After school I raced up to Agro, the local hardware store, to pick up a few bits and pieces. Most notably, a Phillips head screwdriver and some cable ties, both for building my new computer. I dropped past Jusco to see Miyuki who was there, hooray, and I gave her the White Day present I'd bought her. Better late than never, hehe. After that I had a quick doctor's appointment (nothing major, thankfully!) and zoomed home, getting in just before 6pm. I had wanted to pick up some dinner at Paone but didn't really have time, as the couriers were coming any time between 6pm and 9pm. I didn't want to miss them so decided to head straight home instead.

True to their word, the couriers arrived just before 7pm with four enormous, heavy boxes of parts. I traded them for a wad of cash, stashed them in my dining room and then went out to get dinner. Haha, yes, I could actually wait to start playing with the bits and pieces until after I'd gotten food. I'm very proud of myself. And as a side benefit, my favourite checkout lady was there, and I had a good conversation with her :) Once I'd eaten though, it was all on! I ripped through the boxes, digging out parts and gleefully opening their boxes up too, throwing manuals and plastic bags of screws everywhere. After goggling at the size of the video card (seriously, they get bigger every time I build a new computer), I eventually I got myself sorted out and got down to building.

Having built a computer before, with the same case no less, it was a lot easier this time, and only took about half the time. The case is really good but has some annoying quirks that came flooding painfully back into my mind as I started working. The power supply would barely screw in due to its slightly unusual design not quite fitting in the chassis, the graphics card wouldn't slot in until I unscrewed and removed the 'tool-less card clip attachment' (how ironic!) and the front panel spacer (where the DVD drive goes) couldn't be removed without taking the door off, despite the case manufacturer taking special care to add a hole into the case to allow the unscrewing of the spacer. Go figure.

Thankfully I'd overcome all these things last time so I already knew the quick fixes (or when to just brute force it!) To my delight, I noticed that three improvements have been made to the case since I bought the previous one - a removable hard drive 'cage' has been added, the slightly strange tool free 5.25 inch bay locks have been replaced with ones that actually work and the similarly strange hard drive tool-free locks have been removed, allowing the use of screws instead. So all in all, the case wasn't too hard. Most of the other parts were easy enough too, although I did stumble on the processor heatsink and fan installation though. It was kinda strange and the instructions were hard to follow, but I worked it out eventually :)

So about 4 hours after I opened the first box, I was ready to turn it on. To my infinite relief, it worked first time. Well, it didn't blow up, anyway, which is a good start in my book. Unfortunately, nothing came up on the monitor, but I realised that was because the monitor source was set to RGB component cables, not DVI. That was easy to fix and bam, up came the Windows installation - w00t! So that's that. It's formatting the hard drive at the moment which is going to take nearly 2 hours, so I'm off to bed. It's already far too late, haha. I'll see what it's doing tomorrow morning before school.

I won't get the chance to play with it now until after badminton tomorrow night, unfortunately, as I desperately need to head to Himeji after school tomorrow to try to buy that new suit! Tomorrow I'm going to be reduced to wearing the trousers I bought in Mont Bell! While they're certainly stylish and formal enough for school, I feel kinda strange about wearing them given that I snowboarded in them in Hokkaido, haha. Anyway, ahhhh, good times. It feels so nice to have a real computer again. That cancerous new computer smell is just so damn good :D