Category Archives: Computer

Cheeky Bastard

Posted by on October 13, 2008 3 comments

I hate people.

Who drive, when I am driving.  Seriously stay off the road.  You suck at driving.  Being in the left lane does not make you cool.  Sorry, but I thought you should know.

Fall is a terrible time in my life now.  It’s championship of musical chairs and I am deaf.  (Don’t ask how I got there in the first place.  Blame the French judge.)  In no particular order (ul vs ol), here are the chairs:

  • Fallout 3
  • Midnight Club: Los Angeles
  • Saints Row 2
  • Fable 2
  • Far Cry 2
  • Quantum of Solace (Think Goldeneye in a COD4 engine)
  • Shaun White Snowboarding
  • Need for Speed Undercover

In addition I’ve been having issues with my spanking new computer.  I get an ATIKMDAG crash/recover when playing World of Warcraft.  It’s fairly annoying and I’ve tried everything short of RMAing stuff.  I’ve decided to just live with it and hope new drivers will fix the issue.  Very naive.  I should RMA the card before it’s too late.  Only issue is that WoW is the only application (including desktop) to cause the issue.  I did get the issue on the desktop when I went to the Cat 10 beta drivers.  That means very little to me considering they are beta drivers.  I have a feeling my sound card may be to blame.  The crashes seem to happen when new sounds or spell effects fire off.  Either graphics or sound related in my book.  (The card is definitely not underpowered.  I’ve got a 4870.  I could run 4 sessions of WoW and still be fine.)

iPhone has worked well since I traded in the POS one for this new one.

New Jack’s Manequin album is out: The Glass Passenger.  Pretty darn good.  My favorite track is American Love.  It’s got some kind of poppy 80s like beat to it that I love.

The wonderful new car broke 2000 miles today.  It received a chip in the windshield about a week ago.  I let a semi merge in front of me, being nice and not 1 second later up comes a rock.  That was a bad morning.

Back to the waterfall of work.  If anyone needs help with Hyperion Financial Management, Data Quality Management or Financial Reports, I’m available.  At the discount rate of $250 an hour plus expenses.

Wish me luck as I try to maintain my youth while I dive into the maw of adulthood.

If I seem a bit down, it’s because it’s near midnight and I’m doing work and not reading, playing games or sleeping.

Worklog: Mighty Mite (03)

Posted by on September 3, 2008 No comments

I finished the build Friday night.  Here are the pics.  So far Vista 64 is up and running very smooth.  I’m all updated and ready to go.  The other two boot options are not installed.  I’m having issues with APIC.  It’s apparently not too uncommon.  I will have to look more into it.  I’m in the process of cleaning up the old computer as it moves onto data duties or as a “new” computer for the parents.  I’ve made a post over at HardOCP as a work log as well.  Here are the pics:

Link to SmugMug with all 98 pics

iSuck 2.0

Posted by on August 27, 2008 1 comment

I’ve done quite a bit of work on the Mighty Mite build, but this post is reserved for some ranting.

The new iPhone is a great wonder and a piece of crap.  As I may have stated earlier, my vibrate switch broke the first day I had my iPhone.  That was an annoyance more than anything but everything I read told me to bring it in and they would replace it.  I did that today and I have a new phone that seems to have a working vibrate switch.

However, before today it was able to cause great havok.  As I stated in a previous post, the phone had issues upgrading to 2.0.1.  I had to yoink out the USB cable in the middle of a restore to get it to stop restoring everytime I plugged the damn thing in.  (This did “fix” it.)  A week or two went by and I decided to upgrade to 2.0.2 the other night.  Mistake.  That failed upgrade “bricked” my phone.  Luckily Justin was there to help and provide some insight.  I spent 3-4 hours Tuesday night and Wednesday morning trying to breath life into the phone.  Thank god there is this mode “DFU” (which I think stands for “Definitely Fucked Up”), that allowed me to restore from a software boot (I think that’s what it did.)  It failed 3 times.  2 times trying to go to 2.0.0 and 1 time going to 2.0.2.  One last time before bed I tried to restore to 2.0.2.  I awoke in the morning to find it had succedd and it was looking for a backup image.  That was the final straw.  I brought it in today and told Apple my issues.  They were nice enough to exchange it on teh spot after running some diagnosis programs.

I brought the phone home, tried to restore the previous phones image.  That seemed to succed, but it again asked if I wanted to restore the phone or set up as new phone.  Not having anything to lose I choose to set up as a new phone.  Only this time I named it “Phail” and not “Cube Phone.”  Phail is certainly fitting for as I tried to upgrade to 2.0.2 tonight it again bricked my phone.  I got an error 1602 the first time.  I restarted itunes it saw the phone, thank god (unlike last night), and I tried to restore.  This time I got an error 13.  I fucking hate this piece of shit.  I’m uninstalling itunes and going to reinstall it.  Maybe I have a bad version of something.  I’m also going to switch USB ports.  If that doesn’t work I’m writing Apple a nasty email and I will demand retribution for all of my time.  So far I figure I’ve spent 15 hours, 30 Miles of gas and car use and loss of sleep to try and get this thing to work.   Now to the reinstall and redownload and reimage and reboot and re re re re re re re re re re!!!!

Not happy.

Worklog: Mighty Mite (01)

Posted by on August 26, 2008 No comments

As I stated previously, the parts for the computer have been purchased and in fact have arrived.  As I looked at the case and made decision on cooling solutions, I purchased more parts.  I have 3 different sets of items still on their way.  One will arrive Tuesday, one on Wednesday and the last on Friday.

I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss my final choices and ultimate purchase.  Thanks to the constant support of my family and Elizabeth, I came to the conclusion that I don’t need a bleeding edge system.  Instead I choose to opt for a “Bang for your Buck” system.  It you’ve been following the scoping process you will see that I started out with a $4900k price tag (w/o monitor).  From there I moved to a $3.5 price tag (w/ Monitor).  Further thought and research brought the price down to $3k (w/ Monitor).  It was at this time that I had the epiphany and decided to go for a “unique” and more exciting case.  Anyone can do bleeding edge, top of the line, it just takes more money.  To pull off an elegant, cost effective and unique case takes a tad bit more talent.  That said the price of the mouse(G9)+computer+case+cooling/case mods came out to $1630 and I purcahsed a so far wonderful LG 24″ monitor for $350.  Yup, I manage to reign in my spending and come in under $2k.  Here is the part list:

Part Name Information
Mouse G9 Black 5 Buttons Tilt Wheel USB Wired
Motherboard Biostar I45 Tpower
Memory 4x2GB Gskill DDR2 800
Hard Drive 3x 640gb WD
Video Card Visiontek 4870HD
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
PSU ZALMAN ZM750-HP Continuous 750W
Sound Card Creative
Optical Drive Samsung 22x
CPU Fan Noctua NH-U12P
Grill FrozenCPU 240
Blow Hole Fan Scythe S-Flex E
Front Fan Yate Loon Slim Low
Thumb Screws Lian Li
Tie Wraps and Mounts Standard Home Depot
Lighting Blue and UV Cold Cathode
Heatshrink 1/4” Black
Sleeving 1/4” Black
Cables SATA 90degree
Nuts Matching Lian Li Thumbscrews
Screws and Bolts Socket Caps
Window Acrylic
Molding Rubber C-Channel
Mounting Tape 3M Scotch #4010
Extra Tape Electrical Tape
Monitor 24” LG
Case Lian Li PCA05B
Bezel Lian Li Drive C-01B

I hope that table shows up decent enough. The parts were all ordered from Newegg, FrozenCPU, Xoxide, Best Buy and Home Depot so far. I’m looking for nuts to fit the Lian Li thumbscrews. Currently I have some #6-32s that were lying around but the thread count on the thumb screws is far higher. The Pops has sent me the location of a store near work that might have what I’m looking for.  Chances are that the thumbscrews are Metric and I just need to find some metric Nuts. (That sounds kinda funny.) Alright enough talking from me, let’s see some exposition pics!