Archive for February, 2006
… so let it be shipped.
I just placed my order, now granted its no where near complete, I was sad for starters to see “Item(s) shipped from NJ” and every part is listed lol - but its 3 day shipping from UPS, so Wed/Thur delivery - then the fun of getting the system all setup again just how I like it - but on a newer faster SATA drive, plus I also got faster ram and processor than what I am used to, now to just hopefully get that in and get things back on schedule and such - as that drive has a lot of projects on it - I got some off - and moved some of them to Bigboy, but I really want to get this box re-done, and working to its fullest - I love my laptop, but I love the power of a desktop sometimes more!
Anywhoo - that’s my rant for the afternoon, I am off to do some things around town, then its back here for more room re-decorating.
Well its dead jim - I do have one final ‘thought’ but not sure if it’s even worth testing - but at the very least it’ll allow me to de-auth iTunes (one thing I wish Apple would do is “De-Auth” list what computers are authed from a web or iTunes interface!) - but I am going to sit on my order till tomorrow, just in case Courtney decides to go the computer route too - in which case I’ll just double up my order (anyone else want a $500ish 64bit power house?) - but they have a 17inch LCD on sale too - so that’d work for Courtney as well vs. what I am sure is a clunky ol CRT beast!
Okay, have to wait another 20m for this final test, as I think it is heat related, because after I first put things back together after figuring out the bad ram, I was able to get in, get online, etc. - I kinda wish it was ONLY the video card (which is what I think is having issues) but at this point I don’t want to shell out $50 on a card, only to find its not the card, then to have a AGP card I can’t use (as the new board is PCI Express) the joys of computers - but I think I’ll have fun with this board if I do get it, get a second 200GB drive, and raid em into one nice 400GB wonder 
Well - the bad/good news at the moment, is I have a bad stick of 512MB DDR333 - why is this good news? Well the ram is bad, so that’s half the issue, but I am starting to think it is caused by irregular voltage. So I am doing further diagnostic tets, but you know how long a surface scan takes on a 200GB drive? At this rate, tomorrow! But if the drive truly does check out, I may be able to spend about $150 for a new power supply and ram - but if the drive fails the full scan “In Theory” I should be able to get a 200GB drive and be good - so who knows.
Pray for Rosie, she’s not feeling good today - and she has to work for 4 hours this afternoon at B&N, so needless to say she needs a definate pick-me-up and a nap. Back to testing, then in about an hour or so I have a computer diagnostic @ Courtney’s - 1999 computer… doubt it’s gonna be that upgradable… time will tell!
Well, as it seems currently, Sparky is dead. 
I have loaded the drive from it up in a USB drive enclosure and it works fine, did scandisk/defrag, everything checks out fine, it is just simply put dead in that system, so it leaves a number of possiblities as to what it could or couldn’t be - drive controller, memory, processor, etc. Going to do a few more tests before moving forward with the order of Sparky 2.0 - but as it stands, seems like it’ll be a go - so it’s a good thing I didn’t get the iMac - while Mac is fun, the key to have a Windows box for me is not having to have the high-TCO of a Mac (aka buying Photoshop, Office, etc.) plus with Dual-Core iMac’s software compatiblitiy.
So the current setup in the cart right now for Sparky 2.0 is as follows:
- AMD 64 3200+ (2ghz)
- 1GB (2×512) DDR400
- 200GB SATA 150 Drive
- Radeon X300SE (256mb/128mb vram) PCI-E 16x
- MSI K8N Neo4-F 939 Mobo (Dual Core Support!)
All in all a nice little machine, with tax, shipping, comes out to $506.22 - not horrible considering the board alone leaves awesome room for growth into a dual-core configuration later on as Dual Core’s come down in price.
So it’s time to do some further testing of Sparky 1.0 and see if it can be affordably repaired, or if I should be getting out a card and purchasing Sparky 2.0! Time shall tell.
Well tonight my primary PC (Sparky - WindowsXP SP2) blip’d - for lack of a better description thats what it did - simply rebooted, then went into a reboot loop of death the drive appears to be alive, haven’t checked the seconary drive yet, but my guess at this point is most likely mobo - I have a thought it could POSSIBLY be the video card, but this board is over 4 years old, it has lived a good life.
So what to do, what to do - I think no matter what I am going to need to re-install windows… which sucks, but at the same time I am strongly considering just going straight linux in house - or dare I say it, get the iMac (sorry Jake, I still love you though!) just not sure, kind of getting sick of Windows at some level, I dunno, not that I can’t do a lot, and maybe some of my frustrations stem from the recent problems with the PC lying in pieces by me, but who knows, Ubuntu has been good to me, but it would be nice to have a non-dedicated machine, so I could do reboots, play with configs, re-install everything - if needed.
Oh the sadness, I just wish Scandisk didn’t take so long, and would of at least said what was going on other than “Phase 4″ with 2 boxes in, with 3000000 more to go Though you know windows, always so percice.
Well off to do some pricing, seems I may be in the PC / Mac market here soon… what to do… what to do…
A good day is possible. Granted if people had a play by play of my day, not many would see it from the outside as “good” but in the end, all the results came back good. Server had a false positive (all in the timing, durn cPanel and its numerous false positives!), learned more about linux in the process - got a txt msg in the afternoon from the queen of the junkies shortly after her cohart in crime IM’d me the same thing - AudioA won a grammy - so the album Until My Heart Caves in, which as both Linz and Kt have pointed out, our names are in the CD Booklet, were uber cool now
But a good day, some good headway on projects, some good headway on life (possibly more indepth on that in weeks to come… lots of things it ties into) - but this evening as I am winding down, and enjoying watching Mint do it’s thing on CMCentral.com - it’s awesome to watch it stack up, and I MUST take a screen shot tomorrow after stats finish for the day, the GeoMint, already over 300+ points on the google map, I may need a dual core processor (iMac or AMD64×2) but its a very impressive way to watch stats unfold.
Lastly, birthday time draws nearer 20 days till I turn 26… wowza.. 12 days till my sister turns 24 - always fun to have 2 birthdays in 1 month! (though some years I think Dan would disagree as he has soooo many birthdays, anniv., etc. packed into a few months) but I am still back and forth on what I want to do, Chuck E Cheeses seems a tad kid like, John’s Incredible Pizza - kinda boring, Lake seems predictable ( though it is what I am leaning towards ) - I do want lots of open air, and just good ol fashioned fun.
I could ramble on a lot more, so much on my heart and mind today, but I am going to slide on over to the bed, flip open the iBook and watch a movie, I am thinking Elizabethtown… or Melinda and Melinda, nothing like a Woody Allen movie with Will Ferrel…. but if anyone has any clever ideas for my bDay feel free to speak up, everyone is welcome, just let me know your coming, or track down a family member of mine on Myspace/Email to RSVP - I just hope I have something fun 
ps. if you see me online, remind me “No Intel iMac Duo core” - in the words of Monk “You’ll thank me later” (though iMac or AMD64 systems are both welcome gifts, or as Ron is shopping around, a good woman to love! LoL gotta love my brother)
Here’s the super bowl commercials, compliments of Google:
http://video.google.com/superbowl.html
