can fix that, they seemed to target the bios. i've got a fresh stick of ram in there, and let's hope it's stable for a while. but, i'm still more than a little uneasy.

the oiprd wants me to use dropbox instead of google drive. that's fine. and, i'll need to call the dmv before they close.

i didn't want to go anywhere today anyways. so, i got some sleep, and maybe lost a few hours, at most.