Archive for April, 2006

Omg - Try Again

Published
by
Jasarien
on April 22nd, 2006
in All Out Rants and Computing
. 0 Comments

You may be wondering what the title is about - well 2 seconds I go, I tried to write in my blog and Firefox just closed - without reason - like WoW decides to do now and again. Read on.

I am through with PCs! Read it, believe it. Done, dusted. Non stop problems from day one.

Look what happened when I restarted my “PC” after WoW crashed - AGAIN :
Wtf?!

Can anyone please tell me that this is not normal?
I recieved my “replacement” for my “faulty” Shuttle (SN25P) this afternoon. The second I turned it on after installing my EXPENSIVE and POWERFUL (read: crap) components, it blue screened while loading Windows (another of my pet hates). I had to actually overclock the RAM for it to even boot. And even then it still isn’t stable. THIS ISN’T RIGHT!

You spend £700 on a CPU,
You spend £400 on a GFX Card,
You spend £150 on a pair of matched sticks of RAM,
You spend £260 on a barebones system,

YOU EXPECT IT TO WORK!

Am I alone in thinking this? The RAM, CPU and GFX are supposedly fine since I tested them (them being the CPU and RAM) in Richard’s PC, and the GFX card can hold out on 3dmark06 without problems. It has to be the Shuttle. I don’t know what it is, but something in the shuttle is making it fuck up. And guess what? Ebuyer will only provide a “Warranty Repair” service and no refund. Their customer support will be hearing from me. If I can get my money back for the Shuttle, then I will put my faith into an ASUS motherboard and a new case - if that fails, then I am never buying (Notice I said buying, stealing is still an option) a PC again.

New Shuttle - Same problems. I might just put my hardware back into Will’s case and my old mobo, but I can’t be arsed right now, it’s 01:58am.

Anyway, I kinda digress, what I really wanted to say was: I’m buying an iMac. I have asked for an installment of money from my source, and as soon as it arrives, I will be purchasing (what I see as) the solution to all of my problems pertaining to computing.

Behold - the solution to Jamie’s computing problems: The iMac.

And if anyone tells me that Macs don’t play games - So help me God, I will also drag your ass to London (that’s where the nearest Apple Store is), with you kicking and screaming, I will rip off your head and piss down your neck, all while standing infront of the Apple Store’s GAMES SECTION. And I will film it and post it on Google Videos.

Sound violent? I’m angry.

The Shuttle Flies!

Published
by
Jasarien
on April 18th, 2006
in Computing, Every Day Life and Gundam Model
. 0 Comments

Or at least it would have - into a wall! !¬_¬

After testing my RAM and CPU extensively in Richard’s motherboard, I came to the conclusion that my RAM and CPU are fine. how did I come to this conclusion? Well lets just say that my RAM and CPU were multitasking more than women boast they can multitask. And they did so for about 20 mins without any crashing. Whereas in my system, there would have been a lock up, a reboot, a blue screen, a crash - anything that would denote the computer stopping for an unknown reason.

I finally RMA’d the Shuttle and its motherboard this morning, hopefully, to get a working replacement and see an end to the never ending crashes… *Sigh*, its just getting silly now.
You see… if I primarily used a mac, I WOULDN’T BE IN THIS MESS!

In other news, I’ve been getting in a flap about this Gundam Model which I purchased from ebay. According to my PayPal account, payement for the item cleared on the 27th of March. The listing stated that shipping from Honk Kong to the UK would take between 5 - 10 days via Air. “Fair enough”, I thought, £32.99 for Air shipping from China in 5 - 10 days sounded reasonable to me… Now on the 18th of April, 22 days after payment has cleared, I have received NO items. Read that. None, Nil, Zilth, Squat, Nada, Nothing. I have e-mailed this so called ‘Edwin Mak’ twice in the last 22 days and not gotten any response. I know for a fact that he’s there! Where ever ‘there’ is. He left feedback for one of his customers last night at 20:08, so he’s obviously at a computer with access to ebay! Why doesn’t he respond to my e-mails?
I checked his feedback scores, and they are a source of considerably high praise, a lot of people happy with their items, so he’s not a full time scammer at least. I’m going to give it about 2 or 3 more days and probably one more e-mail attempt before I file a complaint against his ass on ebay.
I did try to make a complaint earlier today, but PayPal was being gay. I also noticed a small bit of information that I missed - it said “Funds transferred from Bank Account - Cleared 27th of March 2006″ - Damn right, I thought. Then below that, it read, “Payment sent for ebay auction - cleared 6th of April 2006″ - WTF?!, I thought. So it looks to me as full clearage of paymentables to concerned ebay partakers, only occured on the 6th of April - which is bullshit in my opinion. I clicked the “Buy now” button on the 20th of March, assuming that “Buy now” meant now. As in now - the present moment. But not according to ebay. Nope, it has to transferr the money from the bank which takes a week (fucking pathetic), then it takes another week to send the freaking payment to the person you bought it from. Can you imagine standing in a queue at a shop ready to pay for a game or something, and it taking TWO FUCKING WEEKS to hand some money to the guy and for him to put it in the till? Where would the world be of that happened? I’ll tell you where it would be - 20 fucking years in the future and everyone will still only have bought one thing. Argh, rant.
Anyway, I digress. Even with the most recent discovery, if the payment cleared on the April 6th, that still means that today was the 10th day of the expected delivery date. Add that to the fact that he still hasn’t even bothered to contact me after I’ve e-mailed him twice (they were polite e-mails, I didn’t shout at the fucker…. yet) and I still have grounds for concern about where my money has gone and when the fuck I’ll be getting my Gundam, if ever!

OMGWTFEBAYSUCKZ0RS

Scan Lied To Me!

Published
by
Jasarien
on April 7th, 2006
in Computing and Gundam Model
. 0 Comments

I tell you, they lied! I sent the RAM back for RMA and they told me that it’s fine because it passed MemTest86 5 times. That’s not a valid test. 5 tests is what…? an hour? Less than that? The RAM should be tested over a prolonged period of time. MemTest is a controlled environment with repeated test - the faulty part of the ram could very easily be skipped if the same tests are run over and over. You need a random, real - world environment to call it a fair test. Someone on Pro-Net agreed with me and says he also wouldn’t accept that as a valid test. Idiots. Scan accused me of having a faulty system that the RAM is incompatible with… Know what I say to that? It’s a very simple equation:

Faulty RAM + PC = Instable
PC - Faulty RAM = Stable

I ran Memtest, I ran SuperPi Mod, I ran Prime95 (ON TORTURE TEST CONDITIONS), I ran 3dMark 05, 06, PCMark 04, 05, Quake 4, WoW, FEAR — EVERYTHING on my system ran perfectly. Albeit a bit slowly because of the significant reduction in the amount of available memory. ¬_¬

It’s being sent back free of charge - which probably means via Royal Mail with no insurance, no tracking code, and minimum protection. I’m angry. See me roar… rawr.

In other news, my Gundam Model payment has cleared so that should get here in about a million years… See the sarcasm? I wonder what kind of Customs Charges I’m going to have to face…. damn Chinese…

Augh, life is a pain in the proverbial arse.

Broked My RAM

Published
by
Jasarien
on April 3rd, 2006
in Computing and Every Day Life
. 0 Comments

Turns out, after a long period of frustrating crashes, failures, blue screens and crap, the problem I thought I had fixed was down to a faulty stick of RAM. Even though the ram had passed MemTest86 tests, the pc crashes randomly with the stick in place, and doesn’t crash at all when it’s taken out. Playing my games with 512mb of ram certainly is a painful task. Can’t run them with the higher textures now beause I just don’t have enough memory to cram them into. I set up an RMA, so I should get a replacement before long.

In other news:
JamCam
T-shirt FTW!