Cultivated Nonsense » computers

[Plinky] Take my TV

Jason — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:32:12 +0000

Which piece of technology would you rather go without for a month? Your Television, Cell Phone or Computer

I’d be able to manage without television pretty easily. I’m not a huge must have TV watcher and the stuff that I do watch is on Hulu so I can catch it later if I have to. The only reason I watch as much TV as I do now is because it tends to be on all the time in the living room.

Before I moved in with my roommates, the TV was mostly just a device for displaying my console games. I could go back to that pretty easily. I don’t really *need* cable or anything.

I need my cell phone since it’s my only phone. I don’t have a land line and the only way for people to contact me would be calling up my cell phone. And you can pry my computer out of my cold dead hands.

I Hate Computers Sometimes

Jason — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:20:56 +0000

I’ve been plagued with technical issues today…

Well, it all started last night when I realized that…ok, hang on a sec, I need to explain my computing setup here for this to make sense. My main machine is my MacBook Pro, 3 years old. It’s got a 80GB hard drive in it. My music collection is about 25GB large, and my tv shows and podcasts expand that outward to 60GB. Which leaves no room for…well…anything else. So when I switched to using my MBP as my main machine, I got myself an external drive to house all of my media files and such. It’s worked pretty well, up until last night.

Last night I went to sync my iPod and I noticed that as soon as I plugged the drive into the computer, OS X froze. It seemed to do that whenever I plugged the external drive in. I thought something was screwed up in OS X and I’d have to reinstall (and then re-install again on friday when snow leopard arrived). But as it turns out the filesystem on the drive got corrupted somehow.

I managed to get OS X to mount the drive in read only mode so I could get stuff off of it. Which lead me to another problem…where am I going to put this stuff if it won’t fit on my hard drive? I suddenly remembered I have an 80GB iPod hanging around…and that can be used as an external drive too. So right now I’m copying all my music, video and large downloaded files over to my old iPod. It’s painfully slow, but it’s better than nothing.

Next up I’ll reformat the drive and put everything back. And now I’ll heed the warnings about ejecting a drive before unplugging it…

It’s been a rough day all around really. I realized today that I probably won’t be able to go to the state fair like I wanted to. Stupid broken foot. It’s not healing as fast as I would like and it looks like I’ll have to bow out of the trip and let my friends go on their own. Too much walking and I didn’t want to stress it that much unless things got back to normal. My mom said she’d go with me next week (she enjoys the fair a lot) if my foot allows so hopefully that works out. I really wanted to go this year.

Internet Explorer 6…My Nemesis

Jason — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:04:59 +0000

As I've been mentioning over the past couple weeks, I've been working on redesigning my friend's website ( http://www.wassyart.com) and I've entered the stage where I break out the design elements and create it as an actual web page.

Everything was going smoothly right up until I decided to see how horrible it looked in internet explorer 6. I freaking hate IE6. It's a non standards complaint piece of crap that should never have been released and now that better alternatives are out there should be left behind like the sack of garbage that it is.

Now only about 4-5% of the visitors to her website use IE6, but that's enough where I'd want it to be at least functional… So that's what I spent the evening doing. I got it all mostly working. Couple annoying issues but I'm almost ready to call it "good enough"

And then the fun will begin. It should move along pretty quickly once I get the basic layout done. Not much change in content, more of a facelift.

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It's Done!

Jason — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:27:43 +0000

Repair Status…

My MacBook Pro is fixed! Too bad I can't swing back out to the store to pick it up until Sunday. Just have to hold on…a little…longer…

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The Ughhhh Saga Takes A Bad Turn

Jason — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:01:51 +0000

Yesterday afternoon was the trip out to the Apple Store. The guy I talked to there seemed to know what he was doing (and seemed to realize that I knew what I was doing as well, which was nice). He verfied that, in fact, there were no functioning fans on the machine and then started looking up warranty information.

"Uh, yeah…it's not under warranty" I told him.
"And you didn't get AppleCare?"
"Nope"
"Do you realize how much it costs to fix these things?!?"
"Yeah…I'm kinda regretting that now…"

So we ended up sending it out to the repair depot for them to check out for the low, low price of around $330-ish. Next time I'm buying AppleCare.

Anyway, I was wandering all lost…since I had no fully working computers anymore. Wassy (she came along for moral support, and to listen to music along the way) had to point me to Best Buy since we were going to check to see if they had a power supply extender cable thingy, just as a long shot. Which they didn't.

Fortunately, another friend of mine had an entire spare system since he just upgraded and left most of it in-tact. I was able to swing by his place last night and pick it up, so I can use it temporarily for the next week or two until my MacBook gets back.

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More In The Ughhh Saga

Jason — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:08:35 +0000

Another computer woe update for you.

I went over to my friends place last night with a bag o' computer parts in hopes of piecing together a "new" desktop temporarily, until I can get my MacBook Pro working again (and my desktop too.)

Things were going well until we got to plugging in the power cable for the video card. As it turns out, the cable in his case was short and we couldn't find an extension cable anywhere, so the plan failed miserably. I came up with the idea of getting some copper wire and jamming it into the power plugs. I guess that didn't go over so well, although I can't see why not.

Oh well. I appreciated the help in any case. I have an appointment tomorrow at noon at the Apple Store to try and sort all this out with the MacBook.

Hopefully tonight will be good though. I'm going to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood's improv show tonight. This is the second time for me since they came through town last summer and they were awesomely funny. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time now.

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My Expensive Doorstop

Jason — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:42:10 +0000

The Culprit

Well, I did some checking into my dead computer yesterday. Unfortunetly, it looks like when the power supply exploded, it took the motherboard with it. Anything more than that I can't determine since I can't get it to boot up properly.

It's going to be a month or two before I'm going to be able to fix it, and at this point I might even just upgrade to something else once I get the money.

In the meantime, I've got my MacBook Pro. It's not ideal for gaming, but…it's something. And now I've got it all hooked up to my main keyboard, mouse and LCD.

On the plus side, Wassy surprised me last night (it was hanging on my door when I got back from class) with a little French Vanilla smelling candle thingy (mmm…vanilla) to help with the "charred wire and plastic" smell. Much appreciated…that smell lingers forever.

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In A Flash Of Light…

Jason — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:56:32 +0000

…my desktop computer is dead.

I went to turn it on this morning and it seemed like it got stuck starting up, so I turned it back off, then back on again. BOOM! With a lot of crackling, popping, flashes of light and the smell of burning wires, my power supply died in a fiery blaze of glory.

Hopefully it didn't take the rest of the computer with it since I really don't have the budget at the moment to put together a new system. Come to think of it, I really don't have the budget to get a new, quality PSU for a little while.

Oh well…at least I have the Macbook Pro.

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QotD: I’m Good

Jason — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 14:12:15 +0000

What are five things you’re good at?
Submitted by HapaLove.

This is going to be a stretch I think. I’ll tell you what I’m not good at: Making lists of things that I’m good at. I can think of so many more things that I’m not good at.

Computers – I’m good at computers, knowing how they work, fixing problems that come up. Anything I can’t solve on my own is usually solvable with a quick Google search.
Programming – This could probably fall into the category of computers, but I’m stretching things out here. I’m not the best programmer out there and I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got a lot to learn, but, I think I’m pretty decent anyway. Especially when it comes to web based programming. I’m not great at the local desktop programming stuff, but I think I’m better with the web. I enjoy it a lot more too.
Guitar Hero – Free bird on expert baby!
Researching Stuff – If I decide I’m going to go and do something, I’m good at researching it. I tend to over-research a bit actually. If I want to buy something, I want to know pretty much everything there is to know about that particular thing. I’m also good at looking up useless facts..such as how much it would cost to put a plastic tarp over the Great Lakes.
Listening - From what I’ve been told, I’m a good listener. That’s a little hard to measure for myself, obviously, so I’ll just have to take other people’s words on that one.

Vox Hunt: This Is A Fan

Jason — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:50:56 +0000

Show us a fan.
Submitted by little miao.

120mm fan

Being the geek I am, I happened to have a spare computer case fan hanging around. So there it is. My silent 120mm case fan, just waiting for the one in my desktop to crap out.