How I Spent My Christmas Vacation – Part 2

Way back in April of 2025, I found my dream puzzle. It was called “The Night House Maze.” It was 4,000 pieces and appeared to be based on spooky horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies. And it was twice the size of any other puzzle I’ve done to date, but I fell in love with the visual atmosphere.

There was just one problem. It was out of stock when I first found it. So I put it on my wishlist and waited, hoping it would come around again. In August, it did and I quickly snatched it up to become my Christmas build.

Christmas is the only time I take more than one week off in a row. And with 3 weeks set aside for the break, that seemed like plenty of time to construct my dream puzzle.

I wish this blog post was about that. Because I did assemble the Night House Maze over our Christmas break. And turns out that, once it’s constructed, it’s an actual maze you can solve. It’s so beautiful that, for the first time, I’m thinking of framing it and hanging it on the wall. Especially since this type of puzzle (Pintoo) is designed to stay together forever once its complete.

But there was something else I had to deal with over Christmas break. And while I did my level best to make sure it didn’t ruin an otherwise relaxing time, I can’t lie – it wasn’t fun. See, it turns out that my computer, which is only a little over a year old, had some major issues that needed attention before I went back to work. And it was a journey all its own.

A Brief History

Back in 2024, I had a year of tech issues. The short version of the story is that my hard drive died around about April. It was an NVME drive and only a little over a year old at the time of its demise.

At the time, we thought little of it. Hard drives die sometimes, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t had other hardware issues with that particular PC. We had a spare NVME drive that had been bought at the same time in a PC that was no longer being used. I set it up and went on my way. But four months later, in August, that drive died too.

If this sounds like a familiar story, it’s because it’s the opening refrain of my My Little Domerin shorts. When the second drive died, we decided to replace my computer, and my Twitch community helped me pay for the new one. We ordered that computer on August 27th of 2024. And I booted it up for the first time on September 1st – which made it easy to keep track of its age.

It crashed for the first time on October 23rd of 2025. Which if you’re counting is about a month and a half past the end of the manufacturer’s warranty. At the time, I was AFK and didn’t realize what happened. But 3 weeks later, when it crashed in front of me, I delved into the event viewer and discovered that I had an issue on my hands.

Not the kind of thing you want to experience with a computer that is still essentially new.

My PC Curse

I seem to have bad luck. Pretty much every computer I’ve ever owned has ended up having some form of hardware issue. I already mentioned my last PC – which had a host of problems outside the dead drives. The laptop I owned before that lasted me a long time. But it also had a faulty motherboard. Which meant when the hard drive died, I had to order a replacement motherboard from China before I could even install the new drive.

What a journey that was!

I’m also very fortunate, however. First because I have an amazingly supportive community and, among them, a community expert who was more than happy to help me troubleshoot. We spent a lot of time trying to narrow down the problem and whether or not it was software or hardware. But the crashes happened every 9 – 12 days, making it the slowest hardware issue either of us had ever encountered.

In the end, we determined the issue was probably software. We managed to get rid of the crashes, but Windows kept behaving oddly. So we decided after my in-laws left to reinstall Windows. The hope was to clear out the last little bit of any lingering software corruption and make the PC run the way it used to. I’ve reinstalled Windows dozens of times, so I didn’t anticipate it would take too long to get back up and running.

And if I was going to do something that time-consuming, it had to be done while I was on a break.

In theory, installing Windows 11 is quick. It takes about 10 – 15 minutes before you hit the welcome set up.

But only if it doesn’t crash 4 times in the process of getting to that screen.

How It Turned Out

I’m not going to lie, there was a lot of yelling on reinstallation day. Especially after disabling XMP allowed the installation process to complete successfully.

This is how we discovered the issue had been my RAM all along. (XMP is an overclocking process that makes RAM faster. A process I didn’t even realize was turned on until we turned it off.)

But I mentioned that I was fortunate, and I continue to be. Because my husband knows my luck. So when he bought this PC, he also bought the extended warranty.

I contacted the warranty company to ask for replacement RAM, meanwhile hoping the RAM I had would be more stable with XMP turned off. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. It crashed on me again while I was installing fonts, which has not ceased to blow my mind.

Lucky for me, the part of my old computer that died was the hard drive. The RAM, to the best of my knowledge, was fine. So we pulled it out of the old PC and put it into the new one.

As for the warranty company, they evidently didn’t feel they could replace my RAM. And given the price of RAM right now, that isn’t shocking. But they did send us a hefty refund that should allow me to keep my PC (or another one) up and running for the foreseeable future.

So things worked out in the end. It was a long, winding and stressful road. One I’m not eager to walk ever again. And at the time of this writing, I’m still nervous about using my PC, even though it’s done everything I’ve asked it to for the last 2 weeks. But I never missed any work time, and I’m grateful about that.

But Enough About PC Stuff

So what about the Night House Maze?

Well, I’m pleased to say that the bulk of my Christmas break did go into its construction. And I enjoyed most minutes of it. (The sky drove me a little nuts.) During the high-stress moments when I didn’t know if I’d ever sort out this computer business, constructing this puzzle became my haven. It was a place where I could retreat to get away from the rest of the process. I even spread out my set up a little more than I usually do in favor of enjoying the thing I had been looking forward to doing for months.

This puzzle was challenging. There ended up being a lot of fiddly corner pieces that remained challenging to locate right up until the end. And as I mentioned, the sky required a lot of trial and error, since most of the pattern looked the same.

I started this puzzle by working on it late at night while family was visiting. After everyone else went to bed, I would pull it out, spread it across the table and get a few hours of work in before I fell asleep myself. Once our company departed, I started spending large chunks of my day on it in order to get it done in time. (And I did run over by one day.)

I enjoyed this puzzle. And I even enjoyed the bulk of my break, even though it didn’t go the way I planned. Looking at the finished Night House Maze makes me feel incredibly accomplished. A 4,000 piece puzzle turned out to be a little more than double the challenge of a 2,000 piece puzzle, but I’m still glad I tackled it.

How did you spend your Christmas break?