Hear Elvis singing?

So there's this problem I have. I live in a ghetto. I can't say it's the boonies, because I've lived there before in Montana. This ain't the boonies. This ghetto is so ghetto that neither Qwest, nor Comcast will bring broadband internet. That ghetto. The telephone lines that Qwest does have here aren't that great, but dial-up internet has peaked somewhere between 42 and 44k. Not bad for a PCI modem, until you try to use any ISP in this area. Not once am I able to complete a connection on the first attempt. It's just painfully annoying.

Then I picked up this cell phone that has a USB connection to keep my address lists of friends and family (and other lists) nicely backed-up. Lo and behold, I see it can even act as a modem for the computer with the data package I have.

A couple days ago, as I was getting connection speeds of a mere 24k due to awful noise on the phone line I thought, "What the hell, I'll give that a try. Can't get much worse than 24k fer cryin' out loud."

Try indeed. The first attempt connected me at 460k. Trying later in the day connected my computer at a "lowly" 120k. I don't know why the sudden slow-down, but I immediately called Cingular and upped my service to include their unlimited "MEdianet" package. Only $15 more on the cell phone bill, and I lose $35 for the home phone service and ISP charge.

Yeah, I can deal with four times the connection speed (ten times, on a good day apparently) with $20 savings per month. Yay for the home team.

I can actually stream Sirius radio now WHILE I check out porn download winders updates and irfanview and an occasional tune! ...am I, perhaps, just a little too happy about this?

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Elvis, Money Honey

Down time

Unwind.

Kick back.

Take a load off.

Relieve yourself of mundane household responsibilities and bask in the glow of Slackerdom.

-or-

Spend a combined 24 hours over a weekend wrestling with new computer hardware before you come to the realization that maybe the marketing glossy wasn't entirely accurate "in your case".

A while back, this infernal machine started acting flakey. I did some scrimping and saving, and picked up some nice but not bleeding edge pieces parts. Replacing the motherboard meant a new CPU and memory. I could have gone with a motherboard with integrated video, but what fun is that? Hence, a new video card. Some people pester me saying I could have gotten a Dell (dude) or something similar for the same money, and have something that's already put together, no muss, no fuss. There are two problems with that for me.

First, I like building it. Pulling out the same Philips screw driver that I've used nigh on two decades for these projects (you may now gag on the nostalgia). Cutting open the static-protection envelope to see if the cat, who walked by ten minutes ago across the wool carpet in another part of the world, generated enough static electricity to zap the thing ANYway. Aligning the motherboard with the mount points. Plugging cables hither and yon, and on, and on... This is (mostly) fun to me. Occasionally, it's even challenging; Such as having a mid-tower case to cram everything into and hope it doesn't overheat.

Second, for the money they would spend on one of those pre-built systems, I can buy better components than Dell, et al., use in their one-size fits, well, somebody over there who only types in a text editor now and then. If they type slowly. I'm no hard-core FPS gamer, but I loath to have any game I load start to skip more than my Beatles album that my parents gave to me when I was five years old (and if you think about how your average five-year-old treats the black circle, you'll know what I mean). [Tangent: I wonder why my parents didn't like The Beatles?]

So about the assembly. Yes, your mileage may vary, but do yourself a favor and don't attempt to mess with Mother Nature. For if the optical drive were meant to be connected to the SATA port, it would have damn well been made with a SATA connector. Tread not into the blasphemy of "converting" the IDE port to mate in unholy union with the SATA!

Ahem... sorry about that. I'm not the boss of you, do whatever the hell you want. It can work with your IDE hard drive (that is, it's working with one of mine at the moment), but there's just something apparently not right when trying to do the same with the optical variety drives. Or, at least, with my optical drives.

And for the love of Mom's Apple Pie, ALWAYS...

No, wait.

NEVER try to update ANY software when you're only connection is of the dial-up variety. It hurts.

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Megadeth, Disconnect

Check that bill.

I called my cell provider to have them knock off the pro-rated service charge that was billed before I even received the new phone. Nothing big, just over $8. I get on the phone & explain that since the phone did get here until the 3rd, I shouldn't be charged for service until that date.

He reversed the activation charge to make up for the error. To the tune of ~ $41 and change. Then he asks me, "Has everything been resolved to your satisfaction?" Uh, yeah dude. I'd say so.

Maybe eliminating the pro-rated charge is too much of a PITA, and in the interest of keeping his talk time down, he took an easier and virtually guaranteed customer pleasing way to resolve it. Whatever, I've pondered it too much already. A warm beverage awaits elsewhere...

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Arak Pacha, Pachama - Schmeling Salas ("Who?" Here's a tune of theirs)

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.

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Joy Kitikonti, Joyenergizer (Psico Mix)

shorting out

The desktop is becoming a might unstable these days. For s system that I put together over five years ago, it's done pretty well. Until yesterday: It wouldn't boot up, saying there was no boot device. Turns out the primary IDE controller somehow 'mis-fired' for lack of a better term. Reset button didn't help, but power-cycling the thing was just the kick in the pants it needed. I'd hoped (as ever) that it would last a couple more years as I pick up new pieces parts to build the next monster, alas that's probably not going to be the case.

By "monster" I don't mean viciously fast hardware, so hot off the assembly die that even Tom's Hardware hasn't seen it yet. No, just something that will boot up, play nice, and give BSOD's a little less frequently than I've been getting with the current iteration. How many and often is that? Two, actually. One of those was from the first OS install. There was certainly another, but can't remember when. Probably happened as I attempted to overclock the 900MHz Duron processor that used to be there... Yeah, raw POWER baby!

Heck, the only hardware changes I've had to make to this box was one hard drive, and the oh so nice Altec Lansing speakers (lasted six years and change). I don't count the modem or CPU swap, nor the video card updates because the initial pieces weren't actually broken. Just slow.

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Atomica, Worry

Wednesday? Already?

I love it. Short weeks are always a winner in my book. For the three day weekend, I washed the car. Such excitement, huh? Also pulled together the DVD's lying around & compiled them into Movie Organizer. Though not without flaws (print formatting is a challenge for DVD's with a long title), it's a very nice setup that will pull the data from its own MOODb and IMDb for the movie using the UPC code and/or title. This is less than useful if your DVD was a box set whose UPC was on the outer wrapping that you threw away long ago. Oops. For the price, it cannot be beat. Take a peek, if that's just the thing you've been looking for. Pay what you want to via PayPal. And it's so there's that.

Of course, I still have that half gig of photos to post somewhere (after resizing). Work work work...

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Nocturn, Flirt (Part I) via DNA Lounge Radio