12 posts tagged “computers”
As I've been mentioning over the past couple weeks, I've been working on redesigning my friend's website ( http://www.wassyart.com) and I've entered the stage where I break out the design elements and create it as an actual web page.
Everything was going smoothly right up until I decided to see how horrible it looked in internet explorer 6. I freaking hate IE6. It's a non standards complaint piece of crap that should never have been released and now that better alternatives are out there should be left behind like the sack of garbage that it is.
Now only about 4-5% of the visitors to her website use IE6, but that's enough where I'd want it to be at least functional... So that's what I spent the evening doing. I got it all mostly working. Couple annoying issues but I'm almost ready to call it "good enough"
And then the fun will begin. It should move along pretty quickly once I get the basic layout done. Not much change in content, more of a facelift.
Yesterday afternoon was the trip out to the Apple Store. The guy I talked to there seemed to know what he was doing (and seemed to realize that I knew what I was doing as well, which was nice). He verfied that, in fact, there were no functioning fans on the machine and then started looking up warranty information.
"Uh, yeah...it's not under warranty" I told him.
"And you didn't get AppleCare?"
"Nope"
"Do you realize how much it costs to fix these things?!?"
"Yeah...I'm kinda regretting that now..."
So we ended up sending it out to the repair depot for them to check out for the low, low price of around $330-ish. Next time I'm buying AppleCare.
Anyway, I was wandering all lost...since I had no fully working computers anymore. Wassy (she came along for moral support, and to listen to music along the way) had to point me to Best Buy since we were going to check to see if they had a power supply extender cable thingy, just as a long shot. Which they didn't.
Fortunately, another friend of mine had an entire spare system since he just upgraded and left most of it in-tact. I was able to swing by his place last night and pick it up, so I can use it temporarily for the next week or two until my MacBook gets back.
I went over to my friends place last night with a bag o' computer parts in hopes of piecing together a "new" desktop temporarily, until I can get my MacBook Pro working again (and my desktop too.)
Things were going well until we got to plugging in the power cable for the video card. As it turns out, the cable in his case was short and we couldn't find an extension cable anywhere, so the plan failed miserably. I came up with the idea of getting some copper wire and jamming it into the power plugs. I guess that didn't go over so well, although I can't see why not.
Oh well. I appreciated the help in any case. I have an appointment tomorrow at noon at the Apple Store to try and sort all this out with the MacBook.
Hopefully tonight will be good though. I'm going to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood's improv show tonight. This is the second time for me since they came through town last summer and they were awesomely funny. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time now.
Well, I did some checking into my dead computer yesterday. Unfortunetly, it looks like when the power supply exploded, it took the motherboard with it. Anything more than that I can't determine since I can't get it to boot up properly.
It's going to be a month or two before I'm going to be able to fix it, and at this point I might even just upgrade to something else once I get the money.
In the meantime, I've got my MacBook Pro. It's not ideal for gaming, but...it's something. And now I've got it all hooked up to my main keyboard, mouse and LCD.
On the plus side, Wassy surprised me last night (it was hanging on my door when I got back from class) with a little French Vanilla smelling candle thingy (mmm...vanilla) to help with the "charred wire and plastic" smell. Much appreciated...that smell lingers forever.
...my desktop computer is dead.
I went to turn it on this morning and it seemed like it got stuck starting up, so I turned it back off, then back on again. BOOM! With a lot of crackling, popping, flashes of light and the smell of burning wires, my power supply died in a fiery blaze of glory.
Hopefully it didn't take the rest of the computer with it since I really don't have the budget at the moment to put together a new system. Come to think of it, I really don't have the budget to get a new, quality PSU for a little while.
Oh well...at least I have the Macbook Pro.
What are five things you're good at?
Submitted by HapaLove.
This is going to be a stretch I think. I'll tell you what I'm not good at: Making lists of things that I'm good at. I can think of so many more things that I'm not good at.
- Computers - I'm good at computers, knowing how they work, fixing problems that come up. Anything I can't solve on my own is usually solvable with a quick Google search.
- Programming - This could probably fall into the category of computers, but I'm stretching things out here. I'm not the best programmer out there and I'll be the first to admit I've got a lot to learn, but, I think I'm pretty decent anyway. Especially when it comes to web based programming. I'm not great at the local desktop programming stuff, but I think I'm better with the web. I enjoy it a lot more too.
- Guitar Hero - Free bird on expert baby!
- Researching Stuff - If I decide I'm going to go and do something, I'm good at researching it. I tend to over-research a bit actually. If I want to buy something, I want to know pretty much everything there is to know about that particular thing. I'm also good at looking up useless facts..such as how much it would cost to put a plastic tarp over the Great Lakes.
- Listening - From what I've been told, I'm a good listener. That's a little hard to measure for myself, obviously, so I'll just have to take other people's words on that one.
Show us a fan.
Submitted by little miao.
The power is back on. The air conditioning, however, is not. If you're wondering why this is a problem in late October, well...the room I'm in has about 8 laptops/desktops and 1 server in it. These computers, plus the people, put out a lot of heat, so it could be the middle of winter and without the AC it'd be 90 in here. It's quite amazing.
Something with the power outage this morning messed up the AC, so now it's 80 degrees and still climbing. Not sure what happened. The hallway is much cooler than our room here. It's going to be a looong day.
At least I can actually get stuff done now though
What's your favorite thing to shop for?
Submitted by JadedButterfly.
I'm a guy. We get in, we get what we want and we get out. No day long shopping trips, no looking around...nothing. I guess my favorite thing would be electronics equipment since I'm a gadget freak, but I've generally got a pretty good idea of what I want to get before I jump in.
I do enjoy speccing out computers though. Lots of fun in there with picking out the various parts and finding things that work well together. Hey, I'm a geek, what did you expect?
