LateNightHacking Louis Journal

Auth

WAAAAAAAAAAA! My computer is dead! Again! Still!

WAAAAAAAAAHAAHAA!

OK, so things were going fine. I was getting my chores done and I realized about 2pm that I better swap the memory DIMMs and return the lesser on to CompUSA. Well, I put the two new ones in and it didn't boot! It was hung at the memory detect stage again. No way! So I put the one that had been working back in, and it wasn't working any more either. No combination is working. This sucks!

Looking around a bit, I noticed some crud on the top of a couple of the capacitors near the memory slots on the motherboad. I think it's my motherboard which is toast. This still sucks. I think my motherboard is also still under warranty, but I still have to figure out what to do to get it replaced. This still sucks.

Michelle had complained that the wireless network wasn't working very well downstairs. When using her computer to try to look up warranty info, I noticed the problem too. So after a little investigation, I noticed that the red "diagnostic" light was lit on the router. Not good. I tried power cycling and resetting it, but it had no effect. It seems to be working as a mindless hub, but the wireless functions and the internal web server are not working. I can't even ping it. Linksys says to try to reflash the firmware if the light stays on, but that didn't work (which is not suprising since it's not responding to the network). So yet another piece of hardware that needs to be returned to the manufacturer. If I'm lucky I may only have to take it back to Frys.

Looks like all I've got left is my Playstation. I hope that doesn't croak too.

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Today when Michelle came home from work, we made fondue for dinner. We had boiling vegetable broth and put beef and chicken in it. We also had cauliflower, white and portabello mushrooms, yellow squash, and potatoes. Michelle made some good sauces. We had teriyaki, horseradish, bernaise, and a curry sauce. We stood around the stove and used bamboo skewers. It was really good. One note if you want to do this yourself: we started with vegetable broth, but Michelle didn't like the taste, so we used water and vegetable bullion instead. That worked much better.

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I watched the stuff on the bonus disc that came with the Matrix Reloaded. Seeing how they made stuff is really cool, thought I wish they spent more time and showed more of it. The thing that amazed me is how much of what they did was real. The scorpion kick was real! When the agent jumps on the car and crushes it and all the cars in the background go flying, everything except the agent was real! It's so easy to assume that everything is CG these days and thus less impressive, when these people are really doing these amazing feats. As they pointed out, all the fights in the Matrix are one on one. Comparatively, the number of fighting moves executed in the burly brawl is amazing!

I also didn't realize how much story is in the video game. I'm definitely going to have to play it some time, if just so I can learn the rest of the story!

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Before I knew my computer was dead, I was happily singing in the shower this morning. (There was an article in the news about a guy doing research on music that gets stuck in peoples heads and annoys them. Heck, I often have something in my head, but I enjoy it. It's like my own private radio. :) Anyway, one of today's songs was "Beer For My Horses". It makes me wish I was in a singing group again, because I think it could be really fun to do in an a capella arrangement. Think of it: the last chorus, in unison "we'll raise up out glasses against evil forces saying" and then break out in a big pyramid chord on "whiskey" and complex harmony all the way to the end. It would rock, I tell you!

(Gah, I wish I knew enough music to write it out anyway.)