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OK, so I finally fixed that other computer and handed it back to the owner, so thats one less thing I have to worry about. Ahhh sanity returns!
There are times when I really hate ‘techie’ stuff, and trying to get around that password protected BIOS was beyond me. My first thought was to remove the battery from the motherboard and leave it powered down for a while to get a reset. This was futile as there was no battery on the board, the memory was being held by the RTC chip which had its own battery built into the chip. A potential solution was to replace this chip, removing and reinstalling didn’t do anything.
I downloaded a BIOS update from Gigabyte with the intention to flash the BIOS, but as I couldn’t verify the boot order of the machine, I was unable to do that [?]

A friend from IRC pointed me in the direction of this program, but after downloading it, I was reluctant to use it.
From what I can see it was built on (or maybe is) the killcmos virus. The last thing I need is a cure that is worse than the kill.

On Monday I spoke to B, and he said that the company who did the last upgrade went out of business and so he couldn’t get the password, but he did say to me that I could do an upgrade on the machine.
So thats what I did.

I love shopping for computer parts… Even better when someone else is paying!

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There is this annoying set of lights in the city that are just always red for me, no matter which way I attack the intersection.
Generally, I hit this intersection (Roe Street and Beaufort Street) heading west. Doing this means I have to wait for the priority traffic, being the traffic heading north up the one way (Beaufort) street. Then I have to wait for the pedestrian phase, followed by the easterly traffic that has a right hand turn (leading into a single lane going counter the rest of the traffic on the one way street)
Finally the west bound traffic gets a short turn before the cycle starts over again

Now I can understand why I get caught trying to get through this intersection from the east, after all, in a 3 or 4 minute cycle that direction only gets about 20 or 30 seconds of green…

So why, oh why, do I always get the red light when I am heading north! Map

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TAFE (take 2).
Work ran late. I should have expected it because today was my first day back and all I wanted to do was go home, have a shower and get changed before I headed out there.
But it was a heavy mail day, all the people getting their monthly foxtel magazines through the post meant that there was a large amount of mail to shift.

I was supposed to be in Midland for 12.30, but I didn’t finish in Balga until midday, and although I could have gone straight there and been on time, I really felt I needed that shower.
So home I went.

And out I went

I made it to TAFE, and I was only 5 minutes late. Not a bad effort really considering distance. How I did it… I’d rather not say!

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Don’t forget to look at my Photo Friday entry. Go on, It makes me feel vindicated in spending all that time, (oh ok… about 15 minutes) writing the page.
Next week I want to have a GOOD photo on there.
Just for the record, I’m getting a few hits from the link direct from the Photo Friday website.

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TAFE (Chapter 3).
Things I learned in TAFE today.
Taking the mouse ball out of the mouse is really cool, but not as cool as throwing it at your mates when they aren’t looking.
If you’re adding a representation of your machines physical location in the classroom on the whiteboard, you should also draw in your mouse, keyboard and what the hell, add your chair as well.
Ignore the lecturer if he tells you that you don’t need that much detail.

Unreal… I’m back in primary school!

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I hate it when I do that to myself.
By the time I put Jamie to bed, I was quite tired myself so I had a sleep. Actually thats not uncommon for me, but I normally only have an hour, maybe an hour and a half.
I had nearly 3. Whoops

So I woke up some time after 10.30 feeling very refreshed indeed and did some work on this site, mostly cleaning up code and setting up for Photo Friday (see below), followed by reading some blogs, a couple of newspapers online and finally deciding I’d better go to bed.
It was 2.30am

I probably should have stayed up a little longer as I spent at least the next 45 minutes checking the clock. I remember getting drowsy around 3.15 and next time I looked at the clock it was an hour later.
Definitely had sleep then, I could taste it in my mouth, but it didn’t feel like I had, I was still feeling insomniac. Tired, and yet not very tired.

Thankfully it didn’t take long before i was sleeping again… That is, until the damn cat decided to have a marathon session at the litter box (apologies if you’re eating).
I’m not talking about the business end, but the burying end. Nearly 10 minutes (it felt like it, was probably only a couple) he spent scratching around in the litter. In the end I had to get out of bed and push him away.
Two minutes later, as I was settling down again, he was back in it again, so I put it in the Laundry and shut the door.

It was 5.45am

At around 6.45 he (the cat) was under my bed, probably lying on his back, scratching up at the mattress.
I had to chase him out of the room, shutting the door behind me.

Jamie woke just after 8 and strangely enough, I didn’t feel tired.

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I made the plunge and submitted an entry to Photo Friday. I’ve added the link in the drop down menu at the top of the page, as well as the standard link at the bottom of the page. The address is /photofriday/index.php?mechanism

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I have been meaning to post for a couple of days now, but I really haven’t had anything on my mind.
Oh, with the exception of Thursday. I think I had a vice grip on my mind that day.
I woke up ok, but by about 5.45am I was starting to ache and getting nauseous. Joy of joys, a migraine.

I pretty much wrote Thursday morning off.
I still had to continue with my work until I could get someone to take over for me, one of the joys of self employment, but as soon as I got home I took a codeine tablet and went to bed.

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I got suckered into fixing someones computer for them and I have to admit, I’m ready to scream.
They are running Windows ME on an old 166mhz Pentium with 32mb RAM and only 200mb of free space left on the HDD.
Not really a good choice of Operating System at the best of times, even worse on a computer designed for Windows 95, but apparently it has been plodding along just fine for the last couple of years.

Outlook express gave up the ghost, claiming it didn’t have enough memory to run. Yes I’m not surprised. Windows needs memory, and lots of it. It utilises all the physical RAM first and then after that it uses “virtual memory”, disk space pretending to be memory in the form of a swap file.
The more these people have been putting stuff on their machine, the more they have been cutting into the available space for this swap file.

As they want to do an upgrade on this machine next year, and as the machine is running SIMM memory, I wanted to avoid the cost of upping the RAM, so I thought a larger hard disk would be a good start. Only trouble is, the company who did the last upgrade password protected the BIOS and I can’t get into it to make hardware changes.

AAAAUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Ahh primal scream therapy!
Now where’s my hammer!

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Jamie and I stayed home today and watched TV, played computer games (hello ABC kids) and just generally playing games. Even though we didn’t go anywhere, we had a great time. I had him in fits of laughter doing a couple of things.
Tickling is always a sure fire method. He was standing next to me going “tickle, tickle, tickle” to which I was going “No, no, no… oh ok”, grabbing him and tickling his stomach.
Another one had him pulling my jaw to get me to open my mouth, which i would do then hold my mouth open. After a short while (or sometimes straight away) I would poke my tongue out at him, which had him recoiling in fits of laughter.

*sigh* he’s so damn cute!

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My first Photo Friday challenge

The Computer I got suckered into “fixing” but now want to take a hammer to!

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I decided I didn’t like the choice of colour I was using around the “blog” section of this page. I put a colour around it in the first place because I wanted to break it up from the image and links below, but in retrospect I realised that it was pulling away from the design I had originally envisaged.

If you look back through the archives at early pages, you will see they are mostly black on white and it was that minimalistic feel that I liked about the site. It also made the drop down menu quite startling with its orange rollovers. I felt that that lilac background was detracting.

Hello Grey!

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Further proof that you shouldn’t believe everything you read -
I was reading A Yobbo’s view a few days ago and he had a link… and a rather scathing comment… about Baby Ink. A tattooing company set up especially to cater to babies, infants and children.

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a hoax. Snopes.com have this site posted on their urban legends pages, but it does remind me of something else that was being forwarded via blog.

I can’t actually remember the blog I found this on, (I came across it while surfing) but they had posted a photo of the worlds largest woman “Photographs show the “biggest woman in the world,” a 7′4″ woman from Holland.” and were getting all the wow comments.
As I had already come across this photo via email a couple of years ago, and later had it dismissed on Snopes.com as a fraud, I felt it was my duty to set this hapless blogger straight, pasting the link.
I guess she didn’t like it as she deleted my post within a couple of hours. I guess it is better to spread deception rather than admit that you are wrong!

Its not just general public being shammed by hoaxes. It is not uncommon for the media to run with a story only to find out afterwards that they are victims of a hoax. In this information overload society with unrealistic deadlines, there often isn’t enough time to thoroughly research a story.

Other Urban legend links – Urban Legends Reference Pages | Urban Legends and Folklore | Hoax photo test

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I was supposed to start back at TAFE today. If you had been paying attention you will remember me talking about it last month. Basically, the stuff I want to study, they don’t teach in the evening part time course because of insufficiant enrollment numbers. Also, everything they have on offer in the evenings, I have already completed.
With a little bit of wrangling (although not too much)I convinced them to allow me to take some of the classes in the full time stream.

I have to admit I have been a little nervous. Part time is made up of a lot of mature age students, and I’m fairly sure that full time is all school leavers, teenagers and the likes.

The other thing that occured to me was that all these people would know each other. They are, after all, in the full time stream, and into the second semester, so I will be coming in as the “Jonny come lately”, and this new kid isn’t quite a kid either.

Anyway, determined to make a bad start of it, I left the house 10 minutes late, thus losing the time I wanted to get my mind together and also make sure I knew where I was going.
“Typical” I thought to myself, arriving only just on time to find the classroom locked up. “The actual room is not the one on the enrollment slip!”

Turns out, the lecturer is over in England and won’t be back until next week, the senior lecturer let all the full timers know, but forgot about lil ol’ me!

So next Monday it will be back to TAFE (take 2) and at least I have learnt two things already. 1 – The room number is definately correct and 2 – Judging by the people waiting for other classes… Yes everyone else is younger!

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I’m finding new and interesting ways to burn down the house!

Yesterday evening I put a load of towels in the washing machine with the intention of putting them out this morning. When I got home from work I went to get them out of the machine only to find them still quite damp, so I cursed and put the machine back on to complete its final spin.
The pump kicked in and I could hear water running down the drain, and I went into the kitchen to grab something to eat.

The original plan was to go and pick the kids up from Amandas and worry about putting the washing out afterwards, but before I left the house I noticed an odd smell.
Thinking it might be from the heater I turned the fan off on that and sniffed around that area. I could definitely smell something, but it wasn’t that strong…

Then it dawned on me.

The laundry was filled with acrid white smoke eminating from my washing machine. I cut the power to it and opened up the back door to clear the room.
Great! I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t noticed it before I left.
My hip pocket is feeling it too, as I had to go out and get a new machine today although I shouldn’t complain too much. That machine was given to me about a year ago, and it wasn’t meant to last very long anyway. It was on its last legs when my aunt Carol decided to replace it. (She was going to put it on her front lawn with a “free” sign attached. It was just good timing that I needed a washer at the time.)