did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?

Ever since we had to reinstall Windows, we haven't had sound on the computer, and we haven't had a chance to take it back to the shop (plus, they haven't sounded very enthusiastic about looking at it). I just uninstalled the Soundblaster software, and as soon as I'd rebooted the computer, we had sound! It detected the sound card hardware, and without the Soundblaster cd, automatically said that the hardware and necessary software was installed, and that the computer needs to reboot. So reboot I do, and now we don't have sound again. WTF? I mean seriously. what the fuck?

And why isn't baffled on the mood list?

Either that, or swimming in lane 7 on a deserted Thursday night is the equivalent of saying, I'm desperate, please hit on me and ask me out to "coffee" while I'm trying to swim. No thanks, even if you were 15 years younger.

Went swimming last night, and it was great, there was no one there. And by no one, I mean that the only other person got out as I got in, and I'd done about 8 laps before someone else got in. I was glad, I was kinda getting creeped out swimming in such a big pool by myself. I was pretty happy, I did 1100m (44 laps), 100 metres more than last time :)

I've now backed up my video files, and have checked that we have all the installation cds that we need (I hope). Our big concern is the cable modem, we have no idea about it (though we have a cd), and the Optus website is no help. And as long as we can get it running, we can download any other drivers or stuff we need. We're going to attempt to reinstall our original WinXP installation. If that doesn't work, we're wiping the hard drive and starting from scratch, which is a bit scary.

My home computer remains dead. Weep for me!

We managed to make the changes in the BIOS and boot from the WinXP cd-rom, and go in to make repairs (because a file is corruped, ntfs.sys or something), but then we get asked for the Administrator password. We almost certainly wouldn't have set a password, but null doesn't work. Nor does everything else we've tried - spaces, admin, password, administrator, people's names, pet's names, default, passwords I tend to use - nothing.

Our IT manager has suggested a few things, but we're going to have to take it out to the supplier, which we probably won't do til Friday. So if you need to contact me, I'll be checking lj and email only while I'm at work.

Grrr...really not happy :(

Just had a five minute blackout. Computer seems to have recovered from this unexpected shut down, now we've gotta reset every clock in the house. Oh, yay.

The cd burner is again (mostly) working. This is situation normal.

Last night, I poked. I prodded. I wandered around in the system settings for a while. I reinstalled software. I swore. I poked some more. I gave up, and decided that I'd have to call and ask in the morning (today). This morning, I'm having one last half-hearted fiddle. I look at the properties of the CD-RW drive. I notice the sixth and last tab is titled "Recording". Hmmm, I think. Oh look, a little box labeled "Enable CD Recording on this drive" and it isn't checked.

How this happened, I don't know. Still don't know what the initial problem is. But it's working as well as ever.

Big Blue has been fixed!

Poor hnix has already heard all this, since I knew she might be home and rang her about 4 times with frustrated updates on the situation. Plus, I'm stalking her. Though not in a creepy jilted popidol way. Anyhoo...

So after getting home, and setting the computer back up (too many fucking cables! I shall dream of cables!), I discovered that poor 'puter wasn't working. I wondered what could be different at home, so I spent a while on the phone with their technician, then took computer and monitor back to them. And this place isn't just down the road. It's about a 35 minute drive. They spent a while fiddling, while I baked in the non-airconditioned, western facing, opendoored reception area. Then they demonstrated to me that it was working fine (and that the problem they think they might have found, would have also been related to the startup problem).

So I happily drove home (there was a really interesting guy on ABC radio, talking about the bible, and homosexuality, and bunch of other stuff. Like, why do gays bug the church so much, when there's a few things in the bible against it (and less when you look at a lot of them in context), when they don't protest the entire banking system, which is based on usury, a major major sin?) and set up the computer again (ok, so dad did a fair bit of the actual hooking and unhooking, but I helped), so more cables.

And it wasn't working again! Waaaaaaah!

So we knew there was a problem *here*, so we started unhooking peripherals. Speakers,no. Scanner (which we still haven't got properly installed), no. Zip drive, bing bing bing! The way the computer died when we uninstalled it was kind of a sign, and then once it was up again...perfectly fine video and graphics. No more jerkiness. Bliss!

But what they did was also probably useful. I'm gonna keep telling myself that so that the 4 hours I spent driving and over there weren't a *complete waste*.

Wow, 148 journal entries, and I can still screw up lj tags

Taking Big Blue into the shop. Less than a month old, and there's two issues I want them to look at: a) why we get a primary slave hard drive error half the time when we start up and b) what is wrong with the graphics? I thought at first it was just a dvd playback problem, then we realised that other video files aren't great, and oh, look at the jerkiness of the screensaver, and hey, when you're playing solitaire and drag the cards, they're a bit jerky too.

Grrrr. Not Impressed.

Oh well, might actually get some stuff done

(Though really I'm hoping they'll fix it while I wait *g*)

I can't properly introduce y'all, since I'm still using the old machine at the moment, but next to me is our new pride and joy - Big Blue (from the blue stripe down the front, and the size increase). When I told my sister that I'd christened it, she just said "Not Lex?" in a disgusted tone of voice. To which I told her what an idiot she was (that was only if I got the purple case I'd seen at one site *g*).

Anyone ever used direct serial cable connection to move files from one computer to another? Cause we can get the connection set up, and we specify which folder we want to move, but then the wizard goes through checking every folder on both hard drives, and compressing everything it wants to anyway (and this takes forever, so we give up). Can't find anything in Knowledge Base about this either.

We could use the zip drive to move the files, but it'd be convenient if we could get this direct cable thing working.

Went to a free screening last night of "The Banger Sisters", starring Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon and Geoffrey Rush. They are all very good in it (and I'm way jealous of Goldie and Susan's figures *g*), and there's some very funny parts (though I hated one scene - vomiting doesn't need to be seen), but overall, the movie was rather disappointing. It lacked direction and focus, and I suspect there was a lot of stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor. So I wouldn't really recommend seeing it at the cinema, unless you are a huge fan of the actors involved.

In more exciting news (for me, anyway), we ordered our new computer yesterday! So I should have it by early next week!

...you stupid piece of antiqated circuits whose only useful purpose might be as a boat anchor!

So, anyone have any suggestions about what I should be looking for in a new computer. It'll probably be a desktop, not a laptop. We're getting really fed up with the current 4.5 year pile of garbage, whose floppy disk drive is no longer working. No big deal? This is a domino effect, causing other things to have problems. And everytime a program tries to access the a: drive to see if there's something there, the computer freezes. Hence, incentive to get around to buying new one sooner rather than later.

But I really am seeking suggestions :)