Month: September 2007

Still no computer 🙁

Every problem they fix seems to bring up another one at the moment – it’s not that they’re incompetent or anything, it’s just really stupid bad luck. But at the end of it (which at the moment is scheduled for tomorrow some time) I should have an almost completely new system. New motherboard, new RAM, new video card and possibly even a new processor if they can scare a spare one up. So it’ll all be worth it. I hope.

Five days without a computer (well, near as). It’s amazing I’m still alive.

It’s ironic – seemingly a blog a lot more when I don’t have a computer than when I do…

Well the latest update is that my motherboard is fairly well fried – which isn’t all that surprising considering the machine is getting on for five years old. They’re replacing it with a brand new, sparkling, clean one, so hopefully by the end of today normality will be restored and I can go back to not blogging again 😉

(Oh, and sure I could probably buy a new computer for not much more than it’s costing me to get it repaired, but as an Aspie change hurts my head and I just want things back the way they were. Yes that’s nuts, but that’s me. I’ll upgrade some other time, so just deal 🙂

In two other bits of important news Amazon has finally done what I’ve been waiting for someone to do for years – launch an online store where you can buy plain, ordinary MP3s unemcumbered with DRM. Since way back in the Napster age I’ve been saying that if someone got their act together and started running a store like that, I’d happily pay for large quantities of downloadable music, and it looks like it’s finally happening. I’ll wait a little while for the reviews to come in (just to make sure it’s as good as it seems) and then get updating my MP3 collection with all those songs I’ve always wanted to get but couldn’t be bothered buying entire albums (or labouriously tracking down singles) for. Yey Amazon!

The other bit of news is that Dresden Codak creator Aaron Diaz has declared December 8th as Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day. If I had the guts to behave like a lunatic in public, then this is something I would so be involved with. Alas, I don’t have the guts, so I’ll just encourage others to participate instead 🙂

My computer should be going in to the shop today, so hopefully I’ll have some idea of what’s wrong with it soon. And how much it’ll cost to fix it. New memory is fine – the real worry is that it might be the processor or motherboard. If those are gone, it’ll probably be cheaper to buy a whole new system. But I don’t want a whole new system! I want my old computer back dagnabit! (although a bit more grunt would be nice I suppose…)

On another subject it’s not often I read a book that I don’t want to end. That’s not to say that I don’t read a lot of excellent and enjoyable books – it’s just rare to find one so enjoyable that I get kind of sad when it’s finished. But I finished just such a book this week – Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog. It’s simply the best Time Travel / Romantic Comedy / Victorian Farce / Historical Architecture / Sci-Fi novel I’ve ever read. It’s enough to make me want to buy a bulldog, name him Cyril and go boating on the Thames!

Of course I expected it to be good for the simple reason that it’s set in the same universe as Fire Watch, which is one of the most memorable short stories I’ve ever read. And it won the Hugo back in 1999 and was nominated for the Nebula in 1998. But it’s more than just good,  it’s the most enjoyable read I’ve had in ages, and I heartily recommend it to everyone – or at least everyone who thinks they might enjoy a Time Travel / Romantic Comedy / Victorian Farce / Historical Architecture / Sci-Fi novel with numerous references to Three Men in a Boat 🙂

…as sand through the hourglass, such are the days of our lives… (by which we mean later…)

Well, just heard from the computer people, and it looks as if my CPU fan has got clogged with dust and generally died, leading to the CPU overheating, with various knock on effects, possibly including damage to the motherboard and RAM. They’re going to clean it all out and run extensive tests to find out what (if anything) needs replacing. The Hard Drive should be OK, but they’re going to test that too. It should all be done by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

[zoidberg] Hooray! [/zoidberg]

My computer decided to die yesterday 🙁

Because there were supposed to be thunderstorms (which never arrived) I unplugged it from the wall before going out yesterday morning. I got back home aorund 2:00, and plugged it back in, intending to do some work on my Wild Southwest campaign setting. It booted really, really slowly. So I tried rebooting several times – no change. I had a look at the BIOS settings, reasoning that the battery might have died – they all seemed fine. Finally I took the case off, cleaned out the dust, and had a good look around to make sure nothing was loose – nothing was.

So then I started it up again. The memory check froze halfway through. I rebooted. The memory check froze a quarter of the way through. I tried again, and absolutely nothing happened. I just got a cursor blinking in the corner of the screen, which is how it remained on every subsequent boot until I finally gave up 🙁

So, no emails, no working on my many projects, no looking up stuff on Wikipedia when I get bored. Honestly, it’s like losing a limb 🙁

The good news is (I hope) it seems like a memory/CPU problem. The hard drives should be fine, so I won’t have lost any data. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Now I’ve just got to find time to take it into a shop and get it fixed, which probably won’t be possible until the weekend at the earliest. I don’t know how I’ll survive!

So if you don’t get any emails from me for a while, you know the reason.

DO NOT WANT! 🙁

My arrival at work today was somewhat delayed by a rather entertaining incident taking place at the junction of Hampden Road and Monash Avenue. Here the casual traveler will find a small roundabout (or as the Americans would have it a “traffic circle”), although this morning our traveler would find – in addition to the roundabout – one of those double length buses with a concertina section in the middle to allow it to go around corners.

What made the presence of this bus entertaining is that the driver – possibly new and unfamiliar with this particular intersection – had taken his bus around the roundabout at completely the wrong angle, resulting in said bus’s rather large and elaborate arrangement of wing mirrors getting tangled up with one of the signposts announcing the presence of said roundabout to other motorists.

He couldn’t go forward without tearing off his impressive collection of mirrors and probably taking down the signpost. He couldn’t go back because his bus was already bent around the roundabout at a rather extreme angle, and reversing could well rip the concertina section apart. He was trapped – trapped with such remarkable efficiency that it seems incredible it could have occurred without forward planning and careful maneuvering.

The driver of my own bus got out to lend a hand, but after a few minutes of poking at the mirrors, poking at the sign, and standing around scratching his head he had no choice but to get back into his bus and continue along his route (by this point many of his passengers had got out and started walking in frustration). And inevitably, just as we got underway no less than five more buses turned up, one after the other, all seeking to go around the roundabout – a feat just possible (under the current trying circumstances) for a normal bus, but not for the two – normally extremely rare – double length concertina buses among their number.

We left them to sort it out on their own 🙂

Feeling somewhat more lively today – when I got home on Wednesday night I felt so wretched that I proclaimed “Liver detox be damned!” and ate properly for 24 hours. I’m back on the program today, but at least don’t feel like lying down and dying. I figure three days on, one day off is better than no detox at all, and if the naturopath doesn’t like it, too bad!

I’ve also just finished reading Three Men in a Boat (brilliantly funny by the way), which I’ve been meaning to do for years. This probably – along with the fact that I’ve only had Turbo Boost Detox Powder for breakfast – accounts for the rather odd literary style of today’s entry 🙂

Back to work!

Yaaarrr matey! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day ye scurvy dogs! Yaaarrrr…. Oh I give up, I can’t do this at the moment.

For reasons far too tedious to explain I’m in the middle of a liver detox program. For the uninitiated this consists of avoiding everything that’s in the least bit tasty to eat for two weeks, avoiding all caffeine, and replacing breakfast each day with “Thermo Boost Detox” powder in soy-milk.

So essentially I’m in hell.

The biggest problem I’m facing is that I’m not allowed to eat gluten, meaning that grain based products are totally out of the question. This presents a major challenge because (what with my hypoglycemia) I should only eat low GI foods – which basically means grains. If you really want a fun time, go down to your local supermarket and try to find low GI, gluten free foods. It’s almost impossible. About the best you can do is specially processed (and rather expensive) rice. So not only am I starving and half asleep from caffeine deprivation, but my blood sugar is all over the place.

And don’t get me started on the “Thermo Boost Detox” powder. Do you remember that scene in one of the Austin Powers movies where Austin mistakes Fat Bastard’s faeces sample for coffee? Enough said.

I don’t think I’m going to last the full two weeks. I might see if I can make it to Saturday, and then throw the whole thing in. If I could do it without my blood sugar spiking up and down and making me feel like death, then I might stick with it – but it’s just too unbearable. Especially since there’s so much on at work at the moment, and I feel like sleeping for half the day.

Anyway, enough about me and on to some good news. As of this weekend my good friends Rebecca and Dom are the proud parents of baby boy named Jakob Zachary (I think that’s the correct spelling :). I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with the directly yet, but I believe all three are happy and well. So congratulations guys! 😀

Anyway, better get back to work… Arrrr!

Well it turns out my speculation about Channel 9’s excrable iCaught the other day was right. And then wrong. Apparently they decided to take it off air in favour of Two and Half Men, but then flip-flopped and decided to give it another chance. I can’t imagine why.

Also we can’t blame Channel 9 for it entirely, apparently it’s an American show with a bit of Australian content cut in to try and make it relevant. Yeah, good luck.

The fundamental problem with the show is that there’s no audience for it. Net savvy people won’t tune in because they can just jump onto Youtube and watch the content whenever they want to – and anything really good the producers could possibly show will have already been seen by them anyway. The rest of the population won’t want to watch it, because it comes off of that porn and virus ridden interweb thing that’s full of hackers and peadophiles – not to mention that Youtube videos don’t look very good on a television screen.

In fact I’d go as far to say that the only people who’d ever watch such a program would be fat Americans needing their daily audio visual fix. “Quick ma! That there iCatch telee-vision show’s awn!”. As long as their TVs provide a constant stream of noise and images to keep their brains from firing up, they don’t care what garbage they watch.

Oh, and it looks like Channel 10 may not axe Big Brother – they’re going to sell it to Channel 7 instead. Fine by me – the last thing I watched on 7 was midday repeats of All Saints during my weeks off. Prior to that I haven’t watched 7 since they moved Stargate: Atlantis to 3:08am every second Thursday.  If they want to go all BB crazy, then let them – as far as I stand out of sight means out of mind!

Finish off the week with some foolish follies!

Matt Bellamy in Gwen Stefani Shock!

Ricky Martin’s Secret! (no, the other one!)

Belgian Children’s Television Scandal! (seriously not safe for work, or decorous minds 🙂

Right, I’m done. Go make your own entertainment!

Good News Item 1: Gangster (or should that be ‘Gangsta’? I’m not really ‘down’ with the way the ‘hip’ young people talk nowdays) Rapper 50 Cent has stated that he’ll quit music if Kanye West’s new album outsells his. After only two days Kanye West’s Graduation is 200,000 units ahead. He’ll probably weasel out of it, but still – Huzzah!

Good News Item 2: Channel 10 has admitted that after several years of plumeting ratings and sordidly dull scandals it’s considering axing Big Brother. Of course it’ll probably be replaced by something just as vacuous, but nonetheless – Huzzah!

Good News Item 3: Channel 9’s attempt to hook in the hip, young, internet savy generation with their new “lets rip footage off YouTube and put it on TV to save money on real content” show iCaught was a miserable failure, with ratings worse that Yasmin’s Getting Married. It probably won’t even make it to a second episode. Huzzah!

There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others! 😀

Some foolish ideas that occured to me this week…

1) A five minute, weekly summary of Neighbours animated in the style (and tone) of South Park

Goin’ down to Ramsey Street, gonna have myself a time!
Friendly faces everywhere, Doctor Karl and Harold Bishop…

2) A production of Shakespeare’s Tempest, with Caliban costumed as Spongebob Squarepants.

3) Rewriting The Battle Hymn ofthe Republic to fit the tune of I am Australian. All you only needis an extra line on the end of each verse and a few extra “glories” inthe chorus…

4) A set of small flags (based on the International Marine Signal Code) to be placed on one’s workplace computer monitor to inform colleagues of one’s activities and intentions. The blue peter for “I’m about to go home” for instance or the yellow ensign for “I have a cold – keep clear”.

These ideas may be foolish, but they’re mine. Hands off! 😀