Week 51: The Quest for Ultimate Nerdiness

Week 51: December 17th-23rd, 2023

According to my sister, I officially became a nerd this week. I officially began my journey to build my own PC and have apparently renounced all claims to non-nerdiness. As a Christmas present, my sister and my brother-in-law got me a mini bundle from Microcenter that includes a AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, 16GB memory, and Asus TUF Gaming motherboard.

To complete my quest to reach ultimate nerd status, I had to gather the rest of the requirements to build a PC. My sister and I drove up to Tustin to Micro Center, which is also known as "nerd heaven," or the "promised land."

It was kind of a gloomy day heading up to Tustin, but at least it wasn't raining. Thankfully, there wasn't any traffic either. After we parked, I almost fell wanting to skip inside because I was so excited. I am pretty sure my sister and I were the only women in the entire store, apart from one mother/son duo. I felt many eyes on us as we browsed, but all of the employees were incredibly helpful and surprisingly not condescending, which was appreciated. I half expected to need to prove my intelligence when asking for help finding parts, but everyone was very respectful and patient, even when I proved my intelligence tenfold by saying "Can you help me find a box?" with no details. Just box. Thanks! I am just a girl.

Don't worry, I gave the guy more details after some clarifying questions were asked about what kind of box I needed. The box that has the PC Case I need.

The entrance to the Holy Land

With the expert help of my incredibly nerdy family, and after many "Oohs" and "Aahs" browsing the massive selection at Micro Center, I ended up getting a Lian Li O11 Air case, a Noctua CPU cooler, Superflower power supply, and a bunch of Arctic case fans. I'll be using some hand-me-downs from my sister for my monitor and GPU until I get my own as well.

The retail therapy didn't stop with me. My sister also got a new CPU, the Ryzen 7, and picked up a massive 3D printer for my brother-in-law. It has been such a fun addition to their already super nerdy and fun house. (They even have a temperature controlled server room now after their renovations! Talk about nerd central, am I right?).

The 3D printer barely fit in the cart!

The floor model of the 3D printer was printing a gingerbread man!

I have yet to actually build the PC, and will need to enlist my sister and my brother-in-law for their help as I continue my quest toward Ultimate Nerdiness, but I will provide an update when I do. I'm super excited to finally have a machine that will be able to run bigger games like Planet Zoo, Cities Skylines 1 and 2, and more. I'll obviously also continue my many hours of Sims building.

On the way home, we stopped at Cream Pan Bakery for some treats. After all, what more does a girl need after some serious hard work and retail therapy? Obviously we deserved a little treat to get through the rest of the day.

The modest exterior of Cream Pan Bakery

The Cream Pan Christmas cakes were so cute!

Three Delicious Azuki Cream!

Bonus: This week I also went up to San Jose to see my best friend Ricky for a few days before Christmas. (I know, right? I did a lot of new stuff!) We went to AYCE sushi at Kenzo Sushi, hung out with a couple of his friends, and played a lot of Nintendo Switch games. We also fangirled over the new Percy Jackson and the Olympians tv series that premiered on Disney+. I cannot wait for the next episode and I am so happy with the casting and production of the show so far.

This week reminded me that being a nerd is fun, not that I'd forgotten or anything, but it is especially fun when you're surrounded by people who love the same things as you do.

See you next week, the last week of the year!