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January 14th, 2006
02:35 pm
Update: so I reboot (off of the unaffected drive) and refuse Win2k's demand to run chkdsk and lo and behold, there's my files! Burn spree now I think. Really wish I knew what the fuck was up with this computer!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Okay.gif) blah
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January 13th, 2006
07:07 pm
Jesus fucking Christ it happened again.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Sad.gif) morose
Current Music: not a fucking thing
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December 15th, 2005
12:16 am - Fukkatsu; or "That Which Doesn't Kill Us Makes One Paraphrase Nietzsche"
Here I am, back at it again. Round two - FIGHT!!
So now I seem strangely unable to boot from the freshly formatted and reinstalled HDD (boot sector error? Maybe, but I'd have thunk Seagate's Seatools would've caught that) or from my FDD for that matter (am I gonna have to burn a CD just to flash my BIOS?), and I just got a "system failed VGA test" error from my motherboard for the third time since I built this box (my PC has a sexy downsampled female voice!) and you know that power on/reset issue probably still isn't solved but hey I think my HD is OK (famous last words).
(paranthetical aside)
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Sydney0.gif) I still hate computers
Current Music: Michio Fujisawa - Sonnet (PrePrimer)
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December 11th, 2005
04:21 pm
So uh...anyone know anything about data recovery? :(
See I was just minding my own business an hour ago, leeching ridiculous quantities of copyrighted material via bittorrent like any red-blooded American man, when I tried to launch Firefox and was hit with a barrage of error messages to the effect that each plugin Firefox attempted to load was "corrupted or could not be read". The error messages recommended I run chkdsk immediately, but doing so rewarded me with similar errors. After shutting down (which itself resulted in more disk corruption errors), I attempted to reboot but failed miserably.
So I says to myself, "self, you've got a dusty Win2k installation on that 120 gigger Maxtor in there; why don't you try booting that?" And I did, upon which chkdsk explained that it was very urgent that it scan the Seagate right away. So I let it, not knowing that in chkdsk's language "scan" apparently means "wipe". Now I'm left with 11 GB of data out of what was probably totalling close to 100, a woefully incomplete Win2k installation, and 2.5 GB of "found" *.chk files (gee, thanks a lot chkdsk).
All told, it could be a lot worse. Chkdsk found no bad sectors, and the contents of the Maxtor drive remain unscathed (man am I running some ancient software at the moment though). Much of what was on the Seagate was either transferred from my "temporary" machine which still retains all of that data, or was torrented within the last couple of weeks and can be leeched once more, if I have the patience. The Seagate drive appears to be fully functional, and hasn't given any physical symptoms of failure. If I had to hazard a guess as to what went wrong, I guess a virus wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility - the only source I can think of though would be a warezed copy of Nero, which I tested after installing and seemed to be normally operational. I also had a couple of ports open for p2p functions, but I don't know of any exploit that would allow an attacker that kind of access. I'd like to hear some other ideas though. I'm wary to reinstall on the Seagate till I'm positive that it's stable, virus-free and my lost data has either been recovered or confirmed to be unrecoverable. I guess I'll be trying to update this installation and working with it for the time being.
One last thing that's really bugging me: lately my PC has been requiring me to reset it after powering on before it will POST. After that, it appears otherwise stable and boots fine. It's frighteningly similar to the problems I was having with my last build though, and I didn't start experiencing problems with that till after six months of use. Any ideas, no matter how useless they might seem to you, are appreciated. I'd particularly like to find an accurate, reliable guide to determining PC component power requirements, just in case. Everything I've read on the subject has been vague and unhelpful.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Angry.gif) fucking through w/ computers
Current Music: Guilty Gear XX #Reload Korean Version - Dementia
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November 15th, 2005
05:33 pm
Anybody out there in internet-land experienced with resizing NTFS partitions? The Win2k installation CD formatted my boot partition with the upper size limit for FAT 32 (~128 GB) for some reason, and I'd rather have one large partition on the drive than add a new one.
Also, I know dick about networking and would graciously accept any advice to get my two PCs to see each other, talk to each other, maybe check out a flick, you know. Looking to do some data migration and I really don't want to do a bunch of physical relocation of drives.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Confoosed.gif) inquisitive
Current Music: Bloody Wolf
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November 11th, 2005
04:22 pm
Say Greg, you know that HD you had in your last PC before it exploded? The one with 90 GB of data, but you couldn't find out if it was OK because you had to install 98 on your temporary computing solution and the disk is formatted NT? That same drive that you haven't used in a year and half? How's that doing?
A: fanFUCKINGtastic
Current Mood: so happy
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02:19 pm
oh God
resolutions above 800x600, how I've missed you
poorly translated driver CDs bundled with useless buggy bloatware, I haven't missed you
100baseT, we are cool
Current Mood: jubilant
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October 30th, 2005
07:08 pm
Those who are so inclined, feel free to pick this apart and let me know what you think. I'm going to stick with the Enermax PSU I bought last year (35A on the +3.3v and +5 rails, 33A on the +12v). Keep in mind that I'm not concerned about 3D gaming, so I'm unwilling to lay down more than ~$150 on a video card. I'm mainly interested in an All-in-Wonder because I'm a multimedia fetishist and more cables and connections make me hot. Any glaringly bad ideas here?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Surprised.gif) time to poop
Current Music: nada
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September 30th, 2005
11:04 pm
The Livejournal effect: update with a brief, meaningless rant, maybe throw in an obtuse comment or two, and half a dozen people respond. Compose a more cheerful post about good times, and it slips under the radar. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - just observing. It seems to me like this place feeds off of negativity sometimes.
Mostly for other reasons, I'm curtailing my internet usage. I doubt any of you will notice a drastic change - the truth is I have wasted such an outrageous quantity of time on the net that I can cut back and still have plenty of time to keep in touch. I'm working on creating a loosely structured schedule for my time in order to make myself more productive and successful. Maybe this is an obvious thing to do, but it's rather new to me.
In the interest of contradicting myself, I ask you: if I were in the market for a new PC or components, what should I look for? What new things should I be aware of?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/ford/sydnicons/Awake.gif) awake
Current Music: Shades Apart - Tainted Love
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March 20th, 2005
06:53 pm - Reasons to be happy this week:
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn
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February 26th, 2005
07:00 am
Thank God for Leadtek. They provide an invaluable service, free of charge to the rest of the world: demonstration in action of how not to handle customer service. In honor of their valiant selflessness, I present a suite in e mail for unaccompanied ignorance (Op. 3).
( bitch bitch bitch )
In my analysis, the lack of any immediate response so far is an intentional use of silence for dramatic effect. It's quite striking.
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: every copy of Sledgehammer I find lacks the shakuhachi intro
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December 15th, 2004
01:29 pm
A few weeks ago, my mom emailed me a request for a Christmas gift wishlist. My response:
- for my computer to be functional again
- a new job
I finally tired of not taking any action on the PC front, and wrote another email to Leadtek's customer support. By now my warranty has long expired, and I still don't have a satisfactory explanation for my continued problems. I was hopeful that someone at Leadtek might be able to point me in the direction of a solution anyway. The reply I received was, "I'm not sure the problem. I guess we can just exchange it for you again." I still have no answers other than that maybe Leadtek just assembles terribly crappy components, but hey, RMA goodness.
I sent an email inquiring about the status of my RMA and was told that my replacement board has shipped, and was given a UPS tracking number. Only the corresponding package is in transit to Winnepeg. As in Canada. Two emails pointing out this fact remain unanswered after a week.
Hey, remember this job I mentioned a month or two ago? The guy they hired quit. I re-interview tomorrow afternoon. I guess that means this little experiment ends today. You're looking at six weeks of hard work! Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
I was being facetious when I wrote that list, but maybe it isn't so unrealistic after all. Oh, and my Christmas present to Bob arrived today. The temptation to say to Hell with Christmas and keep it for myself is pretty fierce.
Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: ProjeKct One - Jazz Cafe Suite
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March 9th, 2004
03:53 pm - This year blows
I'm still using the folks' computer, and it's driving me nuts. If you have any comments on my computer issues mentioned in earlier posts, please speak up (or type up), no matter how insignificant you might think your advice is.
My car is in the shop again. It died just short of getting to work on Saturday. I woke up at 3:30 AM to be there by 5 on my day off (I'm not even supposed to be here today!). I only wound up getting about an hour of work done, so I paid $65 for a tow so I could make ten bucks.
So my head gasket is blown. The resulting pressure caused my radiator to suffer irreparable damage. At the very least, I'm looking at $207 to replace the head gasket and valve gasket, $347 for a new radiator, $22 for an oil change as this coolant leak has fucked my oil, $60 to flush and refill the coolant system and $450 for an estimated six hours' labor. The total for repairs is about half of what I still owe on the overpriced heap.
I think my next resort will be to attempt to reason with my dealer. If I say to Hell with this car and let him take it back, he could either do so and fuck my credit, or make a deal with me on a new car and continue making money from me. I think that would be preferable to sinking over $1000 more into this car.
Why is this year so awful already? Here's Smeg's 2004 year-so-far-in-review!
- The only dog I ever liked died. The folks have two new dogs; a St. Bernard mix that's a puppy, and a two year old Pomeranian with a terrible begging habit. Duncan was so fundamentally different I don't even know where to start.
- I fell in love to be let down. I'm not over Danielle in the slightest. In fact I still try, although I may not post about it much in here. Everything about her, every nuance or mannerism or expression makes me feel like I haven't in a long time, but she's almost certainly a chronic, pathological liar.
This has gone far beyond the point of maintaining optimism in the face of doubt. She still never calls me, whether she tells me she will or if I call and get her voice mail. Yet every time I talk to her, she has some new story, some new drama, some new excuse and tells me she still wants to go out. I'm not going to let her turn me misogynist, but I'm still at the point where it's hard to imagine anyone else exciting me like she does.
- Garden Ridge filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and has closed eight stores and one warehouse so far. Work has taken a turn as we've started receiving double the usual amount of freight, as one warehouse has started shipping to us before the other has been emptied out, and we've also received freight for closed stores that's been redirected to ours. Coupled with the number of associates who have already found new employment (we're talking about people who made the job bearable), we just can't come close to managing it all. We have merchandise coming out our ears and I still have to try to find room to unload more every day.
- My computer is comatose. It's worked flawlessly for six months, and all the components should still be under warranty. It's still a pain in the ass to deal with, and I'm practically lost without the thing.
- My car has been in the shop three times now this year, and since August I've already put $700 into it on top of insurance, gas and payments. She has 135k miles on her and just isn't worth the upkeep anymore. I think it's time to put her out of her (my) misery.
2004, in short, blows.
On a lighter note, I cut my hair (no pics till the computer works again). I'm still not quite satisfied with it, but I guess it looks OK. It's more rugged and less metro than I was aiming for, and I'm told the result is more Hugh Grant than Takumi Fujiwara. I don't know what to think of that, but as long as transvestites don't start hitting on me I guess it could be worse. I think some gel experimentation is in order.
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Rick Wakeman - Minas Truth
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February 27th, 2004
10:06 am - Snow day
The view out my front door this morning:
I had to leave my car at work yesterday. I tried driving home, and performed a very tight 180. If it had been on purpose, it would have looked masterful. Alas, I really was attempting to move in a straight line.
Being snowed in gives me some time to try and catch up on some reading. As part of my anti-procrastination declaration, I recently received three huge tomes of SAT prep stuff. On top of those, I finally got around to picking up The Sandman: Endless Nights (which is fantastic, of course) and am currently working through or have yet to start on The Complete Guide to Game Audio (not at all what I was expecting, but I intend to finish it regardless), Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician and Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (haven't even started it yet; it's rather intimidating).
I've been exploring Foobar2000 this morning. I briefly encountered it months ago, when the foobar SPC plugin was the only one to properly emulate the uniquely compressed samples in Motoi Sakuraba's ridiculously awesome Hiouden soundtrack (snatch it from SNES Music if it interests you). There wasn't much to the program then, so I was a bit confused when I witnessed the regulars of #vgmix raving about it. This site can more properly explain why replay gain is such a desirable feature, but I'm already sold on the convenience of playing emulated file formats in Foobar. The "special" installer comes with a wide variety of emu plugins, and each index within a GBS, HES, KSS, NSF or SID file (as well as each SPC within a RAR) is listed seperately on the playlist, making song selection a breeze. I've never experienced such convenience when playing SIDs, and I'm really enjoying hearing a lot of great stuff for the first time.
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Cobra Strike - 32nd Degree
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July 14th, 2003
10:38 pm - Balderdash
So, I finally got the new PC up and running (thanks ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) oddigy), and I've been doing all the things that one should do with an overpowered machine. That is to say, violating copyright laws. I leeched the complete MAME 0.71 set (minus CHDs, for now), because I could. I don't care for the benchmarks traditionally favored by PC hardware reviewers. You know what really matters? My PC emulates fucking NARC at 60 FPS whilst a variety of other tasks are running. That's what I'm talking about.
I bought my first CDR spindle last week, and have been happily busy burning tunage to listen to in the car. I practically had to pry the copies I made of the Beyond the Beyond arrange album and Ecco: The Songs of Time out of my mother's hands. I've made a few of my own compilations as well, and I think my Satriani disc is well on its way to surpassing my Guilty Gear CDs as my ultimate cruising music. I just polished off a three disc retrospective of King Crimson, and for the sake of alienating everyone (except possibly Ed), here are the tracklists:
( King Crimson CDs )
Next up: Faith No More and Primus. Now I just need a reason to spend enough time driving to listen to it all.
Current Music: ProjeKct Two - Return to Station B
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June 13th, 2003
12:00 am - It's aliiiiiiiive
Well, OK, all it does is post at the moment since I haven't an OS to run on it yet. But hot damn does it ever post fast :P
Current Mood: giddy
Current Music: Akumajo Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku - Bloody Tears
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