Issues, Man, Issues.

Our computer has 'em.

For weeks, we've been plagued by a particular kind of bizarre crash, causing us no end of OMGWTF.

The computer will be running fine; everything is working, when suddenly, it freezes - I mean like it got sprayed with liquid nitrogen - and the hard drive activity light comes on, but the hard drive isn't spinning.

Lights are on; nobody home.

Sooooo, seeing as my research on the 'net has come up with bupkis to explain this, I tried replacing things.

The problem is, it keeps faking me out.

For example:

The first time it happened, I thought it was maybe overheated. My evidence? Turning it off and letting it sit for a few minutes produced a period of usability, after which it would lock up again.

...Maybe the CPU cooling unit is all bogus, or something. So I swapped it out for a new one.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Checked - just to be sure - for spyware and viruses; nope, nada. Maybe it's not the HSF that's out, maybe the processor is bad, hmmm? Swap it.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Maybe it's the memory. Swapped out the memory.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Maybe it's a device driver, because it often crashes while Windows is trying to initialize the drivers during load-up. The solution? Remove and uninstall the offending devices.

My video capture card? Gone. Sound and video? Replaced. Network card? Swapped.

Riiiight.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

Lowered the bus speed - and processor clock speed on the motherboard - to see what would happen.

Everything worked great!

...For about 3 days. Then, boom, down it goes again, same exact error.

So, being the last two components that haven't already been swapped in the ENTIRE FRIGGING MACHINE, it's either the motherboard, or the hard disk.

So, tomorrow I am going to pull the entire machine down to the bare case, and rebuild it on another motherboard, which will no doubt be accompanied with much swearing. Much MORE, if it still doesn't work.

I don't have a spare hard drive to swap it out with. Grrrrr.

Wish me luck that the mobo swap works.

In the meantime, I tried a food experiment - about which I was somewhat unsure - tonight, and it worked out well beyond my wildest dreams, so I will share it with you.

I wanted to make a vegetable stir-fry, with green beans, carrots, snapeas, red bell pepper, cauliflower florets, broccoli florets, and asparagus, but when I went in the fridge to find the plum sauce I would normally use for such an endeavor, *pause for gasps of shock* we were all out.

I wasn't gonna even try the round trip to Burnham to get more, so I was forced to improvise. I had a Chinese sweet chili sauce, but Tara's a hot-food wuss, so I had to dilute it, and I wanted a more fruity flavor to it anyway. So, I dug into the fridge and found a bottle of Manischewitz blackberry dessert wine, which seemed like a great find, and decided to make a creative solution to my problem.

What a great idea.

I took about altogether 3 cups of coarsely chopped veggies, tossed them in my skillet with a bit of margarine, and let them get started cooking.

Mixed in a small bowl about 1/2 cup each of the wine and the sweet/hot chili sauce. (You will, if you try this, want to stir this with a fork or whisk quite thoroughly. The chili sauce tends to separate at first.)

I know, it sounds crazy, and if you try it before cooking, will taste pretty crazy, too. But, I am an adventurer.

Once the veggies were starting to soften up just a bit - you want them still crisp, but well cooked - I added the sauce mix to the pan, and stirred the veggies around to make sure they were all well coated. After a couple more minutes of stirring and simmering, I turned off the heat, and we were ready to go.

It worked out wonderfully; the chili added a good bite to it without being hot, and the alcohol cooked right out of it, leaving the veggies with a strong but not overpowering fruit flavor.



Because you know I love you guys, I felt like sharing.

Cope. I watched a marathon of cooking shows today.

I mean a marathon - we watched Food Network Challenge, Iron Chef, and Emeril Live! all in a row. Emeril finished me off; I didn't even get all the way through his show before I was in the kitchen, LMAO.

This is why I try to avoid the Food Network; they make me want to experiment, and while the results are usually good, every once in a while you get a flyer, you know?

I have to say, though, that if you've never watched Iron Chef, that show is awesome. This was the American version, but it's the same show, just in English. The challenger today - who won, by the way - used some crazy shit in his kitchen. By which I mean a food-capable laser printer, a class 4 burning laser, a tank of liquid nitrogen, and a genetic-testing kit as a delivery system.

Wild. But the food looked great, and the judges liked it, so, there you go I guess.

Anyway, you might give my stir-fry sauce a try. Manischewitz dessert wines aren't that expensive, and I recall paying like $2 for the sweet chili sauce at Aldi's. It definitely complimented the vegetables more than I had expected; both of us were sort of expecting "edible, but let's not do it again," but what we got was "Damn, that was tasty."

"I love it when a plan comes together."


[*Edited to add: the word "florets" behind "broccoli," because Samara demanded it.*]