PC Building Thoughts 2020

Prior to rebuilding my PC with new parts, my custom PC was assembled in 2007.

For a system to run a Core 2 Quad for 10 years, I have to give kudos to the manufacturers and my local and now defunct parts store for assembling. At the time, all PC’s were all just behind opaque cases and kept aside. Now custom built PC’s look more like gawdy, over the top cars with accent lighting and radiators. I’m old school. It runs, it is efficient, it doesn’t give up. Though with the introduction of new technology I feel more confident that systems get more powerful but will still lack in many ways.

When I built my PC in 2007, liquid cooling was more of those people who want to experiment with mineral oil, distilled water and nitrogen. Now all-in-one liquid cooling is common and custom liquid loops are an amateur’s reality. But for me, I’m tried and true with the air coolers. A heat sink strapped onto of a CPU with a fan cooling the entire thing. Simple as possible, very few parts to worry and it works in a lot of conditions. AIO coolers to me is still fairly new despite maturing in the last 8 years or so. A closed loop with liquid, a pump and a radiator. The only problem I see is quality, how reliable is that pump? How much will the radiator can wick? Biggest question since there is liquid involved, will it leak? Leaks can total an entire system by shorting out. That’s as I understand, which means I could lose hundreds of dollars on a system. While air cooling is cheap and does the same job with less parts. Living in Canada, the heat here isn’t so bad and water cooling is only if you want to push every single amount of performance to to the point where you are willing to void a warranty or two to get it. Which isn’t that smart especially living on a budget. This computer is the only computer I have to play games and do most of my work on. My laptop is used for portable work things when I can but I don’t use it as an everyday device to get the job done because I can’t game on a laptop.

Storage solutions now are pretty amazing. They’re fast and massive. My first PC before going custom was 40 GB in hard drive storage. My first custom at the start was 500 GB. Now there are drives a tenth of the size that carry 500 GB and can boot up in 10-30 seconds rather than 30-60 seconds. They’re about the same price as I bought my 500 GB hard drive but these solid state drives are more resilient to magnetic disturbance. If I put a magnet to my hard drive, my hard drive will probably no longer exist. Though the implementation of SSD’s, we not have more use for onboard memory. Which is a neat concept to have a compact storage drive integrated to the motherboard. However I still prefer have an accessible part to swap. When the day manufacturers make an SSD bay that’s like a hard drive, it would be revolutionary to me. Now a hard drive bay that can be disassembled and replace each SSD and plug it back in as one hard drive. For now, they’re provided as an integrated circuit or a box traditionally like a hard drive. Not much in between unless you get into third party and custom boards. I have a drive slot on my motherboard but it’s underneath a CPU cooler and a graphics card and I’m not fond of poking around these parts to install a drive. Unless they put the integrated slot to a port of the board that’s unused for anything or have it as a drive bay!

Boards, especially motherboards, aren’t growing into the enthusiast role as they were before. They were standardize to meet with cards and cases. But what I’ve found is graphics cards are outgrowing the space they sit in, taking up 2 and 3 slots at time. Meaning if I want accessories on my back panel, I cannot use the PCI slot because the cooling unit on the GPU would block that slot. Though I have a mATX in a ATX case, I have 2 slots but only one is populated by my graphics. My case is old so I can’t just side-mount anything and the space between the connector and the cooler won’t fit risers or extenders. So one of my slots will forever be unpopulated so long as I use a graphics card. For the cost of the motherboard, it’s not worth it unless it’s purely all gaming on this tiny board. So either graphics cards needs to be slimmed down for their performance or motherboards need to predominately build cheaply to the ATX case format if you want more accessories. But in my configuration, I could get a smaller case but I don’t due to cost.

I’m stuck in my old ways but the old ways still work. PC building has gotten easier and less can fail. Anyone can build a PC nowadays with a little know-how and a YouTube video to watch about it. But sometimes hardware limitations still gripe me because of the lack of design or compatibility which feels like we’re going back than going forward.

Rounding up the summer

Been about two weeks and it’s been fairly busy. Firsty I’ve achieved something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a teen.

After over a decade, I finally dye my hair to a shade of purple. I’ve admire the hairstyles of a few people in passing, but this little modification was something I want to do to my mane. After talking to a few people I know and looking into it, I have to admit my wallet took a heavy hit and I wish I did this in July rather than waiting on August. A haircut and a 2 hour bleach and dye job in a salon chair later, it was like looking into a parallel universe where I ended up in a different path in life. From people who are close to me and myself, all positive reviews on the purple’y hair. Purple was the choice because that colour the represented the changes recently and over the past decade. Though my second choice was red and violet, something dark works well for my natural dark brown hair.

On the PC side of things, I’ve been kind of been trying to get back into recording gameplay and playthroughs. It’s kind of rough since most of the games I have on the back catalogue have been played over the summer. There are still some I’ll play while recording but at least some of these games will still be new to me. At the same time I’ve noticed my CPU cooler is overkill for my CPU so I might attempt an overclock at some point. I’ve been also considering a few minor upgrades once I get back to work. Yep, that would be the top news in my life – getting back to work. My part time jobs have all emailed me and I’ll be working shortly.

Upcoming things I want to do is upgrade my PC and get a photo box lighting set up in my room to sell some of my stuff on ebay. It’ll give me a platform to try product and stills photography. Priority I’m hoping is the stills work since it will free up space in my room.

So another trip to the salon before heading back to the buzzcut life I had because of the cleaner and efficient haircut. Might be a long time before I see purple again in my hair. Better enjoy it!

Another Yesterday

I have to admit, the past six months have been different for a lot of us. I know I’ve been through a lot, both positive and negative. Not too long ago my province finally reached stage 3.

With the lockdown slowly peeling away, the city is coming back alive despite a few things being postponed for the following year. The 5 feet/2 metre distance is still applicable as well as face masks for indoors and crowds. In “Stage 3”; dining in restaurants will make a comeback, theatres are allowed to reopen, pools and amusement parks are coming back for the end of the summer and that’s as long as they can follow medical guidelines.

Retrospectively I should’ve taken more photos when the city was empty. Despite being away for a few months especially at the peak of the pandemic, coming home and seeing the empty streets was strange. Strange, yet peaceful. A lot of events are cancelled but the makeshift patios authorized by the city are livening up curbs. Though some places are heavily crowded to hardly able to walk pass, it’s different from what it would’ve been. The face masks does make everyday interactions a bit different. Living in a culturally diverse city, the biggest obstacle is a linguistic barrier. Though most people do speak English here primarily, most ESL speakers are a bit harder to interpret without reading lips or the mask muffling the enunciating tones of their voice. There has been a few times I had to lean in closer but the plexiglass or acrylic barrier dampens more of the sound. The only thing I can take away from this is line ups for places I like are really short. Exposure is limited even in a publicly accessible indoor space so good for me for having these small niche places I go to for food and goodies. It’s either that or I just go at the least busiest time.

Though I’ve been slacking off a lot in July, August is the month I have to do something drastic. Not every year a pandemic can allow me to change my physical look. Been planning to dye my hair so I have about a month or so to enjoy long and coloured hair. Took me about a decade to do it, I might be able to because of the pandemic.

I’ve also hit a wall in my photography so my next step is to do a bit of product and still photography. Recently cleaning out my desk, I’ve found some old stuff I can easily sell off online. While I’m at it, I might as well get my arts and crafts on and build a light box out of cardboard and printer paper.

But first, I have to find the time to get out of bed at a better time and have the powerful motivation to do stuff.

Gotta Go Fast

Last week, I wrote about how I upgraded my PC. After a week, I can safely say I’m highly satisfied with the choices I made on this. However there would be a few changes I wish I did before going in.

With a new AMD Ryzen 5 3600 under the new and new electronics to support it, I’m surprised at the speed it’s running. Despite of a bit of a bottleneck with having 2 hard drives spinning up from time to time, the 16 GB of RAM loads things fast. Not lightning fast, at least I won’t be hanging long on loading screens in video games. Surprising thing about it is I usually suffer sweating it out with my PC during the summer. This thing I think is running a bit cooler than usually despite recent temperatures being near or above 40 degrees celsius which would put my room in the mid-40’s easily. It sits well under 40 while idle and under 45 under load, though “load” would be running games that are indie or using less intense graphics despite being set to high in the games themselves.

Though most of the other parts after from the old build, it was more like a rebuild of a system than receiving all new parts. My 750w supply is still underutilized since the AMD chip is a bit more power efficient from what I’ve read compared to the new Intel CPU’s if I chose to get an i5 or i7. So I have a lot more power I can put into other things like drives and accessories.

Few things I’m living without is solid state drives at the moment. Originally I wanted solid state off the bat so boot times would be lower. I’m still about 5-10 seconds out from a cold boot but I would like to pull it down to under 10. Aside from that, I’ve read things that small solid state drives can be used to cache data so loading programs can be a bit faster as well. If I had the money, it would be the first upgrade. To speed things up and futureproof, another 16 GB of RAM would be handy. I would like to try and push it to the limit to of the motherboard, which says 64 GB on the box though the Ryzen 5 says it’s good up to 128. Lastly though the GTX 950 graphics card from the old system, I would like to push it to the 10 series. Only thing holding me back is GTX boards are still fairly overpriced because of the cryptomining surge during the mid-decade.

But for the cost of a full budget PC, having a upgrade with mostly recycled parts is definitely a life saver for someone with a environmentally and financially conscious. If I could recommend it, I would say buy a used case starting from under 40 for a case that would’ve been about $100. Preferably a case with ATX motherboard standard since the full size is compatible with micro-ATX/mATX motherboards which have the same screw configuration as the full side variant. Shopping for a cheap power supply is an option. Now 500 and 550 watt supplies are priced, but having a bit of extra power would be helpful if you plan on expanding by adding things to stick into the motherboard like an additional graphics card or powering a large water cooling setup.

With this PC, I’ve been able to play Destiny 2 without much graphical lag (network lag is another story). Kerbal Space Program is running like a dream, no lag even when zooming in watching physics go awry. Photo and video editing is almost snappy, taking about 20 minutes and under for YouTube quality videos that I’m reinvigorated to start recording again. 100 photos is nothing with so much power under the hood though exporting is still about 5-10 minutes which beast sitting here for about half an hour.

No doubt this thing is going to last me about 5 years, 10 if everything survives to the next decade.

Upgrades

Since I got back for working two months straight, I wanted to commit to buying some new parts for my aging PC. It’s not a luxurious upgrade but enough to keep it running games for the time being.

The last “upgrade” was a Asus GTX 950 to replace my Zotac 750 which replaced a PNY 9800 graphics card which I first bought with my first custom built PC. For ten years I ran with the following:

• Intel Core 2 Quad CPU
• ASUS P5N-D Motherboard
• 4GB of Kingston ValueRam
• 500 GB Seagate hard drive
• LG 16x DVD Drive

Over the years I added 1 TB, refitted the Thermaltake Soprano case with a variable speed fan in the front and an Arctic F12 Pro fan in the rear. I don’t remember if the case came with its own power supply so I’m guessing my Thermaltake Toughpower 750W from 2009 isn’t a stock supply unit.

This was my first time I’ve ever purchased from Amazon. With stores shutdown at the time, I couldn’t necessarily buy local. In hindsight, it might have been a bad idea to buy electronics during the pandemic. At the same time, I still think I got a pretty good deal. If I needed to bring my PC to the next decade, I had to pull the circuits out. Everything on the motherboard had to go, which sadly is the most expensive part of any computer.

The CPU is always the highest expense. At the time AMD was still behind on Intel in processing power. Now the Ryzen 5 3600 is my first AMD CPU I’ve purchased and used. Along with a new CPU, I stuck with the same brands for all my products if not different models:

• ASUS B450M-A/CSM Motherboard
• Thermaltake 150W CPU cooler
• Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB RAM

I don’t have a big budget but with a short budget, it’s all I can do. Though if I ever manage to get working again or receive emergency relief from the government, I might try and get a couple solid state drives to boost boot and cache speeds. Since this board comes with a SSD slot, I might as well use it.

The IDE interface is now deprecated, so my DVD drive still have to find a home. Also I never used my USB expansion port and 3.0 is a bit better than 2.0 so it immediately had to go. Sadly not everything can be salvaged. On the upside, I’ve managed to cable managed a bit. The case was never designed for cable management. All I need is a modded side panel so I can store the rest of my unused cables behind the motherboard. For not, have a bird’s net inside my drive bay will do.

A few things I learned along the way if anyone wants to swap parts. First, back up all your data! I lost a lot of personal files on my Windows 7 operating system so when I thought I could just upgrade my hardware then software, I would be able to keep all my files. Pulling an all nighter to install all my programs and a fresh Windows 10 operating system is a big consequence to lost all my files. I was a bit worried about installing the cooler onto the CPU, it was my first time applying thermal paste. By writing this, I guess it means my system is fairly stable and I didn’t screw it up. However I feel the instructions from the manufacturer did not match what I had so I had to improvise. Rather than using all the included parts, I installed it by slowly screwing down the cooler to the bracket. I felt a bit uneasy going off the rails with the instructions, but I think that’s what they were trying to convey.

Lastly, I’m surprised how quiet it is running at the moment. The loudest thing is the variable fan I’ve kept in the case. On high, there is a bit of buffeting (that whirring or whooshing sound made by the turbulence of the fan) but when I dial it down, it becomes almost silent when my drives aren’t pushing too hard to load programs.

Next step I think is to increase storage. With a PCI slot available out of the 2 (my GPU covers two slots, making one unusable), I could install SSD’s, a sound card, or a wireless card. At the same time, I would like to remove this tiny dial and hook the fan control up to the motherboard itself.

I’m going to try and play around with my new(-ish) PC build. I’ll let you know how it turns out in the future.

“I’m so bored”

Of course we have days and days into this pandemic and for some, there are days and days more until we pass the peak. For some of you, the phrase has been said time and time again. During these times, you have plenty of time to do everything you could want when you could be working. If you’re not working and still stuck at home, hopefully this list of things could help encourage you to do more in the moment.

• Start a blog. Talk about your day and open your thoughts up to the world. Talk about your hobbies and interests. Rant about things that matter to you and review things in your life. Definitely this blog here doesn’t receive a lot of viewership but here I am, about a decade old and I’m just going about my day.
• Start a new hobby or interest. I’m actually getting back to PC building. I’m upgrading my old PC and buying parts from Amazon. I’ve been reading graphic novels and I’ve even did a bit of art. A new project would definitely get you a bit productive. Want to start a garden? Want to talk to a financial advisor about planning your future? Want to find out how cryptocurrency works and how you can make money in it? Want to learn a programming language like HTML, C++ or others? Want to paint or draw or pursure artistic endeavours? Now is the time since you don’t know how long this pandemic will last, good time to really put your brain through the wringer and see what comes out!
• Clean/organize your [fill in the blank]. For me to prepare for the previous point, I cleaned my desk for a workspace to install the new parts on my PC. I’ve even dived into my drawers and cleaned them. I might even go through the drawers under my bed and clean those as well. Clean your garage, apartment and yard. Organize your tax returns and documents. Organize your files on your computer. Organize all your things.
• Figure out how to make money without working. This might be a bit hard since the economy is in a low since not a lot of people are working. However you can be a bit environmentally friendly and make some money on the side. Help neighbours with chores, sell your old books and stuff you don’t use on Facebook Marketplace/Craiglist/eBay, start an lemonade stand, start livestreaming to use all your bandwidth.
• Get take out and find a usually busy place and enjoy the silence. Urban picnic? You can go to usually where you couldn’t have a picnic during the day because it’s usually busy and just have a picnic. The financial district in my city has been extremely empty and there are a lot of open spaces where you can play an instrument, or have a picnic, or sit there and not look weird because you’re socially distancing. There are tons of spaces where it’s absolutely devoid of employees and passersby, use the space that’s being wasted for something good. Here you can draw a mural with chaulk, bring a mic and an instrument and play some music, picnic with friends, play soccer or some ball game there.
• Something new. Start a new podcast, new book, new game. Just something you never have done. Straight forward.

Maybe when you have done everything on your little lists, you can then share it with friends after the pandemic. Don’t get me wrong, this list is short but you could probably expand on every point on this list. If you have been inspired, completed something and want to share it, feel free to comment it about it. I would like to know and who knows? Someone reading could be inspired to follow suit.

To Coronavirus and Back

So the reason of my absence after saying I will commit: work called me up. Quite literally when my last blog was published, I got a phone call to help out a community where the novel coronavirus as gripped them heavily. I couldn’t say no since I would be sitting here and trying to put my rampant random thoughts into coherent posts. Also it paid, so there’s that.

After a month of returning, I feel a bit more at home. It was kind of hard being away for two month and feeling so alien coming back to my normal routine. Grabbing my camera for the first time after being away was a relief. I went out and took some photos and been spending the entire month trying to connect with people after being pushed away from people to help them at the same time. It was rough.

Coming back, I neglected with keeping up with the viral news. Updates to what I can and cannot do in the city. Coming back,, I had to buy a mask and keep my distance from people with chaotic movement patterns. Last month wasn’t so bad as people generally stayed home. But the city is slowly lowering the restrictions so I have been seeing more and more people for their midday meanderings. This month I’m glad to have the mask since public transit is mandating masks and any indoor spaces are doing the same. Still no indoor dining and I can’t go back to my other job, but it’s starting to look a bit normal if not better.

I think out of this pandemic, the city does benefit a lot from some zoning changes. Recently the mayor here allowed road closures along the harbour for people who want to get their workout in. Patios are allowed to be open and even extended onto sidewalks where permitted. A lot fo restaurants have been taking advantage of this near my home and it does bring a more lively vibe to the neighbourhood. These are definitely something worth promoting since it does bring people out to enjoy the summer and even connect to the area they live in. That’s some positive changes.

At the same time, a lot of radical changes are coming. I managed to keep updated to what is going on internationally. Things are looking pretty bad in the States, cases are still pretty high along with racially charged protests. The melting pot that is the United States might be finally melting and it has spread faster than the pandemic itself. I know minority communities are marginalized heavily. I myself is a visible minority despite being very anglicized. Early during this pandemic, Asian hate crimes were on the rise but no one really did anything despite these immigrants weren’t even associated to China except the colour of their skin. Even then, the majority of victims in the cases were from other countries. Therefore not all the Asian hate crimes were against Chinese. Business vandalized and owners victimized, it’s not a measuring contest for the most victimized minority. All minorities are affected to some or all the discrimination, regardless of how you look or what your are as a person. Probably another blog post about it later, but seeing people openly fighting against the racial divide is a just cause as long as no one innocent gets hurt and positive change is made for all parties.

This virus I think has done a lot more than we expected. Despite infecting millions, it’s brought us all together and realized how fragile our civilization is even with it’s inherent problems. We still have time to fix it all and move us in a different direction. We have the revelation how pollution and industry has affected the planet, we have shown we are capable of stopping pollution even for a couple month. We culturally identified the faultlines we need to heal and what must be done to change the future. When 9/11 happened in 2001, the world changed and a decade long crusade was ignited for the worst. What will it take to crusade for a better and healthier world?

Viral Benefits

The cases are piling up and it seems like there isn’t much stopping. National news here says this might last for a few months before we’re over the hill with this virus. Constrictions in activities and movement of people have taken a toll on the economy. However looking on the light side, there has been a few benefits.

Working on the daily does take a toll on everyone. As introverted as you may be, you would agree having time alone to do your own thing does help benefit people mentally. Spending time with family, friends and pets is definitely something everyone looks forward to, why not make a full time commitment?

At the same time, this is an amazing opportunity to learn new hobbies and ideas. We live in an extraordinary time until the Spanish Flu. We’re still very interconnected electronically that we can gain knowledge of what’s going on in the world in seconds instead of weeks or month. I learned everything I can by myself about photography, but I have been thinking I could learn it a bit more semi-formally.

Along side with that, I’ve always wanted to learn a bit of electronics. This might be a bit more difficult since I would have to invest into hand tools like soldering iron, pliers and drivers. That doesn’t even include materials.

I could reteach myself into editing HTML. I learned a bit of HTML in high school a decade ago. I’ll definitely get back to you on that one.

A couple years ago, Canada legalized marijuana as a recreational drug. Since then, there has been a huge boom in sales and brick-and-mortar shops. Even chains are starting to pop up all over the place!

With that, there are more people beginning to smoke very openly. I have nothing wrong with people enjoying themselves. The problem I have is the smoke expelled from the burning herb. Since the start of legalization, I’ve been having a lot of headaches more than usual. About four a month coming from a guy who use to have occasional headaches less than five per year. Some of them are worse than others where I couldn’t feel too comfortable. The pot shops are still open, however I’ve seen less and less people hanging around there. The last week or so, I’ve had no headaches and it feels nice.

There are still a lot of people walking around despite people are suppose to be self-isolating, the amount of cars have reduced by a lot. I could jaywalk downtown without much worry about getting hit by a car. Occasionally there will be traffic jams, but with everyone staying home it has made the city a bit more liveable. And a lovely side effect of less cars is better air quality! Living in the west, there is more of a conscious about the environment but having this virus has contributed fresh air without the smell of rubber and gasoline.

So. Many. Photos!

The last couple weeks I’ve been doing my best to locally document the COVID-19 pandemic. Honestly day by day it’s getting harder since there isn’t many places to rest as well as being way to cold to rest outside. I’m only avoiding rainy days and make those day my edit days when they come. Besides that I’ve been editing every 2 or 3 days of shooting to keep workload light.

Definitely the boredom is slowly settling at home. At the same time I’m avoiding my vices. I don’t have the space to drink, so my alcohol tolerance will be low after this. Keeping away from the video games since I wouldn’t be sleeping properly and I still want to maintain some rhythm. Hoping six hours of sleep will help me, at the same time I wish I could sleep more since I’m eating more to maintain my alertness.

To keep myself safe for at least 6 hours, I began playing Life is Strange 2. No doubt I’ll be done in a week and put on a review here if it keeps up. I could start creating more gameplay videos on YouTube, but I’m still turned away from poking my voice out there. I didn’t even finish my Fallout 4 playthrough series and I’m burnt out and rusty on editing video.

While we’re on YouTube, I’ve been looking at short films and news reels from a century ago. I was really considering getting an digital streaming device like a Roku, Chromecast or Fire TV. I have a feeling I wouldn’t get any new content that I would get from downloading here. How I miss the 90’s when you can turn on the TV and channel surf than browsing through menus.

At least now I have more to time doing a lot of things for free. Sadly I’m hemorrhaging money without working. At least I don’t pay much and all payments go towards food. While I’m taking photos, I still have to pay for transit for the time being. Hopefully by the time this gets published, there might be a reduction in cost to ride.

For now the best I can do is photograph and wait indoors.

Masks and cleaning

This post will probably make people lose their minds, especially during this pandemic. I’m stilling heading outside, trying my best to not let all this bell ringing fear keep me inside. Besides the Monday rain, I’ve been outside for at least 4 hours every day. I need to feel not like a prisoner in my own home. At the same time, I don’t do much to antagonize my chances of surviving despite them improving by staying indoor.

“Social distancing”, now called “physical distancing”, might sound something complicated though honestly anyone who’s in their 20’s and early 30’s have endured this. You might now know it is “binging”, you sit at home away from contact from anyone and watch TV or play video games. I’ve done this many times and in the past, I’ve gone months without setting foot outside unnecessarily. Before I had a prescription, video games was my life. It ruined me pretty bad where it took me longer to graduate high school and set my life back permanently. Agreed I should stay inside and join everyone being stuck indoors and wait out, but there are still things I don’t dare admit about my home life which disturbs people. Those facts about my life I keep to myself are enough reason to choose going out than staying in. Living in the city, staying two metres away from someone is uncommon. Though usually anyone can agree your personal space is within arm’s reach. Even walking down the street I try and keep a distance from people around me since in the city, there are people that can just easily get you sick because they’re constantly exposed to diseases.

However this what annoys me a lot and why I titled my post about this, cleanliness. I don’t have a problem for being cautious and taking precautions, I for one do my best on the daily to clean my hands before and after I eat since I don’t want foreign germs and matter going into my body. I work in an industrial atmosphere where lubricants and solvents are either toxic, poisonous or cancerous upon ingestion. So the use of soap, water and heavy rubbing is a must. At times, water and soap is unavailable especially now when restaurants are restricted to take-out and delivery here. For this we have a modern solution, hand sanitizer. Though alcohol based, it does get a bit harmful for your skin if you use too much of it. I don’t like using it because it doesn’t make a good substitute to proper hand washing. Why pay for an inferior product when you can have a cheaper and highly effective solution? I’m not turning people away from hand sanitizer but it’s a poor solution for lazy people who refuse to learn to wash their filthy paws.

I think at the same time when hand sanitizers showed up on the scene around 2004, there were more and more people wearing surgical masks. It become a bit of a fashion trend in a lot of Asian countries and it seems to be re-surging and being part of western society as well. If you have hoarded or bought masks during this crisis, I feel so sorry for you since you sort of been peer pressured to do it. To clear up what each mask does, here’s the short explanation from my knowledge:

• Surgical Masks are commonly used in hospitals to prevents people coming in contact to your cough or sneeze. Does protect you a bit but won’t stop anything aerosol or airborne. Wearing one to stop a virus is equal to using paper to stop a bullet.
• Dust Masks are for vapours and particulate. Though it does firmly seal around the nose and mouth, it’s as effective as a surgical mask against an airborne virus. It doesn’t. Though if you hoarded a bunch of these, good time to learn to graffiti paint or take up carpentry.
• Respirators are any mask with a filter. These are especially great when you’re constantly in a space with heavy aerosol or particles in the air. Does it protect against a virus, some but not all. Viruses are really small and these do well with prevention especially with 95% of particles that are of a particular size.

But the biggest kicker is this, none of these will stop you from getting sick. They’re all prevention tools to reduce your chances, but absolute protection is unlikely if you are already exposed. So hand washing, using hand sanitizer and being decked out like a hospital worker might reduce your chances greatly, if one gets in and survives then it’s kind of moot to be protected. The best we can do with absolute success is working together.

At this very moment, some really smart folks are figuring out this virus and creating a vaccine against it. For them, I urge people to not hoard equipment so these people have the right stuff to keep us all alive. Then there are the people trying to keep those people keeping us all alive, let them do their job. If they don’t do their job, then that’s one more thing you can hang over them when election day comes.

The best we can do is just remember what our parents taught us. Hand washing and keeping as clean as humanly possible. And absolutely not feed into the fear and panic. Keep calm and carry on.