So, I was going to the bus stop last night….

And I was approaching the bus stop, I noticed someone waiting 10-20 feet away from it. I didn’t think nothing much of it. I do it, if there’s a ‘character’ at the stop, and I want to give him a wide berth. I went to the bus stop, and I saw a radio flyer wagon with a bunch of stuff on it, and two people sitting on the bench. It wasn’t until right away that I realized what was going on: a drunk was getting serviced orally by a hooker (?) at the public bus stop, while there was still traffic! Anyway, I immediately stepped away from the stop, and the john came out and started lighting into the other guy standing there (apparently he was supposed to be the lookout). they all left during the argument, and I went to the stop (by then, I was the only one there), and I could tell they were prettily hammered. When you’ve left five minutes ago, and I can still smell your beer, you’re probably very well pickled. I boarded my bus. As the bus proceeded on it’s route, I noticed that same wagon a couple of blocks down the road near some bushes. And two pairs of feet in the horizontal position….

Moral of this story: Don’t even sit on the bench in King County Metro sheltered bus stops. And there are still a very small minority of the populace who still uses bus stops to actually catch the bus. And I’m one of them….

It's alive, part deux?...

When we last left my tower, I was running Chkdsk on it over night. It finished during the night, and I turned it off. This morning, I turned it on and loo and behold, it booted into windows! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! And then I couldn't get online anywhere... That was simple. I just had to power cycle my modem and router.

As soon as…

As soon as I get one tower upgraded to something workable, the other one tries to die….

Like I posted Monday, I got the processor situation in my Win9X tower upgraded (I ‘borrowed’ a couple of power cables and a monitor from my main WinXP tower so I could see if the other tower works. Then on Wednesday, my brother’s boss dropped her computer off for me to look at. From what she was telling me, I thought that it had given up the ghost, and was merrily frolicking amongst the Beer Volcanoes and Stripper Factories. SO, again, I pulled the monitor and the power cables from my main tower, and started analyzing it. It turned out that her main issue was the video cable had come loose. Still, I ran Windoze Update on it, and made sure she had a decent AV. While that was going on, I tried running my main tower with only one monitor, and I noticed it wasn’t booting normally (the splash screen was just hanging, and the colors weren’t all there). Oh shit. I put all the hardware back together (thinking that it was just because I was trying to run it on only one monitor when 2 had been installed. And it wasn’t booting. Couldn’t even get to the POST. Finally, I got it to POST, but then the hard drive wouldn’t spool up. Finally, I had to give up on it, as it was 1 on the morning, and I had to get up a 5 to work a 13 hour shift.

I get home from work tonight, and give it one more try. For some reason tonight, I was able to successfully boot off the XP cd, and get it into recovery console. Right now, I have chkdsk running, and it’s 57% percent complete. This may take a while, as it’s a 1 terabyte drive.

I’m so grateful that I bought my laptop the last time my computer had issues. But on the bright side, I know now how to change a slot 1 processor, as well how to re-seat a socket 775 chip…

It’s alive?

About a year and a half ago, my former district manager at work gave me his uber-old computer, a 265 MHz Pentium II. He had upgraded hos computer to a laptop, and it was just sitting in his closet. I casually asked how much he wanted for it, and he gave it to me outright. It sat in my room for a year, and I decided to restore it. If I’m going to run Win98-WinME, then I’m going to try to get a decent processor. Looked on Ebay, and there were a shit-load of cheap Pentium II Slot 1 processors available. Ordered one, it arrived today.

A couple of months ago, my boss offered me his old computer desk and monitor (he, too, went from tower to laptop). The computer desk works, but the monitor is a dud. Pulled one of the monitors off my main tower, and the slightly less-old tower works, though I can’t get into the BIOS (and it just sees a 500 MHz Pentium Pro, instead of a 700 MHz PIII). But it still works. With my boss’s computer desk, I’m trying to set a separate computer desk in my room. And along with this, I’ll have a separate work station set up, so when I get called upon to fix a tower, it can just be dropped off at my house, and I can leave the rat’s nest behind my main tower alone….

A little older, hopefully wiser….

When somebody posts to my Facebook wall, I get the usual email. I also get a text. It comes in handy. If I know who’s ‘freinding’ me, I can confirm it without having to open my browser. However, this can have it’s drawbacks/ Like when my birthday comes around, and everybody posts their wishes. And they have to do it at three in the morning. Fortunately, I remembered I can put my phone on silent mode…

My birthday was today. As of this writing, I have about 20 minutes left of it. I didn’t get much this year, which is alright with me.  The well wishes I got from my friends (and my sisters. And you, Mom & Dad) throughout the day were the highpoint of the day. And Steve, shall hunt you down, and repeatedly say ‘NI!’ at you until I get my shrubbery…

Aside from the well-wishes, I did get a couple of items. Mother gave me a case of Coke Zero. I told my father I really didn’t want anything specific, so he gave a couple of Federal Reserve gift certificates.

Surprisingly my boss hasn’t tried selling me a phone this year. Three years ago, he sold me his Shadow. Last year, he sold me his HD2. But this year, he’s selling me a computer desk and a monitor (to go with the old tower I already have. When I’m not screwing around with that tower, I’ll use it as a workstation, ie keyboard, monitor, and mouse so I can fix other towers, something I still get called upon to do….).

Life isn’t fair….

I remember in the late ‘90s, there was this drink put out by Coca-Cola called Surge. I drank it. And enjoyed it (this is before I was diabetic). And then, I realized it was gone (right about the time Target stopped carrying 1-liters). I’d get home from Seattle (I was working in the Westlake Center at the time), go into the South Hill Mall Target, grab a 1-liter of Surge, then go to South Hill Hobbies (the owners were by best friends, and one of them still is. RIP Bob), and my Happy Hour was chugging it, and then going home.

Anyway, Surge went to The Beer Volcano and The Stripper Factory in 2003. Here are 24 other items that are no longer with us. Pepsi Blue is actually still with us. It’s just know as 2000 flushes…

I now pronounce you Google and Motorola

If you haven’t heard it yet, Google is buying Motorola Mobility. Motorola has in the past made phone that are icons. Remember the microtac from the mid-90’s? Or perhaps the first wearable phone, the star-tac (some years later they released the RAZR, and the Star-tac was still lighter than it). I used to have a motorola, a blue MotoRIZR Z3, that I bought from my boss (who at the time had the original T-Mobile Shadow, a gift from his wife). Six months later, he sold me his Shadow. Two years later, his wife bought him a HTC HD2. Six months later, he sold to me. IMO, he made the biggest mistake of his life (there is so much more you can do with an HD2…). Hes now using and LG Optimus G2X.

This will probably do much to improve Google’s market share (iOS is still the phone system for douchebags, but there are still lots of douchebags. And then there’s The Anti-Christ….). If this clears anti-trust, good things could happen. Then again….

My contract went up two weeks ago. But waiting to see if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger will go through before I renew/upgrade my contract. Sprint is also a viable option…

So I got a birthday wish last night from one of my friends...

I'm sure he meant well from it, and I appreciate the thought. But still it isn't my birthday yet, and I'm not really down with celebrating birthdays and/or holidays early. One day at a time is the best strategy in my opinion for special days. it's the same with Christmas Creep. I like the example of Norstrom. They dint set up for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I can understand it if there are other events like an overseas deployment that make an early celebration necessary, but to everyone else, you can wait till the appointed time...

So I'm still running Froyo on my phone....

And I have absolutely no motivation to upgrade to Gingerbread. Aside from the obvious fact that I'm still running an HD2, which wasn't originally designed to run Android. But I think I've been through that before....

Since April, I've been running Roms by CMYLXGO. First I was just running stock, then I figured out that since the roms were just basically zip files, I could customize them with my own software selections (and save space by taking off programs I didn't use). But I realized that space was still an issue. When I was running droid off the sd card, I usually had an entire gigabyte to install my apps too. When I was running just straight nand (everything off the phone memory), all the software ran off the phone memory, and space ran out really quick. Then I switched back to Rafdriod. I used to use it before I was using cmylxgo. Basically, it's a stock Desire HD adapted to the hd2. But since it's also written for the european version of the hd2 (which only has 512 megs of memory), it has a little trick up it's sleeve: you can partition your sd card, and have a fat32 partition for your memory card & have a ext3 partition for your phone's data partition. Space is no longer an issue. With a 2 gigabyte partition on my memory card, I have as much available space on my phone that I had with the MyTouch 4g. Without the ticking time bomb of a possibly defective emmc chip....

There is progress being made in developing a Gingerbread rom for the hd2, but there are still a couple of bugs in it. Nothing really big, but it's enough to keep me from upgrading. If it works, I really don't see a reason to try and fix it.

Tomorrow, it'll be a year since my boss sold me his HD2. Though I should give the shout-out to his wife, who bought it for him in the first place (which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't shown her my Touch Pro 2 when I bought it). And I'm still happy with it.

First Pre-Season Game is in the books….

And all I can say about it it that Seattle’s back-up players are better than San Diego’s back-ups. Starters got to play one quarter at the most, and then we saw the back-ups and the others play. Which in my opinion is the best football. The starters pretty much know they have employment secured for the rest of the fall, so they aren’t going to play that much. Everybody is still trying to get work for the fall, so they have much more motivation to perform in the pre-season. During the game the Monday Night Football crew were also pointing out some changes this year, among them being (in no particular order):

• Horse collar tackles don’t actually have to be a tackle to draw a penalty. A safety measure.
• They’ve expanded the rule to protect vunerable players (ie punters right after they’ve kicked, etc). Any contact will now draw a 15 yard penalty. People may say the sports degenerating down to touch football, but I can see the league’s point. It’s a safety issue. They’re in a position where they can’t protect themselves, they’re usually not anywhere near where the play is, and they can really get hurt….
• No more two-a-day practices. That was actually part of the new collective bargaining agreement. And there must be a minimum of 5 days off during the bye week.
• All scores are automatically reviewed by the replay official, who may direct the referee to look at it. This way the coaces don’t have to waste there allocated challenges.
• The big change this year in the rules was relating to the kick-off. The ball is now kicked off from the 35 yeard line, and the players on the kicking msut start with a body part on the 30 yard line. This is another change made in the name of player safety, but I can see the kick-off turning more into the opening touch-back than an actual kick-off return. In tonight’s game, I saw a the majority of them returned anyway, though that may be due to players trying to impress somebody into a roster spot, and possibly a job.

Hopefully the Seahawks will make the play-offs with a winning record this year….

Just another sucky Monday morning….

It’s a day off, but I ordered a stick of RAM for the tower last week, and Worst Buy is shipping brown. They said anytime betwwen 9 and 7, so I set the alarm to get up at 9. Pulled the laptop out to the living room, and the Wi-Fi is out (as laptop was unable to connect to the apartment’s secured wi-fi network). And come to think of it, my Android Powered HD2 was unable to connect as well. SO I go back to the tower (it has a wired connection) and I start to play with the settings. Rebooted both the router and modem. Reflashed the  router firmware. Restored factory setting. Twice. And eventually I got the wi-fi to work. DNS is still buggy, though (I think that my be an issue on Comcast’s end, as I did verify that I’m using the right DNS servers…).

While I was writing that last paragraph, Fat Bastard’s Co-Workers showed up with my delivery: a 1 gig stick of ram for the tower. I don’t think I’ll be putting anymore in it. It already has 2 gigs in, and a 1 gig video card, and the maximum it can support is 4. No, I didn’t do this for XP. I’m doing it for an eventual upgrade to windows 7, which is also why I’m setting up my win9x tower. And a nice off-shoot to setting up the separate win9x tower is that’ll I’ll a separate monitor, mouse, keyboard, and a workspace to I bring friends’ towers home to fix them (and maybe charge them). I don’t really mind most of the time having to fix their computers. I do mind having to pull my tower out & disconnecting all the cables, and then remembering to reconnect them. Why can’t people just leave my rat’s nest alone?

No more Linux. I can get the tv tuner to initially work, but once I install the Catalyst driver, all I get is a buzzing noise. Not even a window. It’s not worth the frustration. I guess this means I can pull the 2nd TV tuner out. I had disabled in Windows. It was just there for Linux….

EDIT: Who knew that to fix the balky router I just has to power-cycle the surge protector it and the cable modem were plugged into?

EDIT II: It’s confirmed that my supposed ‘n’ router is crap. Apparently my roommate has had nothing but problems with it since I set it up, but he never told me…. So we’re back to the old one. And I moved the modem/router out to the living room, so we can all get the same signal…

Ok, who wants to play 6 degrees of Kevin Tighe?!

I joined Netflix tonight. Only the 7.99 streaming plan, though. If I want to watch a DVD, I can always check it out for free from the Pierce County Library. When I first got my laptop, I saw the standard Windows Media Player, and then there was the Windows Media Center, which is essentially a 64-bit version of Windows Media Player, plus some enhancements for TV Tuners and the like. And Netflix. So, I’m now watching Emergency!. And unlike Hulu, which only had 4 seasons, and you had to watch commercials, this has all 7 seasons. And no ads, so far.

So, to hell with 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. Let’s play 6 degrees of Kevin Tighe.

And I’m sure I’ll find other things worth watching, too. I can also stream HBO programming (since HBO is part of my xfinity tv service…).