This morning I had no impending work. No work on the shed until lunchtime. No paying work scheduled until next Wednesday. The world was my St Helen’s Shoebox Oyster. Here is a picture of my lovely teapot tea and sourdough toast with loganberry jam breakfast.

I began reading Kate Remembered - which is great, because Katherine Hepburn has always done it for me.

I decided that after my kicking back breakfast, I would finally devote some time to my DAW - after neglecting it since the power supply blew up. M was out. I set everything up in my workroom, got my screwdriver ready, and unpacked the power supply from the box. Took the sides off the computer case. Hooked up the power supply to the hard drives. Went to hook up the main power supply plug to the motherboard. And choked. And choked again. I have to say that I wept with fury. For whatever reason, when my old power supply spat it (under warranty) I took it back.

The guy at PC was apologetic and offered me a new power supply. Now, I had researched what power supply to get for my whole audio rig, because I don’t know much about it. I figured out what was best for me to get, and got it. So when this guy offered to replace my dead one (which is no longer in stock) and said ‘I use this one, it’s excellent and very quiet’ - I, in my naive girly way, said ‘Great, I’ll take that then.’

Let this be a lesson. One that I should have learnt by now. Whenever anything seems too easy when you’re getting something replaced that died while under warranty, and you’re getting it replaced with a different brand… and whenever the guy (and it’s usually a guy) that’s dealing with you says ‘I use this one, it’s excellent etc. etc.’ - STOP. THINK. Even get them to write down the model number of what they’re offering you, and go away and google it.

In my case, I built my computer, used it four times, packed it away for almost four months and the first time I used it, the power supply died. So stupidly, when the guy gave me a power supply that suited a Pentium 4 motherboard, I didn’t say;
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve got an AMD board, you’ll have to find a different one that suits my rig.”
I said (cringingly);
“Great! Thanks very much!”
And drove an hour home.

Now (having thus far stopped myself from making a hysterically screaming phone call (because some of this situation is due to my naïveté), I am going to re-research what I need and what suits my computer, and then call them back and state what I require.
Someday I’ll learn. Hopefully.