Those who get queasy from reading tech shit MUST LEAVE NOW
Wow, cool!
The primary IDE controller on my computer went belly-up, so now I can't boot (unless I keep trying for twenty minutes, and then wait a full TEN minutes for the boot to complete). Yay!
I'll try taking out the optical drive & see if it'll boot from the secondary controller more easily until I scrape up funds to get a new motherboard ... and CPU, since Socket A is a tad long in the tooth (so much so that I doubt it's been produced in a good two or three years). Anyone know someone that can use a working Athlon 1.2GHz Thunderbird series CPU? I'll even include the all-copper heat sink. Waste not, want not, don'cha know.
I could go budget & get a newer mobo that still supports AGP so I can keep my video card. Even so, I'd need new memory since my PC133 chips aren't going to fit anything new. I've got a pair of 128M sticks if anyone wants 'em (the 256M stick is spoken for). I think I'll splurge as much as I can though; I like games.
I'd thought about going to Dell/HP & the like for a new system (yes, even Apple, but I've got too much $$ in PC software to justify that migration). The thing is, I have many components that are fairly new and working great. Why get another optical drive, case & all when I have those already? I suppose I'm just not a true consumer. Oh well.
ANYway, I'm shopping for pieces parts. This does make me all kinds of happy. Now I've just gotta pare down the "nice to have" (I do wish the MSI K8N Diamond Plus wasn't so damned popular) to the "need to have" (I've not forgotten the need for a new power supply).
...
Follow-up: Booting from the secondary IDE does indeed work just fine, though I continue to get a brief delay while chkdsk does its thing. Every. Time. I. Boot. So yeah, a replacement is in the works.
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Psyclon Nine, You Know What You Are
26 October 2006
18 October 2006
You left it where?
Last year (or longer?) there was a lawsuit against Palm regarding a problem with the low-end Palm Pilots (think m100's if you know what I'm talking about) loosing the memory when merely changing the batteries. I noticed this trouble, but didn't think to file a class action lawsuit over it. The guy that DID think to do that received $10k for being a PITA, but I digress...
The courts signed off on an agreement to (in addition to oiling the squeaky wheel) refurbish those items. Owners like me didn't get a dime, but did get a post-paid envelope to send the thing in for the refurbishing. I figured, "Okay, if they're going to fix it free, I'll take advantage of it."
I received mine back a couple weeks ago after a couple delivery attempts. The courier they used couldn't leave it without a signature, and always finished their run around 2pm. The old m100 Palms are essentially worthless, really, but I guess they didn't want to deal with a bunch of other squeaky wheels claiming they never got it back & demand a more up-to-date Zire or something. Okayfine, I went & picked it up from the distribution center. It seems to work, but I've not attempted the battery change yet to see if it does the same thing.
That's not the point of this post though. Amazing that I'd go into so much detail about that, huh?
I had splurged Monday & ordered a new huge (to me & my 17" CRT anyway) LCD monitor. I only paid for the run-of-the-mill ground shipping, figuring I'd get it sometime early next week. I would've been perfectly fine driving down to the distribution center again to get it since this same courrier delivered so early in the day. I checked online to see where it's at this morning. According to the tracking information, they (that required a signature for an obsolete PDA) left the monitor at my front door. Thank you, Fry's. I really appreciate that... and I'm also pretty happy that I didn't spend the extra $20 for 2nd day delivery.
The challenge was to see if I could get home before the hooligan neighbors around here sober up & go collect "abandoned boxes" in the neighborhood... I'm happy to report that I succeeded, and am really enjoying the new view from my chair! If you get a chance to pick up one of these, I'm pretty damn sure you will not be disappointed.
Joy Kitikonti, Joyenergizer (Psico Mix)
The courts signed off on an agreement to (in addition to oiling the squeaky wheel) refurbish those items. Owners like me didn't get a dime, but did get a post-paid envelope to send the thing in for the refurbishing. I figured, "Okay, if they're going to fix it free, I'll take advantage of it."
I received mine back a couple weeks ago after a couple delivery attempts. The courier they used couldn't leave it without a signature, and always finished their run around 2pm. The old m100 Palms are essentially worthless, really, but I guess they didn't want to deal with a bunch of other squeaky wheels claiming they never got it back & demand a more up-to-date Zire or something. Okayfine, I went & picked it up from the distribution center. It seems to work, but I've not attempted the battery change yet to see if it does the same thing.
That's not the point of this post though. Amazing that I'd go into so much detail about that, huh?
I had splurged Monday & ordered a new huge (to me & my 17" CRT anyway) LCD monitor. I only paid for the run-of-the-mill ground shipping, figuring I'd get it sometime early next week. I would've been perfectly fine driving down to the distribution center again to get it since this same courrier delivered so early in the day. I checked online to see where it's at this morning. According to the tracking information, they (that required a signature for an obsolete PDA) left the monitor at my front door. Thank you, Fry's. I really appreciate that... and I'm also pretty happy that I didn't spend the extra $20 for 2nd day delivery.
The challenge was to see if I could get home before the hooligan neighbors around here sober up & go collect "abandoned boxes" in the neighborhood... I'm happy to report that I succeeded, and am really enjoying the new view from my chair! If you get a chance to pick up one of these, I'm pretty damn sure you will not be disappointed.
Joy Kitikonti, Joyenergizer (Psico Mix)
10 October 2006
If I dig any deeper...
I found a root sometime in the past few hours.
First some perspective. I have had nightmares for most of my life & could never figure out why. I wasn't knocked around at home, didn't get in to the liquor cabinet (much), let alone ingest/inject any other (debatably stronger) substances, as a kid. Didn't have any Uncle Molester that I had to visit. I just usually had gory dreams & never could pinpoint a root cause.
It bugged me, because I like to have a neat & tidy explanation for things (why this doesn't make me a dyed-in-the-wool athiest, I couldn't really say). A couple years ago, I made a conscious choice to not let it bug me so much. This coincided with me letting other things go a while after my divorce. I'd held on to some self-doubt for a while.
Anyway, I started writing a few of the nightmares down. One of my earliest remembered haunts came to me the other night. It was based in a waking incident one winter when I was knee-high to a grass-hopper.
We lived on a court. "Not a through street", as the signs say. One night I'd gotten out of the house because of some noise I'd heard. The moon was out, there were some clouds in the sky. There was one that was not like the rest though. The others were all just hovering there in the sky, no wind at all. One of those clouds, all poofy, was moving. I followed it as it drifted across the sky. Then it stopped. I stepped off the porch, and two steps onto the lawn, it started moving again. A little quicker that before, slowing down as it moved.
I stepped further out into the lawn towards the street because it kept going behind the roof line of the garage. Start and stop. I heard sounds of an engine revving, and thought, "What a weird cloud." Start and stop. Further onto the lawn I went, nearing the sidewalk. Start and stop. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of the street, looking at this odd-ball cloud sputtering across the sky as its companion clouds moved not one bit. The revving engine sounded closer. Louder. Then the squeal of tires brought me around on my heels to see headlights bearing down on me.
The revving went down with the nose of that car as it came to a stop not an inch from my chest. The odor of tires, locked up, filled my nostrils. Air rushed by me... through me... where I stood. The car rocked back and forth as it came to rest. The fan behind the radiator pulled air through, threatened to pull me through. I could tell you even now how many bug corpses were in the radiator of that Chevrolet Bel-Air, because I was sure to be the next corpse to be added to its fins.
A yell came from the front door of my house. It was my name, bellowed by my dad. Yelling at me to get in the house right now. Looking back, I see that I had cheated death. I was supposed to be a corpse in that grill. Because of a cloud. As I started running to the front door, I looked up at the last place I saw that cloud. It was still there. Glowing. Hadn't moved one bit, as though it was there, just knowing what was going to happen. It had lured me out to death's door (Christine?), and now appeared to be irritated that I wasn't taking up residence next to all the other bugs. That's when I was awake.
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KISS, Detroit Rock City (as I peek out the window for any glowing clouds)
First some perspective. I have had nightmares for most of my life & could never figure out why. I wasn't knocked around at home, didn't get in to the liquor cabinet (much), let alone ingest/inject any other (debatably stronger) substances, as a kid. Didn't have any Uncle Molester that I had to visit. I just usually had gory dreams & never could pinpoint a root cause.
It bugged me, because I like to have a neat & tidy explanation for things (why this doesn't make me a dyed-in-the-wool athiest, I couldn't really say). A couple years ago, I made a conscious choice to not let it bug me so much. This coincided with me letting other things go a while after my divorce. I'd held on to some self-doubt for a while.
Anyway, I started writing a few of the nightmares down. One of my earliest remembered haunts came to me the other night. It was based in a waking incident one winter when I was knee-high to a grass-hopper.
We lived on a court. "Not a through street", as the signs say. One night I'd gotten out of the house because of some noise I'd heard. The moon was out, there were some clouds in the sky. There was one that was not like the rest though. The others were all just hovering there in the sky, no wind at all. One of those clouds, all poofy, was moving. I followed it as it drifted across the sky. Then it stopped. I stepped off the porch, and two steps onto the lawn, it started moving again. A little quicker that before, slowing down as it moved.
I stepped further out into the lawn towards the street because it kept going behind the roof line of the garage. Start and stop. I heard sounds of an engine revving, and thought, "What a weird cloud." Start and stop. Further onto the lawn I went, nearing the sidewalk. Start and stop. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of the street, looking at this odd-ball cloud sputtering across the sky as its companion clouds moved not one bit. The revving engine sounded closer. Louder. Then the squeal of tires brought me around on my heels to see headlights bearing down on me.
The revving went down with the nose of that car as it came to a stop not an inch from my chest. The odor of tires, locked up, filled my nostrils. Air rushed by me... through me... where I stood. The car rocked back and forth as it came to rest. The fan behind the radiator pulled air through, threatened to pull me through. I could tell you even now how many bug corpses were in the radiator of that Chevrolet Bel-Air, because I was sure to be the next corpse to be added to its fins.
A yell came from the front door of my house. It was my name, bellowed by my dad. Yelling at me to get in the house right now. Looking back, I see that I had cheated death. I was supposed to be a corpse in that grill. Because of a cloud. As I started running to the front door, I looked up at the last place I saw that cloud. It was still there. Glowing. Hadn't moved one bit, as though it was there, just knowing what was going to happen. It had lured me out to death's door (Christine?), and now appeared to be irritated that I wasn't taking up residence next to all the other bugs. That's when I was awake.
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KISS, Detroit Rock City (as I peek out the window for any glowing clouds)
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