Know the rules

I got home late tonight. It's starting to get hectic at work again...

RyanC was done with dinner and was already eating grapes. He had pushed the chair to the kitchen sink area and climbed on top of the chair to help grandma wash grapes and eats them right there. He gave me this big smile as he quickly stuffed another grape into his mouth. Usually he comes running towards me to give me a hug as I get home. No hug for daddy until he got done with the grapes. AidanC was in the swing and giggled/smiled as I played with him a little. It's always nice to see da boys in a happy mood.

I told wife that JAM , who lives near by, needs my help with installing his new computer tonight so I have to go over after dinner.

Wife asked "Don't you have fat camp tonight?"
I said "Yeah, but I am not going."
She responded "That's right."

I know the rules. I can go to fat camp but just not every week. :)

Then wife asked "Why doesn't JAM know how to put together a computer?"
I clarified "He has never done it before and he also bought a different memory than what he was suppsoed to get to save money so I need to bring mine over just in case."
She commented "I thought engineers would know how to buy the right components."

I thought back to the time when wife bought the right potable water expansion tank without matching the detailed spec and decided to ask wife about dinner instead.

After dinner I headed over to JAM's to help setup his system. It turns out that he already had most of the connections done. We double-checked the work and decided to plug the power. The first push on power button resulted in nothing. Dead silence. Well, maybe not dead silence since we hear a light squeak. I was starting to think maybe he has a bad power supply since they usually fail more often than other components. Yet I noticed the motherboard's green light was on so that seemed unlikely.

After spending 15 minutes checking more connections and unplugging some other components, we dicussed moving the supply to another machine to make sure it's really working right but thought we would measure the voltage output first. While JAM went to get his digital volt meter (I don't even have one yet), I decided to try a few more things and check a few cables. That's when I noticed the 4-pin power connector had two branches on this power supply and the 2nd branch was hiding behind the CPU fan that I couldn't see from where I had been sitting. Hmm... that's weird. I pulled it out to exam them and found one had label and one didn't. The one without label was plugged in. The one that said "P2" (I assume that meant power-supply connection #2) was not. I plugged in the P2 connection, turned on the power and tada! The fans came on and the machine started booting. I felt like an idiot for not catching this sooner. Well, I am used to this since I do this a lot at work and still get paid for it...

It turns out that JAM got lucky and his memory works fine on this motherboard. He saved $80-100 by buying this out-of-spec memory. Well, if he had listened to my warning about recent memory price hikes a few weeks back then he could have paid the same amount for faster memory -- just like mine. Timing is important... just like knowing when to ask about going to fat camp.

As I left for home, I looked at the time (30 minutes after fat camp starts) and wondered how the guys were doing. Maybe next week...