razorslave

on sale at Newegg for $79.00 it cost me 82.99 with rush processing and *MAY* be here tomorrow if it ships from California. . .

Which will free up 4 160GB Drives out of my file server, increase the total size of my storage by 50% and allow me to populate the 4 of the 7 machines I was given when I helped close Pat Clark Auto.

If you know any one in the Las Vegas Area who is interested in a super cheap FreeNAS file server (I will have 2 ready to go) with a 160GB Drive in each. . . I can hook you up. . .

I will also be pre-purchasing the first Microsoft OS I've purchased* since Windows 3.11 tomorrow. . . http://www.microsoft.com/windows/buy/offers/pre-order.aspx $99.00 for Windows 7 Professional is nothing to sneeze at.

Rev


*not counting O/S's purchased via the Microsoft Tax on new system.

Not Work safe, I'll have to check it out when I get home. . .

12 clips of topless greased up women playing Wii

Thank you (I hopw) Kotaku.com

If I'd a known about this, I woulda just bought one of these rather than replacing the LCD and the inverter (multiple times) in a failed attempt to resurrect my compaq. . .

EDIT: May be a scam, defintalely holding off on it to see what the verdict is. . .

For $150.00

http://www.medisoncelebrity.com/

Intel® Celeron 1.5 GHz CPU
14" Widescreen X-bright LCD
256 MB Ram memory
40 GB Hard Drive
802.11g Wireless LAN
Optimized Linux operating system
Pre-installed office and multimedia applications

Plus, it will take the RAM out of my existing laptop, so I can bump it immediately to 512MB Ram and 60GB HD

I may order this today. . .


researching further. . .

$77.00 on pricewatch.com gets me a 2.6 Mhz Pentium 4 that works with the motherboard in this thing. . .
$90.00 Gets me 1GB DDR400 RAM

$317 for the whoe thing. . . damn. . .


Rev

I'm in love with the Jawbone. . .

http://www.jawbone.com/

take a look at the demo, the sound is apparently recorded through the headset. All the reviews on the net are glowing. . .

The silver is available out on the net for around 80.00

I'm thinking of holding off for a couple of weeks to get the black, or maybe even the red. . .

I also will no longer be having the issue with my phone and the irritating GZZGSZZZZGZGZGZG noise anymore, as I'm buying a sidekick 3 after work. . .

Rev

My home work (as opposed to the Game) boxen has started to seriously fuck up. It's been locking up has required two hard restarts. I also noticed that when it came up the c: drive (a newer - maybe 1 year old SATA 160GB Drive) has started collect bad sectors.

Looks like I get to transplant the 160GB IDE Drive from the unused External HD into the machine, and RMA the drive. At least I'll get to add a drive to my gaming box for swap space. Not that it really needs it, running a 10K SATA Drive as it is.

The annoying part will be the roughly 8-12 hours this re-install will take. On the flip side, this windows install is almost a year old and is BADLY in need of a refresh.

Rev

So I got my select statement problems all taken care of, LEFT OUTER JOINS solved it all. I can now pull the data in my application and display it in a myriad of diffrent ways to make it usefull.

The next step is creating the ASP.NET 2.0 based DB Entry/Addition, and Editing and Deletion pages.

I'm having problems getting my head around the best way to do it.

I know there has got to be a simpler way to do this than doing a diffrent ASP.NET page for each portion of the process (Each Table) and clicking through the addition of one peice of data to each table that requires a diffrent peice of data.

A .net Transaction a la this page seems to be
the best way to go.

But how do I go about making it accept the form based (or whatever) based entry and tying that entered data into the 6 or so diffrent tables that it draws the information from.

Any thoughts?

Rev

One of the hazzards of knowing the amount I do about windows, and PC Hardware is that I'm constantly being called by my family for assistance with their computers. I really don't mind, slightly over half of the people who call me pay me, and generally pretty well.

My Uncle Dick called me last week and scheduled me to come out and take a look at what was going on on Tuesday night.

I get there after work and he's having issues with BOTH his desktop and his laptop.

Tech Geek Scavenger Hunt & Triva

1 year old HP P4 512MB RAM 200GB SATA Drive looking at DOS window that says NTDLR is missing. Pull out the HP restore discs becase the restore partition doesnt seem to be there. Stick disc 1 in, reboot the machine and follow the prompts to do a non destructive recovery. Get error message that it is unable to write to the drive O.o Not good. Reboot check the bios, hmm, driv shows up, run S.M.A.R.T. tests everything works out fine. Says the drive is good. Try again, choose the option to repartion and reformat the drive and re-set up the HP restore partition. Get the Same Error Messages o.O Now I'm thinking dead drive. I end up taking the box home with me and utilizing Ultimate Boot CD I'm able to fdisk and reformat the drive. Restart the HP Restore process, choose the option to repartion and reformat the drive and re-set up the HP restore partition and the whole thing goes without a hitch. Total time spent on this little project: 6.5 Hours what I will charge him. $200.00

Any ideas as to what could have caused this?

I get to deliver it back to him tonight and pick up the laptop. When I got there it wouldnt connect to the wireless at all. I monkeyed about a bit, ended up attempting to re-installing the wireless utility and although it failed, it evidently got to the point where it re-installed what it needed. As it now connects to the linksys router. It is most definately in SERIOUS need of a fresh re-install. He's had it for 2 years and hasnt re-installed his OS since he bought it. The amount of CRAP that is loaded on it, plainly scare the piss out of me. A 2.4GHZ P4 should not take 45 seconds to load the control panels page. There's also undoubtedly a large amount of extranious and usless software shoehorned in by AOL and their, "I must control every aspect of the operation of this computer" mentality. He's going to have me re-install it, configure it, load Norton Ghost on it, and back it up creating him an image, so that if anything ever goes wrong, he can just restore it. Estimated time: 4-6 hours.

While I was there he revealed that when he had an issue 2 years ago and my dad looked at it, when he mailed the machine in to have Compaq take a look at it, my dad had removed the HD and when Compaq sent the laptop back. They also sent him another 60GB HD for the laptop. Which has been sitting in a box unused.

I'm thinking that I'll tell him that I'll configure and tweak the latop for $200.00 or $150 with the 60GB Laptop drive.

Rev

http://arstechnica.com/staff/carthage.ars/2006/7/1/4502

The plan is to write a book, detailing EVERYTIHNG that is needed, including the necessary open source software and tools. To show how easy an election on a electronic voting machine can be rigged. With the information out there, and usable by anyone with a mid to high end PDA. The idea is they will be forced to ground the technology or face the consequences. . .

Rev

So I was at Guitar Center on a date. . . yes, lol, we went to Guitar center on a date, her idea, that earns HUGE big points in my book. Possible musical collaboration in the future. . . she does piano work, wants me to remix it after hearing the noise type stuff that I do. . . intriguing. . .



And while I was there, I noticed that they had the M-Audio Axiom 25 on sale for $179.99 $50 off the MSRP. . . I know in gear land that pricing is about normal but with the 3 for 1 ProSessions discs offered by M-Audio as a new purchase incentive it was worth it. Along with the Copy of Live Lite 4.0 that will allow me a shortcut in the upgrade cost to go to Ableton Live 5.2. . . wheeee.

It's a suprisingly well made peice of kit. and combines the best features of a midi controller keyboard and the trigger finger.

I can't wait to get the whole thing figured out, and hooked up to my system running the ESI Sampler and loops and all that goodness through this thing. . . mmmm live shows. . . mmmm

I got home and registered it with M-Audio, got the promo codes for the 3 for 1 deal) selected the CD's I wanted and went to order them, but then it choked and told me the promo codes provided my m-audio are invalid. . .

um. . . I just got them from the website. . . grrrr

So I've fired off an e-mail to sales and I hope I get an apologetic letter with the appropriate codes and the necessary info to re-order the sample CD's. . .



Rev

http://www.bf2s.com/player/60211829/

only 4 unlocks to go. . . I love this game. . .


amd Ventrillo works FAWLESSLY with the new hardware set up, meaning my clan and I have full uninterrupted communication on the board. . . :)

Rev

I have Entered Primary Negotiations to buy two of these one of these and all nicely packaged in one of these well it slightly resembles one of those, but I don't get to get my grubby paws on it until August when I'm in PDX Next. . .

Rev

The Z Machine and the Sandia National Laboratory. . .


Sandia’s Z machine normally works like this: 20 million amps of electricity pass through a small core of vertical tungsten wires finer than human hairs. The core is about the size of a spool of thread. The wires dissolve instantly into a cloud of charged particles called a plasma.


( cut to spare all of your page layouts this image is huge and high res )

I also have a new background for my work computer. . .

Rev

http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/downloads/Moo3Patcher.zip

linked fromt his page

http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/downloads.php

its the patcher for 3rd party game modifications for Master of Orion 3.

My Companies Network HATES the Moo3 Patch.zip file. I try to download it and it I get a message that my connection to the server has been reset before the download can be completed. I was able to download every other patch and the .dll file on the downloads page so i know they don't have it blocked. I had Barnaby download it and try to e-mail me the zip as an attachement, and it kept bounching at the yahoo mail servers. So I had him try to send it to me via file transfer on IM and the server choked, hard. So I had him rename it to a .wav file after we proved it would transfer .wav, and it choked, I finally got him to e-mail the renamed file as a .mp3 and yahoo's servers passed it on, but every time I try to download the attached .mp3, the only one that doesnt work, the connection to gmail's server gets reset. weird huh. Guess I'll have to wait till I get home to download it, and install it on my laptop so I can run moo3 with your patches at work. . .

Rev

So I went in to fry's, they actually produced a laptop as a loaner for the 6-8 weeks it will take to repair or replace my laptop.

What I had. . .

Compaq Presario 2103US
Athlon XP Mobile 2800+
768MB RAM
30GB HD Space
DVD/CD-RW

pulled my 512MB SODIMM from the machine before I turned it in. . .

what I recieved.

HP Pavillion XE2153US
Athlon Semperon 3000+ (64Bit Woot!)
512MB of Ram
60 GB HD
DVD-R/RW / CD-R/RW

I wish they'd just let me have this one, as it's just a BIT nicer than my old machine. . .

but they did say it was ok to wipe the drive and install whatever on it, as long as they were able to restore to the factory install they would be happy.

Rev

No call recieved in the promised 24 hour period for descision on loander which started at 6:19:15pm 1/1/2006

Called Frys at 6:24pm

Ian placed me on hold twice to check status last time @ 6:32pm. Was on hold for 28 minutes. Called back provided number and had and answer available within 3 minutes to come and pick up my loaner laptop, They say, all I need, is a valid credit card [X] Id [x] and my body [x] I'm also bringing the origonal service contract.

Rev

the backlight on the LCD for my laptop just died. Was working fine yesterday, go to boot it up today, and screens not responding, not a big deal, it's done this before when I've closed the lid without powering it down. I restart it after hard powering it off. Nothing, I punch in my password, let it run, and am leaning back in my chair when I notice that i can see windows in the backgound with the screen tilted just the right way. . .

I purchased an extended 2 year warranty from fry's, it does not cover accidental damage to the laptop, I have dropped it before, but it's worked fine, and it defiantely shows the wear and tear of being a mobile dj rig for over a year. I just hope they don't try to give me to much shit or we will be getting pre-paid legal involved . . . again.

Reviewing the contract now. . . looking at whether I can take it in tonight, or if it will have to be tomorrow. . .

**update**

4:15pm Called frys with faxed coy of service contract, they could no locate the invoice number in their computer system. I have faxed them a copy of the paperwork and await a callback.

4:42pm Frys' called back says I can bring the laptop in and it will pull up in the system. I'm going to run it over on my lunch, once things calm down here after about 6;00pm. Hopefully that doesnt take to long, and hopefully they will provide me with the "loaner" laptop that I can hold hostage until live up to the terms of my service contract.

6:42pm Just got back from Fry's, watch them hem and haw and cluck over the cosmetic damage to the laptop. showed them that the laptop still worked, only the backlight was out. They will be calling within 24hrs to advise whether or not they will provide a loaner as per the service contract. Will have a lawyer ready to fax them a letter if they do not. LCT Backlights can fail from physical trauma, but expect the LCD to be shattered in that case.

Rev

Am I a FPS Geek? Apparently, I guess so, because I got all the jokes in this and found it to be fawking hillarious. . .

( behind cut to preserve bandwidth as GIF is HUGE )

I also found this to be quite entertaining. . . and will be using to to properly salute asswipes on message boards and Lj. . .

( might not be worksafe if a drawing of a woman felating the words 'this thread sucks' counts as NSFW )

and for anyone who knows me and my cat. . . there is no picture that describes our relationship better than this. .



Rev