OMG!!! IT’S BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Archive for June, 2006
Have a guess. Yep. Still on the laptop.
I rang AT Computers (the Apple Centre, Cardiff) yesterday, and asked them what was up with my iMac. They told me they had a logic board on order for it and that it would arrive either tomorrow (Tuesday) or the next day (Wednesday) and that they’d ring me if there were any updates. Well its now 01:42 on Wednesday morning, and they didn’t ring me, so I can only assume that the logic board will arrive later today (Wednesday). Either that, or the logic board arrived yesterday and they’re taking their time putting it in ¬_¬…
Blah. Anyway. I’ve written a quick PHP script that reports the status of my Teamspeak Server. It can be found at this location. Now there’s no reason to ask me if the server is up anymore 
. The server IP and port are also shown, so if you wanna drop in when it’s online, feel free.
We went on another shooting outing on Sunday. It ended up being more of a hike than a shoot though, but I’m not complaining, it turned out to be very fun. We had our very own campfire on the go 
and we climbed some trees. God… I sound like a 10 year old! I don’t care though, it was fun. I haven’t climbed a tree for years……
Yep, still using the laptop from hell. I guess one and a half years can do a lot in terms of supassing technology. This laptop was state of the art when received. Dedicated GPU & and graphics RAM, beefy CPU, lurvely 15.4″ widescreen, DVDRW, built in Wi-Fi. I guess the only thing that it lacked was the other half a gig of RAM it could have benefited from. I never got around to adding the other half a gig. In heinsight, I don’t think it would have been a good investment anyway. The only thing I used the laptop for was Uni work while at Uni, and to have some kind of computer to use if I needed to when I was away from home. It serves its purpose extremely well when I look at it that way. But as soon as it’s recruited to do the job of a temporary desktop replacement - it’s just not fit enough.
Besides the peridoic 10 -15 FPS bouts while playing WoW and the horrid Greed Screen when playing any type of video format, I suppose it’ll do until my iMac is back *sigh*.
I took steps towards canceling my O2 contract yesterday. They make it so difficult. I had to ring the Customer Services line, go through a miriad of options and finally explain to a representative why I didn’t want to hear about their pay-as-you-go services. And even then I was told that I had to write to O2 to a specific address, stating my mobile number and my written signature. Then to top it off with a proverbial cherry, the contract will be canceled 30 days from the date theyr receive my letter. How pathetic is that? I’ve paid the 12 months contract, why do I need to be subject to another month which I’ll have to pay for?
I guess the best idea would be to not use my O2 sim card for the remainder of the contract, and let it die out quietly, facing the outstanding charges at the end of the “30 days notice”. Wankers.
On a lighter note, I successfully sold the FX-57 on eBay for £310. Not as much as I hoped it’d go for, if I have to be honest. I listed it first time around with a reserve of £500, but it didn’t get past £255, so I relisted it with a reserve of £250, and it sold for £310. I can’t not be happy at that result I guess. It’s £310 more than I had. Hopefully it’ll be put to a much better use than it’s had here for the last couple of months. Just sat in a motherboard, not doing anything. It’ll see better days.
Moving onto the subject of air rifles, I’ve been looking around for a replacement for the BSA Lightning XL, which was unfortunatly written off by my (twatish) siblings. I’ve been toying with the idea of just getting another Lightning XL, since it was a really nice gun while it lasted ¬_¬. But since BAR are currently fresh out of Lightning XLs, I was urged to look around a bit more. I’m glad I did, actually. The Logun Solo looks and sounds like a really nice gun. The only thing that’s not so nice about it is the price tag. Add that to a scope, mounts and a charging adaptor, and the price looks even uglier. I don’t consider myself an expert when it comes to guns, but from what I can read, a free floating barrel is a good thing - and it’s probably what is making up the large part of that price tag.
If I can’t get a Lightning XL, or a Logun Solo, then the next gun I’d go for would be the BSA Meteor. The Meteor is the gun that Yin has. He’s never had a problem with it, and it’s a nice gun to handle and fire. Yin can even make accurate shots using the iron-sights instead of a scope… (but I’ll put that down to his experience using guns with the Cadets… or whatever he’s with). It’s a nice cheap and reliable rifle, and when you add the scope and mounts cost it’s not such a frightening price tag.
I have a few other things I want to say, but they’re neither interesting or important so they can wait for another post.
I reviewed the settings for the comments since I installed the newer version of Wordpress, and I will say that I am impressed with the improved administration over comments.
From now on, you can post comments on my blogs after regsistering for a user account with my site
That way I can know who’s commenting and I won’t have to put up with spam comments. Woot.
So aside from that, me and Sof took a trip to Cardiff this morning to visit the Apple Centre. They booked my iMac in for repair, and hopefully that should be done before too long (10 working days 
)… The guy I spoke to was either new, or just couldn’t type very well and didn’t know his way around their bespoke invoicing application. But after a while he got my details down, and seemed rather perplexed by the problem I discribed, as if it’s never happended before. He also seemed surprised by the fact that mine was an Intel Mac, and not a G5. Hmm.. Either way, it’s there now and I want it fixed.
Meanwhile, I’ve been relegated to using my laptop for everything I do. Which means having to use Windows (ugh). The graphics card in this machine REALLY needs some other kind of cooling system. It reached the slow-down threshold while playing WoW earlier, making the whole screen artifact and corrupt. Alt-tabbing out and back again seemed to give the GPU time to cool down a bit - and I moved the laptop to a cooler place. Seemed to be ok from there.
I hate using this thing. Once you’re used to a dual core 2.0ghz cpu and 2gb of DDR2 RAM, the performance drop is just too steep. The laptop only has 512mb of DDR, and a 2.2ghz single core cpu. Nightmare.
I’m surprised it even runs Windows Vista - the reccomended specs for that seem to be the steepest ever. This release of Windows is the first ever to require a dedicated graphics processor. Madness.
Anypong. I don’t have much else to say. Damn laptop. Damn iMac. Damn Computer-Killing Jamie.
Why me? Why meeee….?
I came home yesterday, sat down at my iMac, wiggled my mouse to bring it out of sleep mode and this is what I’m greeted with:
So yeah… I spend about a month preaching about how damn good these machines are, how they don’t crash, how they play games just as well as a PC, how they don’t need to be restarted once a day… And then along comes a lovely thing called HARDWARE FAILURE! I spent a good couple of hours looking online for other people who have had the same problem - there are a few who have had similar problems, but nothing as extreme as mine. Some people may have one line obscuring their screen and said that a restart fixed it.
Well no amount of restarts have fixed this. I turn the iMac on and thats what I see. I’ve reset the NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM), I’ve reset the SMC (System Management Conroller), and nothing seems to be helping. Although, if I boot into Safe Boot, I am able to log in and see my desktop, but it’s still obscured by the diagonal garbled lines, not the vertical and horizontal that you might be able to see in the pic.
I spent about 30 mins on the phone to Apple Tech Support this afternoon, trying to find out what was wrong. He took me through all the steps I’ve already tried (as techies always do), and finally came to the conclusion that it was a hardware fault either something to do with the video card, or the LCD display itself.
At least It’s not software related - because that’s what I’ve been preaching about more than anything. In fact, just to back up how rock solid OSX is, I can still “use” my mac using SSH login, and I still have access to all data on the mac. I just can’t use anything graphically because of the obvious display issue. The network shares are still accessible too, so that, if necessary, I can back up anything I need to.
Anyway, after talking with the Apple techie, he gave me the address of a place in Cardiff that was an Authorised Apple Service Centre, and a phone number. So I rang that, and was told that I can just bring my iMac in whenever and they’ll do any repairs needed. They say it’ll take around 10 working days to have it repaired and ready for pickup… which is probably less time than it would take to pack it up and send it off to Apple and have them do it.
So Sof is kindly giving me a lift there tomorrow morning, and hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. Poor iMac.
On another key - WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS STUFF KEEP HAPPENING TO ME!? What is it with me and computational machines refusing to work as intended?! First the “uber” PC fucks up, and now the “indestrucible” iMac… I only had it about a month - if not less!
So anyway, on a lighter note, we held a suprise party for Will’s birthday, and since he’s such an anti-christ anyway, we decided it would be rather funny to play the Hilter Rally full blast as he walked through the door, and was greeted with a Swastika made from birthday banners. Oh the hilarity!
Zeig Heil! Mwahaha…
That night was - as I recall - a good night. A very good night. Apart from my carpet burn on my elbow… FFS Slim…
On another light note, I was shown this video by Max via Sofie. I have to say that this game looks like it could be a VERY awesome game. From just watching that video, I already want it. The way it goes from cellular level to inter-galactic level is just absolutely crazy! Awesomeness written in <0|)3 !! (That says code for the not leetish).