Today, while I was bored, I decided to fiddle with my shit.

I stuck in another video card and magically it worked. So, now I have 3 monitors. But that's not the fun. The fun is when I tried this card last time, it didn't work. Now it does.

It gets funner. I bought a TV/FM Tuner & Capture card some time ago, just before christmas I guess. I got it, installed it. It "worked" but I wouldn't say it was anywhere near a top performer. In fact, it wasn't even good enough to use at all. It captured fine and dandy, but if I tried to just watch tv in a window larger than the default (about 320x240, tiny) it would get really slow, horrid and out of sync with the audio. So I figured I'd contact support, maybe I got a faulty card, maybe they'd have a 'cure'. After a few days and a few attempts at getting it to be usable I gave up, got an RMA form from them and didn't fill it out.

The card sat on my desk being shuffled around throughout all my papers, food, pop cans etc. out in the bare. Unwrapped, unprotected (egad!). So today I figure, while I'm fiddling around, maybe I'll test this thing once again. Stuck it in (the only slot I have... ouch) and booted winders and... it worked. I didn't install any new drivers, I used the same old program that it came with. And it worked. Full screen, smooth, nice. What the fiddlesticks? Talk about quirky.

So now I just have to figure out why my video-in on my GeForce4 card stopped working, but I think I know what that is (and was actually caused by me in my attempt to get above tuner working 3 months ago.) Aside from that, everything seems fit for fondling.

And yes, I have too much stuff in my computer.

So, what is it with computers that make them stupid? Why can't things just "click"? And why is it that when I leave a part out in the open, outside of those protective little baggies, they seem to work? I bet my broken ati card will work fine under windows again too, now that it's been in my Linux box for 8 months. But you know, it can stay where it is because my GeForce4 is much^32 nicer.

Here's whats in and around my box;

• ECS K7S5A (Socket A Motherboard, onboard LAN, Audio, USB, etc.)
• AMD Duron 1.1Ghz CPU
• 640 MB PC133 RAM
• Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 Soundcard
• Adaptec AHA2940AU SCSI Card
• iLink 3 Pord Firewire Card
• MSI 128MB GeForce 4, Dual Head, ViVo
• S3 Virge868 (3rd display)
• LeadTek WinFAST TV2000XP (Tuner/Capture)
• Yamaha 8x8x24 CDRW (SCSI)
• Sony 2.4x CDRom (SCSI)
• Compaq 2x CDRom (External SCSI)
• Western Digital 40 GB Harddrive
• Maxtor 80 GB Harddrive
• Logitech QuickCam Web
• Wacom 4"x5" Graphire Tablet w/pen & mouse
• Canon CanoScan FB630Ui Scanner
• Acom Data Compact Flash Read/Writer
• 17" Xtreme Monitor
• 15" Compaq Monitor
• 14" TTX Monitor
• Logitech Cordless Keyboard
• Logitech Wired Wheel Mouse
• Coffee Warmer

Man, what a lot of crap. And amazingly, it all works together. Anyways, I'm sure some of you have geeky computer experiences... spew them, I need to giggle.