Archive for March 2007
I got Lego Star Wars (prequel trilogy) for the PS2. I don’t like the prequel movies, but I liked the original trilogy lego game so I thought I’d give this a try.
I’m still sad about Buster. I’ll write about that soon. I wrote about him being lost and then found, last summer. I haven’t been able to write about what happened after.
No entry yesterday, because on Monday the power went out on my block. (Yes, yesterday was Tuesday, and the power was out Monday, but it’s connected.)
The power went out for about the 4th time in 9 months. Before that it hadn’t gone out that many times in 5 years. What’s up, PG&E?
Calling within 60 seconds of the outage, I got an automated message saying they knew of it and were working on it. I think if people were already in the field working on restoring the power within a single seconds, it means those same workers probably caused it to go down as well… but at least there’s a number to call and some soothing “it’ll all be all right” verbiage. The estimated repair time is always a few minutes from now to 2 hours beyond that. So if you call at 10:51pm, then the estimated resolution time is between 10:59pm and 12:59am.
For some reason this made me think it’d be closer to the short end, but once it was 90 minutes. This time it came back on within a half hour, but I was already in bed.
And may I say, that while I’d rather not be remodeling my house (I’m lazy), it’s awfully nice to have a 19.2volt cordless Craftsman lamp right within arms reach?
Anyway, when the power went out, my UPS started screaming. I wasn’t using the computer at the time, so I turned it off.
Tuesday I had to actually turn the power off myself to do a little electrical work. Took longer than I thought (got started late — lazy, remember?) and that meant when I powered back up, it was 8:24pm, and I’d missed the beginning of American Idol. Let’s hope Sanjaya gets voted off tonight, or else let’s just have him win. Either one.
After a bit, I went to turn the computer on. Didn’t turn on. Ah, the UPS, says I. Flick switch, lod POP and a nice acrid burning smell to fill the room with joy.
Power supply dead. I’d never changed one out before, wasn’t sure how hard it was.
Today I took the computer to work so I could swap it out on my lunch break. Pulling out the old was easy; no soldered components like on my old 386…
Unfortunately, my dead power supply had a 6-pin auxiliary plug, in addition to the more standard 2×2 and 20-pin plugs. Not a single power supply at CompUSA had one like that. (I hate CompUSA but they are close by and it was urgent.)
I called up the guy who sold me the motherboard and case (I put the rest together myself) and he came by, told me I didn’t need the 6-pin plug, and gave me a replacement PSU for $15. The computer boots up, and this guy is the owner of his own computer hardware/repair/network installation business, so he really knows what he’s doing… but unfortunately I’m still nervous. I think I’ll do a full backup tonight…
$15 is much better than the $65 at CompUSA. I’d link to my guy, but he’s semi-retired. I trust him, but on the other hand I don’t really trust anyone, even myself, so I’m wary.
This blog doesn’t show up on google yet, since I just submitted it last week, so I don’t know how many people will *ever* read this. It’ll just function as a (censored) diary if no one ever reads it, which is still worthwhile.
So there.
My wife and I have been watching this show on NBC. It’s not really that good. Last week they finally got rid of the ironically named “spiritual Sandy,” to our frustrated relief.
This week they saved Austin, the one guy we have both been wanting to get kicked off since the show started. As long as he doesn’t win, I really don’t care who does. He is so incredibly off-putting, arrogant, and just plain yucky. I don’t know why people have voted for him, unless it’s a votefortheworst.com type thing.
A friend of mine died yesterday so I don’t have much to say right now. I just started this blog, and so far it seems pretty boring. But it’s not like anyone is reading it yet. I’ve got some possibly interesting content percolating in my brain and perhaps some will show up here.
I’m basically only on the computer to charge my ipod, in preparation for getting to work remodeling the nursery.
Down with Austin.
