Month: January 2006

34,000 Things That Could Be Wrong

I feel like such a dummy. I used to be an alpha geek, now I’m lucky if I even can claim the title of plain ol’ geek. My computer knowledge peeked around the cusp of the Windows98/Windows2000 change over. I never really learned anything about networking and it is starting to show.

I managed to get both computers to connect to the Internet through the router. But I can’t get them to talk to each other. I’ve turned on file and printer sharing, I shared the my documents folder on both machines, they belong to the same workgroup. A couple of the tutorials I’ve found on the web have mostly rehashed the same old procedures that come from XP’s built in Network Troubleshooter. I have run XP’s Network Setup Wizard, but always stop short because it looks like it wants to change some setting that I used to get the Internet sharing to work and I don’t want to muck that up.

About halfway to work this morning the Emperor clicked past the 34,000 mile mark. I wanted to say rolled over, but the Miata has a digital odometer so it doesn’t roll at all, it just blinks. The 3 nines change to zeros and the thousands digit advances one. I kinda miss the rolling action. Of course sometimes the zeros didn’t exactly line up nice until a few more miles down the road and that bothered the anal retentive portion of my brain. Maybe the digital is better after all.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 4

That Noise!

While not terribly loud, it was annoying enough for my wife to wake me up at 2:22AM this morning to go shut off the PC.

Just figuring out how to get to the replacement parts area of the Dell website was a chore and then after drilling down thru the hierarchy to get to the fans I was greeted with a “We’re sorry” page, please call 1-800-357-3355. I was then shuffled off to the Philippines to order the fan. But before I could actually get the woman to order the fan I had to politely refuse, twice, to buy some sort of computer service book especially tailored to my PC. It was also a minor fight to keep them from putting it my Dell Credit line (unused for the last 2-1/2 years after I took advantage of it to buy this very PC) and place it on my regular credit card. Total with shipping – $22.95.

In one of my attempts to find out how to order a fan, I was rummaging through the support forums and learned of a web site that sells Dell spare parts, Centrix International, but unfortunately, both of the fans listed as compatible for my PC were out of stock.

Started up, went down, went up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 4

Linguistic Aptitude

For whatever reason I am good at understanding people who are speaking with an accent. In my wife and my travels over the years I am always the designated interpretor. I have never mastered any language other than English (and sometimes my mastery of that is in serious doubt), but when other people speak ‘merican in a mangled form, usually after a minute or so I can figure out what they are trying to say. Also, I don’t notice it, but my wife will tell me that as I talk for a while to people who have a strong accent, I will start to take on that accent in my speech as well.

Mike Ward‘s 6-year old daughter was having a sleep over and she wrote him a list of what she wanted to do. He can understand his daughter’s list, but was offering a free beer to anyone else who could decipher it too.

* paly games
* and liscin to my inp3 palyer
* haev pytsa
* wactv
* and dowl
* and wac a moovy
* read a book
* and look at the Cisrmois tryye
* and do my karoke
* liin to radyo disny

I’m pretty sure I got them all (except for one.)

* play games
* listen to my MP3 player
* have pizza
* watch TV
* and draw (guessing ????)
* watch a movie
* read a book
* look at the Christmas tree
* do my karaoke
* listen to Radio Disney

So Mike, if I’m right on the draw thing, when’s a good time to stop by?

What Noise?

Came home this afternoon and fired up the PC. After 10 minutes or so the noise came back. I unplugged everything from the back of the tower and dragged it out into the middle of the floor. I got out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up as much dust as I could out. I pulled out the CPU fan and it?s housing from inside the PC and boy was it dusty. I spun the fan and it turned jerkily, no noise, but it didn’t rotate smoothly. I removed the 2 screws mounting the power supply and contemplated unhooking all the connections to remove the unit from the tower, but decided I would wait and see if it was the CPU fan first.

I hooked up all the cables, leaving the CPU fan out, and fired up the PC. While I let the PC run I vacuumed out the fan real good, but couldn’t find any place where I might be able to lube the motor shaft. After about 15 minutes and no noise I figured that the CPU fan was indeed the culprit. Shut down the PC and reinstalled the fan. I started the PC again, leaving the case wide open with the intent of waiting until the noise started and then unplugging the fan to confirm that it was bad.

After 30 minutes the noise hadn’t returned, so I buttoned the case back up. The PC will be left on tonight and we’ll see if we get woken in the middle night of the night by a rumbling fan…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 1

Boating Anyone?

Donna\'s Mom and Dad on a Boat in 1970 Back over Thanksgiving week when Donna and her sister were going through pictures to take to the funeral home for them to use in producing a tribute video of their mom, Sandy kept looking for a picture she had seen before and wanted it included, but looking high and low it couldn’t be found. Donna and I hadn’t ever seen it before and we were beginning to believe that it didn’t exist, that Sandy had a false memory implanted somehow or was confusing/combining two separate images in her head.

This weekend Donna has been in the back bedroom continuing her daunting task of sorting through thousands of family pictures. So guess what she happened to find today? That’s right, Mom and Dad on a boat. Sorry we doubted you Sandy…

New Year’s Revolutions

That’s right revolutions, I gave up on resolutions a few years back when the only ones I could actually stick to, were to ride my bike less and gain some weight.

Radio Paradise is out as my internet radio station of choice. For the last week or so it has been plagued by drop outs and annoying buffering for 10 seconds to forever until it reconnects. Now it could possibly be my fault as it seemed to have started about the time I got this whole wireless network thing going…or it could be they knew I didn’t donate my usual 5 spot at the end of the month like I’d been doing all year…or whatever, but RP is out and RadioIO-eclectic is in. RadioIO-eclectic is a little harder edged, plays more cover tunes (which I like) and doesn’t play many “oldies” (which I sort of miss), but most of all it hasn’t once dropped the stream on me.

Netflix is back. This time we opted for the cheapest entrance fee – $9.95 (+tax) – which entitles us to one movie out at a time with unlimited rentals per month. Because there is a distribution center in Columbia, SC now we are looking at quite possibly a three day turn around time. We are going to plan a mid week movie night, and if the mail gods are smiling we should have another movie available for a weekend night. We quit NF in October of ’04 and haven’t watched too many flicks since then, so it only took about 10 minutes to line up 20 movies for the queue. I’m sure keeping it that full won’t be an issue for a while. Guess I’ll see about getting a plug-in to show the queue on the right hand side here, so you can see what we’ll be watching on Wednesday nights.

Might be turning off the PC at night and during the days for a while. Started to get a loud rattle this afternoon. At first I thought it was the sound of a hard drive about to self destruct. I shut the PC down and started it back up and all was quiet, for a while. Shut it off again and when I restarted the computer I commenced to backing up my documents. When it started making the noise again I cracked open the case and pushed on each HD to see if the noise would stop, and it would for as long as I was putting pressure on the drive. But neither felt like it was vibrating enough to make that much noise. Sounded more like it was coming from the power supply fan and a quick whack in that area silenced it. There is also a CPU fan in the same general area so it could be that too. But seeing as if either one were to fail silently it would be catastrophic, I’ll just turn off the PC when it is not in use. Going to put a slight crimp in my search for ET for a while.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 1

Old New New Year’s Tradition

Last January 1st I remarked that we had started (after all of 2 in a row) a new tradition of taking a hike in the Sumter National Forrest on New Year’s Day. This year our hiking companions were non-committal and a pleading phone call from an old friend made us revive an old tradition with some folks who continued on in our recent absence. We joined the Aiken Bicycle Club on a ride to Aiken State Park.

In the intervening 5 years or so since we last did this with the ABC a couple of things were different. 1) Donna and I were riding a tandem instead of separate bikes and 2) the Aiken State Park was now called Aiken State Natural Area. (I wonder what the difference is?)

The Natural Area is a 22 mile one way trip and seeing as that is about 2 miles further than we have ridden in a long time and there was a catered lunch waiting there for us, we opted, along with about 1/2 of the cyclists, for a ride back to Aiken in a car with the bikes on a trailer.

Because it was such a beautiful day for January, we had plenty of daylight left when we got back and tomorrow promises rain, so we climbed into the Miata and went for a 50 mile or so drive.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 0