September 25, 2004
If you care...

Replacement mobo is being shipped. Like the other stuff from Newegg.com, it shipped from New Jersey, but instead of getting in here within 1 day like the rest of the stuff, it decided to go in the completely wrong direction, and ended up in Indiana. So, last I checked, it had to be taken back to New Jersey, and is now sitting at Dulles, VA, where it should have gone in the first place. But, since it's a weekend...

Anyways, I'm broadcasting DDR EXTREME US on my webcam for an unspecified length of time tonight. If you're bored, you can watch too. =p

I still have to write about the trip up to NJ last weekend, and the trip to go see a used Altima with Josh on Tuesday (he got a different Altima than the one we saw), but that'll wait until later. People on DDR Freak have been watching the cam for about an hour now and I guess I should start playing more since they're watching. =p

Posted at 08:04 PM | Comments (1)


September 17, 2004
Offline continued...

(Yeah, this one's a direct paste from LJ. So sue me. =p)

Well, technically I'm not offline anymore, but the current state can't be considered permanent.

I'm currently running on a loaner mobo from Kevyn, as we've pretty much determined the mobo I got was DOA. I've already started the RMA process, and Newegg should be sending me another of the same mobo soon. (I would have preferred to get another mobo instead, but I didn't have a choice...)

I'm holding off on the OS reinstall until I get the mobo finalized. So, I'm -running- on this one without a reinstall, and basically everything except the video card drivers work. So, WinXP fell back to the VGA video drivers, leaving me at 640x480x16 color for the time being.

Hopefully the replacement motherboard will work better, and this can all be fixed up soon. The saving grace was that I looked over my setup and it seems I didn't really install all that many applications in the first place, so getting myself back up and running from a reinstall shouldn't take -too- long. Of course, I have to get the hardware end working first...

Other than that, nothing of note happened really. Though, we are going up to NJ/NY this weekend, and apparently we're going via Route 1 since the Mercedes' engine isn't broken in yet...

Posted at 03:31 AM | Comments (0)


September 15, 2004
Offline...

The motherboard swap attempt went badly. Currently, it powers on, then powers itself back down after 5 seconds, with no change to monitor state. (If RAM is removed, it also beeps like hell before powering down.) If I remove the ATX 12v input, it doesn't automatically power down, but it doesn't really power up either - no monitor state change, keyboard states can't be changed (except for F-Lock, which is computer-independent), and the drives do nothing except their standard power-on functions. It also takes a 5-second hold of the power button to turn the machine off.

So, I don't have a working computer for myself at the moment. Joy.

We initially tried this at Kevyn's place, and I tried to test it more here, but without success. I'm going to be taking it over to work to see if we can get it working, but I somehow doubt it will work. Our best guess is that the CPU is probably overheating upon start and causing an auto-shutdown, since the machine was able to beep when the RAM was pulled.

Annoyed.

Posted at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)


September 09, 2004
Samoa's flag is pretty rare...

Don't have anything to update about, but I had to log in to update the Blacklist manually anyways, so I'll be brief.

The motherboard input port problems are getting worse. The frequency of it requiring me to unplug all the USB devices (as mentioned before, I'm now using USB for the keyboard and mouse because the PS/2 ports are shot to hell) is increasing, and it's actually getting slower at picking the devices back up. Once, it left me without any kind of input for 2 minutes longer than usual. I'm getting more and more convinced that buying that new motherboard was a necessity, because I can't have that happening during something time-critical, or when writing a paper or something.

Strange graphical glitches have been plaguing me lately too... I assume the board is overheating because of the horrible ventilation in the case, because it stops happening if I let the system cool down for a bit. Again, this is something the new case should solve, since it has only 3x more cooling features. I'm kinda wondering how I'm supposed to open up the PC when there's a fan hooked up to that side of the case, though...

Otona ni nuts (released in the US as "Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts" by TOKYOPOP) is wuv. Even if the US title is kinda bleh, and the cereal-box cover is worse.

Have to head to class, so that's all for now.

Posted at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)


September 06, 2004
If it has four wheels...

As per normal, Saturday didn't exactly go to plan. Instead of sleeping in after not getting a whole lot the previous night, my parents told me to scan some photos for them. The only scanner we had was our ancient HP OfficeJet 710, which was in disrepair to the point that it cannot print without blurring lines anymore, and leaves a holy hell of a lot of colored streaks across any scans. Not wanting to deal with the photo cleanup involved again, I told them we should just buy a new scanner if they intend to continue scanning more things. After my mom demonstrated her complete lack of knowledge about how the internet works (which would have made it impossible for her to take the photos to the office to scan then send them back to me, since she lacked the basic knowledge of how to do this), I end up forcing myself to volunteer to go out and buy a scanner.

Not having much time to research the topic, I end up simply visiting PC World's website and finding the latest top10 they did on the subject. The current top-rated product was a Canon CanoScan Lide 50. Unfortunately, Best Buy doesn't carry this model, but I found that they do carry the Lide 35, so I tentatively decided on that. After getting there (after a stop at the bank to switch my account over to Student Banking), I find myself a bit disappointed at the Lide 35's specs, but I also saw the HP Scanjet 3970 right next to it. For $20 more, it had superior specifications (though just barely), and a CCD sensor array rather than a CIS one. After spending some 15 minutes deliberating over this, I ended up choosing to take the HP. I really should shoot a photo of the "corner of HP" that is now taking up a large portion of the basement computer area. It's pretty funny.

Having picked up the scanner, we did the rest of what my mom intended to do during the trip - at my insistence, we stopped by Pioneer Optical to pick up my new glasses frame. Amusingly, I found out why she (the store's owner) was confused about the color of my old frame - we had ordered the "MD Blue" (presumably "Midnight") color, but the specification had rubbed off in the 14 months of use that frame got. So, the new order was for a "D Blue" (presumably "Dark") color. The current frame is, thus, an unintentionally different color from the old one. Still looks good though. The legs bend about as well as the old frame's did, too. I don't think I'll try bending the center on purpose.

We also stopped at the Asian market. Not much to say about that - I did get to pick up some snacks that I wanted, but it was mostly my mom finally getting to buy what she had set out to buy.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent hooking up the scanner, and scanning in the photos that my parents wanted scanned. Of course, the quality blows the old scanner completely away. Maybe I'll actually scan some of those convention photos that I took before I got my digicam.

Much later, I ended up setting out to SF mall. I missed the tournament, but I did catch them on their way to go eat at Sweetwater Tavern. I went along, even though I had eaten dinner at home. Amusingly, I still ate a full meal, even though I didn't really intend to. I also stole some of the leftover fries from other people after I was done with mine. ^^; Yep, my metabolism has slowed down, but it still races around other people's.

After dinner, I dropped Alison off at home, then rejoined most of the dinner people at the AMF Annandale Lanes for bowling. As I was wearing my customary slippers, I didn't have any socks, so I ended up buying a ridiculously overpriced pair at the bowling alley for $4. Bowling was... pretty funny, as the best shot I made all night was the one where I simply dropped the ball and kicked it towards the pins. =p

Seeing Chris try to fit his size 11.5 feet into my size 9 rental bowling shoes was pretty funny, too. Brice had the same shoe size as him, but he wouldn't share. =p

After the bowling (and $0.25 yo-yo demonstration) was over, I took Chris to his house, watched Inuyasha and Wolf's Rain on CN in his living room, then slept over.

Didn't do much the next day except watch over betas of the current HnK project (you'll see it this Sunday, September 12, if you're interested), finish Metal Slug 3 with Chris, and go over to Billy's house and play Hyper SF2/Megaman Anniversary Collection/SF3 3rd Strike until it was time to take Chris home. Though, we did pick up 22 pieces of fried chicken (and a large side of mashed potatoes) for $20 at Popeye's on the way to Billy's. Went home, worked on current HnK project some more, went to sleep.

Today, pretty much worked on said HnK project all day.

Tomorrow, I get to try again to make it to class without getting a speeding ticket. And, well, I have to go back to work too. But I had a nice 3-day weekend of free time at least. ^^

Site updates: Changed the LJ RSS feed to feed only the latest 5 entries rather than the default 15. This will reduce the size of the "floods" that occur every so often with syndicated feeds on LJ, and will decrease the chances of a very old entry receiving new comments reappearing as a new entry. Of course, this is a change that probably won't have too much effect on the way things work. I also changed to a different Blacklist updater script than the one I was using before. Again, you shouldn't notice any differences. Eventually, I'll bring the webcam back to some kind of usefulness. But for now, it'll remain in its old position next to the old computer, where you're probably more likely to see my brother's face rather than my own.

Posted at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)


September 03, 2004
Pack, pack, pack...

Firefox and/or this stupid keyboard and/or this stupid flaky motherboard just ate the entry I was writing. I am not happy. I had a good 400-800 words going too. >.>

Well, time to summarize, since I'm not writing it all out again, especially when I can't keep the keyboard working for longer than 10 minutes at a time today. And it was a good entry, too...

As the title suggests, I haven't been doing much other than work, which is why there really hasn't been much to be seen of me online. Class did start this week, but I only managed to make it to class starting today. Would have been yesterday, if not for that stupid speeding ticket I got on the way >.>

Anyways, the events of late, in somewhat chronological order...

Been ordering lots of stuff off Woot! lately... Okay, I only bought two things. I now have real speakers up here rather than the 10 year old set that has no bass nor a working left speaker. I also bought a tabletop monitor stand/keyboard shelf, but it didn't fit on my desk at the angle I wanted it, so it now sits in the basement, with the height too low to operate the shelf because, well, the thing adds way too much height.

I've also been dealing with, as mentioned earlier, a flaky motherboard. The problem being, the PS/2 connectors appear to be on the verge of falling off, and all the USB devices randomly "malfunction" forcing me to unplug them and plug them back in. Since I don't own a USB keyboard, the former problem has been a big issue. I've actually had to use the onscreen keyboard on many occasions in the past week, because I simply had no alternative. As a permanent fix to this problem, I decided to just pick up a new motherboard, and hope the swap doesn't force me to reinstall the OS. While I was at it, I also decided to pick up a new case to go with it, as I've been having ventillation problems with the current one (not to mention the current one is way too freaking big). I ordered these items on Monday around noon, and they arrived just before I left for work on Wednesday, at 1:09pm. o.O Haven't done the swap yet, as I'm going to wait until I get a few time-critical things done first. As a temporary fix to the keyboard thing for the time being, I picked up a PS/2 to USB adapter while I was out at Best Buy picking up a wireless-g PCMCIA card.

Now, the wireless-g PCMCIA card was for my dad's laptop, which is now apparently his to keep. So, on Wednesday, I began working on getting his laptop connected to the wireless network. The big problem I ran into was when I told the OS to connect to our workgroup instead of the company domain, which , since we didn't have any of the local account passwords, caused the laptop to lock down. >.> After hours of screaming at the fact that we now possessed a brick with an LCD screen, suggestions from several people resulted in finding the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor and using it to blank out the local Adminstrator account password. After that, all was good.

Naturally, that had to be followed by being clocked 44 (BS, I couldn't have been going faster than 40) in a 25. The officer was a bit nice and cut it down to a 34 in a 25, reducing the ticket cost to $65 and 1 point - barely. I'm still going to wait for the court notice and show up, in the hopes that I can avoid that point. I'm only a few months away from my previously accumulated 3 points being wiped, and I'd prefer not to have to wait another two years to get a clean driving record again. >.> The time it took for the officer to write the speeding ticket, combined with ridiculously few available parking spaces, made it impossible to get to class on Thursday.

That's about all the notable events since the past entry, except for a couple interesting pages out of the Azumanga 2004 day-to-day calendar. I'll have to scan those later.

Posted at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)