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.
-------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------
KISS, Detroit Rock City (as I peek out the window for any glowing clouds)
29 September 2006
Leaving ... on a jet plane
Oh how I'd love to not come back, though I wouldn't want to stay permanently at this weekend's destination. I suppose I like Houston as much as the next guy, but if my friends moved to someplace a little less humid, I don't know that I'd ever go back there.
This weekend's happiness is to be camping at the Renn Faire near Houston with friends. Since I've not taken any vacation for a whole ... (flipping through the calendar) six weeks, I thought I'd head on down there, hug friends, chew on turkey drumsticks, and participate in the Great American Past-time known as spending cash. Though I guess that's more like the Mediocre American Past-time since I'm not putting anything on credit cards, but I'm okay with that.
Really though, this is the last vacation I have planned for the year. Until I figure out what to do for the holidaze anyway.
The Start, The Underwater Song
This weekend's happiness is to be camping at the Renn Faire near Houston with friends. Since I've not taken any vacation for a whole ... (flipping through the calendar) six weeks, I thought I'd head on down there, hug friends, chew on turkey drumsticks, and participate in the Great American Past-time known as spending cash. Though I guess that's more like the Mediocre American Past-time since I'm not putting anything on credit cards, but I'm okay with that.
Really though, this is the last vacation I have planned for the year. Until I figure out what to do for the holidaze anyway.
The Start, The Underwater Song
22 September 2006
Surprised, though I maybe shouldn't be.
I made the second payment on Bobbie, and her "Service Engine Soon" light poped on this morning. Sure, Bobbie's not new (at 101k miles), but still. She's not missing or sputtering or anything, so here's hoping it's something minor, like an O2 sensor or something relatively benign like that.
18 September 2006
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.
Atomica, Worry
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.
Atomica, Worry
16 September 2006
Is there a full moon out?
One of the forums I frequent has been in a sad state lately. Everybody bitching about so little. Is this maybe some kind of test to make sure one is able to go absolutely ape-shit insane before the holidays begin? Because, if it is, I'm boarding up the windows and putting another dead-bolt on every door. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Taking offence at someone else's opinion who believe one peoples or another make fantastic lovers (not a racist statement), feeling it's an affront to all those who differ?
Lashing out because you think this style of driving is heinous and the lashee gives another perspective?
Slamming one person because they chose to protect and insulate themselves while you allow YOUR SPOUSE to wallow un-aided because it should be the other that deals with their issues instead of you?
Fuck!
...wait for it...
Can't we all just get along?!?
Whitesnake, Still of the Night
Taking offence at someone else's opinion who believe one peoples or another make fantastic lovers (not a racist statement), feeling it's an affront to all those who differ?
Lashing out because you think this style of driving is heinous and the lashee gives another perspective?
Slamming one person because they chose to protect and insulate themselves while you allow YOUR SPOUSE to wallow un-aided because it should be the other that deals with their issues instead of you?
Fuck!
...wait for it...
Can't we all just get along?!?
Whitesnake, Still of the Night
13 September 2006
What day is it again?
House is clean-ish. The way I see it, if there's nothing crawling up outta the drains and the color of the carpet is a) identifiable and b) same as when I moved in, it's a win. A couple more people have viewed it, but still no offers. Even with the fucking curb appeal that was imposed.
Ice Cream Social; Work is putting on a fundraiser for United Way, so tomorrow ice cream will be scooped, toppings will be dribbled and sprinkled, and people will be like pigs to the mud pit. They might even fork over some donations, which would be nice. I've got scooping duty for a half hour, so we'll see how it goes.
ponder
S.U.N. Project, Fatal Error courtesy DNA Lounge Radio
Ice Cream Social; Work is putting on a fundraiser for United Way, so tomorrow ice cream will be scooped, toppings will be dribbled and sprinkled, and people will be like pigs to the mud pit. They might even fork over some donations, which would be nice. I've got scooping duty for a half hour, so we'll see how it goes.
ponder
S.U.N. Project, Fatal Error courtesy DNA Lounge Radio
06 September 2006
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...
Nocturn, Flirt (Part I) via DNA Lounge Radio
so there's that.Of course, I still have that half gig of photos to post somewhere (after resizing). Work work work...
Nocturn, Flirt (Part I) via DNA Lounge Radio
04 September 2006
Good gawd
Al Capone is still alive. Yes, it is true. Want proof? Well I'm sure he's keeping away from the cameras, but it seems he's pulling the strings of extortion through a front company known as [name withheld for the moment... fucking libel laws anyways]. Tenants whose homes are on lands owned by the bastages are being bled dry by a landscaping paragraph. Not that the stipulations there are observed even by the bastages... Much of my yard was ripped up and redone according to this paragraph:
"6b. Landscape Improvements - ...snip... Landlord may require Resident to repair, replace, or plant additional landscaping to meet approved requirements. Resident shall be responsible for repair or replacement of trees, shrubs, lawn, fixtures, and other improvements on the Premises damaged or destroyed due to the negligence or the intentional acts or inaction of Resident, its guests or invitees. Or, upon five (5) days prior notice to Resident(s) that he/she failed to adequately maintain the Premises, Landlord may, but shall not be required to enter upon the Premises and conduct the repairs and/or maintenance, and may charge a reasonable fee for services and/or materials incurred by it to maintain the land and Premises upon which the Manufactured Home is situated, and bill the Resident the costs thereof as additional rent. ..."
It's not so much the price for the work performed that was disturbing (but make no mistake, $2k is not reasonable for what was done). The extent of work done is what chafes my ass right now. The fuckers ripped up healthy lawn to expand the amount of "refurbishment" required, no doubt to bring a smile to their accountants feces. Oops, I meant faces (really though, could you tell the difference in the first place?).
That they failed to provide that five days notice that they self-imposed didn't slow down the greedy bastages one iota, of course. Legal consultation is in process.
Ted Nugent, Cat Scratch Fever
"6b. Landscape Improvements - ...snip... Landlord may require Resident to repair, replace, or plant additional landscaping to meet approved requirements. Resident shall be responsible for repair or replacement of trees, shrubs, lawn, fixtures, and other improvements on the Premises damaged or destroyed due to the negligence or the intentional acts or inaction of Resident, its guests or invitees. Or, upon five (5) days prior notice to Resident(s) that he/she failed to adequately maintain the Premises, Landlord may, but shall not be required to enter upon the Premises and conduct the repairs and/or maintenance, and may charge a reasonable fee for services and/or materials incurred by it to maintain the land and Premises upon which the Manufactured Home is situated, and bill the Resident the costs thereof as additional rent. ..."
It's not so much the price for the work performed that was disturbing (but make no mistake, $2k is not reasonable for what was done). The extent of work done is what chafes my ass right now. The fuckers ripped up healthy lawn to expand the amount of "refurbishment" required, no doubt to bring a smile to their accountants feces. Oops, I meant faces (really though, could you tell the difference in the first place?).
That they failed to provide that five days notice that they self-imposed didn't slow down the greedy bastages one iota, of course. Legal consultation is in process.
Ted Nugent, Cat Scratch Fever
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