ok, my second computer (my server serving up my domain) died. i cracked it open today because i wanted to get to the bottom of the ear piercing high pitch coming out of that computer. and i found 2 things. the math coprocessor fan wasn't spinning (i took it apart, wd-40'd it and its fine now), but the high pitch noise was actually coming from the hard drive. i noticed that there was some loose power going to the hard drive as well, and playing with that when the computer wasn't smart. i did some serious damage to the hard drive. it won't boot any more. not much valueable stuff in that computer other than the 2000 pictures i've taken with my s230, the source code that ran the picture randomizer, and the asp script that ran the gallery. don't really feel like spending a few hours on both of those again. so even with minimal loss, it is still considerable. i hope i didn't damage anything that can't be recovered, at least partially. i'll have to stick that drive into my other computer when i get a chance to see if i can salvage anything.



what sucks is that the computer that crashed today was a computer that had the best parts available at the time. a $185 ASUS motherboard...that has been the source of all my problems, compared to the $125 MSI motherboard that looks generic in comparison is still performing flawlessly. i think once i finally get all the kinks out, it can still be a solid computer. for right now, it's dead. and random pic and the gallery will be down for a while.