Mostly lemon based

Category: Computing

Computer problems

  • Mmm, tasty brown goo.

    So, there are levels of not-going-well for a week.

    Missing my lecture because I got drenched, that wasn’t particularly good.
    Having the alternator fail on my car, that wasn’t particularly good either.
    Having the new drive arrive from Scan and singularly fail to work? That also didn’t fill me with joy.
    Trey missing her riding lesson because of screwed up public transport, again not brilliant.
    My PC deciding to let out the magic scent of burning silicon last night? That again wasn’t great.

    The new powersupply sourced this morning (which meant that Trey had to take public transport to her lesson…) looked to have cured the problem. Indeed I was feeling somewhat ‘stupid’… (more…)

  • Doing so well…

    So, I had this plan today: Swim, Clean, Fix car, Lunch, Shower, Work.
    It was slightly modifyable by when the DVD+-R/W/RW/Z/Q/R/an/do/m/L/e/tte/r/s drive arrived, to include ‘fit new drive’.

    (more…)

  • Enthusiasm Mediocre, keep in mind the paper is dead.

    *sigh*

    It’s not like I don’t care. It’s not like I’ve not got energy. It’s just… it’s hot. And I really don’t feel in the mood for university work at the moment. I don’t need compassionate leave, I need I’m fucked off with this place leave.

    Adult learning my arse.

    I admit it though, I don’t really feel like doing anything very much. Maybe chilling out listening to some music (e.g. the Kaiser Chiefs album, oh, hey, I’m doing that) and reading a book I know far too well…

    Or wandering up a mountain?

    But sitting here doing university work. I know I need to. I’m going to Alaska in… 10 weeks. In 10 weeks time I’ll be in Alaska. Roughly. Or en-route. Hang on… Oh, I can’t be bothered to work it out right now.

    But the general point is true.

    So I’ve got a vast amount of work to get done. And I suppose I should attempt to make some kind of progress on it. In other news, I’ve found the MatroxG200 card, or G100 or whatever it is (seems less than forthcoming) which goes with the PCI Matrox+Rainbow runner card.

    Having looked, the Rainbow Runner definately doesn’t fit onto the G200 card; which means… well… I think maybe the idea was that they both go in together – thus giving a decent AGP card for the normal use, and a second monitor displaying the output of the PCI card. Unfortunately, this desk is ‘not big enough’ for two monitors. So I’m left pondering.

    Ponder, ponder, ponder.

  • Disks glorious disks…

    Where, oh where, oh where have they gone.

    I’ve looked in our bedroom, in the filing cabinet (Windows 95, 98 (versions 1 and 2), NT4, 2000 all there. BeOS5, PC-DOS 7, no problem.

    XP? My shiny XP disk? No idea. Gone walkies.

    Grr. Is the world trying to tell me something?

    Stuff the world!

    Where’s my disk?!

  • Pocket PC is back!

    Albeit with the linux bootloader; but it’s all good. Well, it’s not. But it’ll suffice ;-)

    It appears to be Windows CE version 3.0.9348, which is unexciting. It also seems to think it’s only got 31.25megs, which I presume is a problem with the version of CE. Grr. I’m not quite sure how to prod it into recognising the rest of the memory.

    I’m trying to hunt out the WinCE/PocketPC 2002 upgrade for the iPaq in the hope that now we can at least *talk* to it, we might be able to do something useful. I’m going to [this is all scaring me witless I hope you realise] do a ROM update in a minute. Which is all terribly terribly scary.

  • Wizard People & iTunes

    This (Wizard People, Dear Reader by Brad Neely (NOT Harry Potter)) is apparently very good. I’m currently attempting to obtain it, I recommend you do too if you fancy it, before Warner Bros. Stomp on it harder than normal.

    And in other news; I’ve had to remove iTunes. (more…)

  • The Lord of Windows

    So, James visited… And his suggestion (update the video drivers) has fixed video playback on my machine. *ra*.

    James, you are truely a god of Windows. This saves me upgrading, which was going to be ‘hastle’. Although I’ve still got a huge pause at the beginning of, particularly, MPEG4 videos. But hey.

    It works. It doesn’t crash. I’ll try and remember that (I’d already done replacing codecs, replacing software, removing everything related to the thing that caused the problem, it just never occured that the video drivers might need updating; or that that might fix it).

  • The big old V-day

    So, uh, been a little while since I posted….

    A week, actually. During which I’ve… been sick. I’ve actually been way better, the day after the 37.7 deg temperature I started to feel better, not like ‘going back to work’ better, but significantly better. I guess it’s like most fevers, they hit a peak of awful and then you start to feel better.

    (more…)

  • Quiesence

    ‘scuse the spelling of the title.

    So, the new heatsink arrived today. This is fortunate, because I’m very bored being at home and being ‘ill’. I declare myself ill, because this morning I was running a temperature of 37.4 deg, and feeling really quite unwell. Still a quick dose of paracetamol and I felt more human.
    (more…)

  • Silence is golden

    Except of course when it leads to a hideous misunderstanding between friends.

    I thought she was asleep…. so I didn’t say anything…. She thought I was pissed off and so didn’t say anything…. Bah.

    These LJs are dangerous things; on the other hand, if it weren’t for LJ we’d probably not have finally managed to communicate the fact that Lauren could actually hear my PC throughout the house; and I wasn’t understanding how grating she was finding it. I guess the fact that my hearing’s terrible is a bit unfortunate sometimes.

    Anyway, a new quiet harddisk and a heatsink with no fan is winging it’s way here, so hopefully in a couple of days my PC will be back in action, and somewhat quieter.