My brother Sam has a wish list at Amazon that includes, among other strange things, a home defibrillator. Gah!
My Uncle S and Aunt V sent us a package, it's our second wedding present! Thanks, guys, we love you!
I've been fighting a new motherboard, trying to get it to work since last night, and it finally is working good. I have a new Abit AA8 DuraMax LGA775 board that won't reboot after you quit BIOS and save. I couldn't flash the BIOS for some odd reason, either. Every time I start the machine, it says the CPU has changed, and I need to update the BIOS settings. I could install Windows (just had to hit F1 every time I rebooted), and I installed the Abit Flashmenu utility. Unfortunately, the version on the CD isn't current, so you have to get the new one from the Abit Website. When I did that, the One-Click update (and all the other BIOS update options) complained that the version of BIOS isn't correct for my motherboard. So I rebooted with an old Windows 98 boot disk and loaded the awdflash.exe DOS utility along with the binary image of the BIOS update to the ramdrive. When I ran the awdflash utility this time, it worked just fine. I then reentered BIOS, reset the SATA RAID, hit Save and Exit and it worked.
Jacob: 1, Goofy Hardware Issues: 0.
We got our first wedding present yesterday, it was really cool. It also makes me nervous, because the day is coming quickly.
Well, I had to post about this, because it was funny. I'm putting a new computer together at the office, and the label on this new Toshiba DVD drive says:
To built this product in an equipment, handle it only in electro statically safe environment.
Everything else is grammatically fine, just that one warning
You can finally get Farscape DVDs for a reasonable price! I loved the series, but never bought it because a single season costs about $120! Other TV shows that I've picked up were between $30 and $60, much more reasonable. But finally you can get Farscape season one for about $60.
Last Saturday I went to get my hair cut, and the first two questions the lady asked me (when I told her I was getting married in a couple weeks) were:
Have you been married before?
and
Do you have any kids together?
It's truly unfortunate that society has gotten to this point. Marriage just doesn't seem to matter to people any more.
New Category Day!
It's Friday (finally), and I have some cute fuzzy kitten pictures for you:
I got a letter last night in the mail from my Home Insurance agency saying thanks for my payment, but it was late and they typically charge a late fee. It also said they'd waive it this time because it was the first late payment they've had from me.
Unfortunately, that payment comes from my Mortgage company, out of my escrow account, and I never have paid it directly. What can I do if they pay my bills late??
I was reading one of the two sites I visit daily, and under some comments someone posted a few jokes:
During training exercises, the lieutenant who was driving down a muddy back road encountered another car stuck in the mud with a red-faced colonel at the wheel.
"Your jeep stuck, sir?" asked the lieutenant as he pulled alongside.
"Nope," replied the colonel, coming over and handing him the keys, "yours is."
Officer: "Soldier, do you have change for a dollar?"
Soldier: "Sure, buddy."
Officer: "That's no way to address an officer! Now let's try it again!"
Officer: "Soldier. Do you have change for a dollar?"
Soldier: "No, SIR!"
I have a server down here in the office, with an error message that I've never seen before:
NO ROM BASIC
SYSTEM HALTED
And it says this in big blocky letters, not the normal resolution that even BIOS uses.
The machine is a P3 933 with an additional Promise ATA drive controller to run a newer 400Gb hard drive. I removed the new controller but the system runs through BIOS checks, begins to boot Windows, then resets, so I think it's some other problem.
Update:
The problem was a little crazy—we lost both the hard drive and the power supply. When I replaced each part, one by one, things started working, but when I put them all back together it started randomly rebooting. By the long process of trial and error I determined that the problem was both the power supply and the hard drive.
Update 2: (14 April)
I discovered that not only did the main drive and the power supply go bad, the drive controller card also went tango uniform. I replaced it and the secondary (400Gb) drive came back up like a champ (instead of saying Drive not formatted.
Yup, you guessed it, gas went up again, $2.471, and a new area record. That's up eleven cents in two days, and fifteen cents in three.
I've had a computer sitting around for several weeks now, in case someone needed files off the hard drive (it belonged to an employee that recently moved away). Finally, today I was asked to remove the drives, replace them with some new ones, and hand the machine to one of our testers, who could use the faster hardware. No sooner than it was done, I was approached (by the same person) to reinstall the drives and begin retrieving files that were on it. This happened twice. I just left everything hooked up and running waiting for the third time...
Well at least I bought gas yesterday, check out today's jump:
Coeur d'Alene
Current $2.441
Incidentally, that's the highest recorded price for Coeur d'Alene since they started tracking it.
Today I paid the most for gasoline that I have ever paid in the U.S. It cost me $30 to fill my tank this morning at $2.40/gallon. What really chafes me is that it happened despite the fact that crude oil prices continue to drop.
But don't just take my word for it, check out AAA's Retail Gas Site for Idaho:
Coeur d'Alene
Current $2.362
Yesterday $2.328
Month Ago $2.021
Year Ago $1.802