Teh Epik Master Plan Part III + I've Survived

Posted 6 years ago2018-06-15 20:04:01 UTC
Admer456 Admer456If it ain't broken, don't fox it!
This is a double journal. ;)

Teh Epik Master Plan Part III

On the 23rd November 2017, I convinced my dad to let me use his debit card. Then I bought myself the Valve Complete Pack for just €10,52.
Success. However, the quest still continues as I'm yet to open my own bank account.

And this year, it might finally happen.

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(man, I've got Convertible Marks, pfennigs, euros, euro cents, Canadian cents, and Croatian lindens, LOL)

So, I've been collecting money for the past 5 years for my new PC, and then something unexpected happened.
My aunt from the US sent me *$20! Now I can buy an SSD alongside the 1TB HDD, a Ryzen 5 1600 instead of the 1400, and a 1050 Ti instead of the 1050. :D
(maybe extra 8GB of RAM, 16 in total)

I knew that this day would come. The day when my patience and perseverance finally pay off.

So, my plan is to spend a part of it on the PC, and save the rest to my soon-to-be bank account (otherwise my parents would keep using me as a bank, like they've been doing for the past 7 years). The days of lag and global warming caused by my laptop will finally be gone, and I'll enter a new age, a better age.

I'll likely re-purpose the 2005 HP Compaq as a home server or something. My 2007 laptop will finally get retired. The grandpa deserves it after all these years.
It will be a dream come true. Funnily enough, June is the only month where I have dreams anyway. I've dreamt in the past about buying the parts, I've dreamt about taking the part boxes to my dad's car, I've dreamt about using it. Now it's time for those 3 to become a reality. For some, it's pride month, but for me it's the dream month.

I've Survived

6th of June, 2018, 10:25
My IT professor says "Please don't make any trouble in the classroom, I'll be away for 10 minutes."
And then all hell breaks loose. I even drew UwU on the board.

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approx. 11:05
The professor returns and the board is cleaned. "Alright, since we don't have much time, I'll take a brief look at your presentations, and I'll see if I can bring 2 students so they can actually present what they chose."
The classmate, whose IT homework I've done yet again and again, got an 5 (or an A, if you will). Then I knew I could sleep in peace, knowing that he doesn't hate me and that my reputation is not yet ruined. As for me, IT was already concluded as a 5, so it wouldn't matter even if I got a 1.
The professor finished taking quick looks at the students' presentations. He asked: "Alright, who wants to present us their homework?"
I raised my hand almost instantly. "Alright Admer, come on up.", he said.

My presentation was a history of Microsoft operating systems. At one point, I reached Windows ME.

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The text doesn't matter, so I won't really translate it. I was talking about its (in)stability and I briefly mentioned Windows 2000.
And then, something unexpected happened.

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"Oh, I apologise, we're having some technical problems."

The professor started laughing so hard. And my classmates thought it was an actual BSOD, so they got worried.

11:40
IT class ended, and I was told I won't have any further classes for that day. My summer break had officially begun.

7th June 2018

I arrived to school at 9 in the morning. I had to meet with the professor and the principal. We went to the ceremonial awarding, and I happened to have won 2nd place on an IT competition hosted by the Pedagogical Institute. They also hosted the awarding. It felt nice to be a part of it.

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And that's it. I'm free until September. :3

*It's not actually $20, I just won't tell the true value. :P

4 Comments

Commented 6 years ago2018-06-15 22:26:57 UTC Comment #101260
Admer-able!

I can somewhat relate too your story. I received my first "beefy" computer when I was 14 after years of dreaming of one - I've used a Pentium 2 until that point since I was 6. I remember it even now: a Pentium Dual-Core, 1GB of RAM, Nvidia 7600GS. I remember that in the next few months I had basically become an information sponge - learning whatever there is to learn about using the internet, discovering mapping and TWHL and other communities. Some of the members here had crazy amounts of patience because - here I was, a foreigner with a passion for technology, not knowing English very well and certainly not acquainted with the way of ze interwebs. Those were some of my most enthusiastic times, I sometimes try to remember my enthusiasm when the gates of the internet opened to me to try and apply it to new domains of my life.
I remember that I soon knew that my configuration wasn't really capable for the latest titles, so I began collecting whatever pocket change I could over the course of more than a year, and then bought myself 2GB of RAM, an Ati Radeon HD4850 and a new power supply. 2 years later I applied the same pattern in order to buy myself a camera.

I encourage you to continue with this behavior. I feel like an impatient man, but those years of having to have patience for so long for a thing balances things a little bit. You will find that most of your peers will become really just creatures of the moment, triggered by stimuli but not looking into the future. I can't say I'm not like that, I've just started to be conscious of that. Us millennials, and especially those born after 2000 had the bad luck of having their attention-span really fucked up by the social media.

One another advice: IIRC you're about 16, read the heck out of every book that you find interesting. I can't believe how much free time I had back then and wasted a lot of it. At about your age I remember I discovered League of Legends, and got so hooked on it that I used to play at least 4 matches per day (and some matches can last an hour). That's the most I knew.. I had not mentor and as every kid, didn't listen too much to my parents.Be careful with things that capture your attention too much, but give you very little over time. Sure, it's important to have fun and make friends. But I guess you understand what I'm talking about.

Congrats for your effort once again, keep us updated!
Commented 6 years ago2018-06-16 04:02:16 UTC Comment #101262
Nothing like the feeling of unpacking boxes and putting together a new machine, hooking it all up, and having it boot for the first time. I've only done it twice but each time was a massive upgrade in what games I could play and what software I could use. UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!

Just uh, make sure you put the standoff screws in your motherboard where applicable (A lot of more modern designs aren't using them as much anymore). I almost fried my first build by neglecting to do that. (I thought they were extras, didn't realize they were a special kind!)
Commented 6 years ago2018-06-16 11:07:53 UTC Comment #101263
One another advice: IIRC you're about 16, read the heck out of every book that you find interesting.

Speaking of that, I got a book about what Bosnia and Herzegovina was like in 1896 (as part of the reward on the IT competition). I'll definitely read it.

About the PC, I think it's good luck in disguise. I mean, 5 years ago I really wanted an AMD A4-6300, AMD Radeon HD 6450 and 2 or 4 GB of DDR3 RAM. I was pretty much just going for the cheapest things I could find on PcPartPicker, not caring at all about the motherboard, PSU and the case.
2 years after that, I went for something similar: AMD A4-6300, AMD R7 250, 4GB of RAM. In 2015, I wanted an AMD X4-860K, nVidia GTX 750 Ti, and 4GB of RAM. In 2017, I finally decided to choose something more relevant: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, RX 460 or GTX 1050, 8GB of RAM etc.

And this year, I think some of the parts will be the following:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 8, 12 or 16 GB (200KM, 300KM vs. 400KM, we'll see)
GPU: GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti (330KM vs. 470KM, we'll see)
Storage: 1TB HDD and a 250GB SSD

As for the motherboard, PSU and case, I've talked to my seller about it. Cases are one of the most repetitive things in this country. In every shop, it's either 3 or 4 unique cases. <-<
And good PSUs are rare, as most shops only have ones from an unknown brand, and are mostly 300W. Motherboards aren't as rare, but there are usually no quality ones unless you really invest into them.

Luckily we managed to find an Asus Prime B350-Plus, which to me seems good. It even has a PS/2 port which I find surprising, but that's good as well. I won't have to buy a new keyboard. ;)

@JeffMOD
Thanks for the advice, I'll keep that in mind.
Commented 6 years ago2018-06-16 21:48:57 UTC Comment #101265
And, here's an update:

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Well, I'm thinking either AC or BC, 16GB. What do you think?
I initially went for a Samsung 850 EVO (250GB) but it's a bit too expensive.

The MS PSU is a placeholder until I can find the price of an EVGA 450 B1 in my country. MS Industrial's PSUs are plain unreliable, and they're like a disease which roams nothing but the lands of former Yugoslavia (at least as far as I can tell). Their cases seem to be fine though.

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