(no subject)
Jun. 30th, 2003 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofallgeeksAhhhhhh, well, there goes my 'vacation' of sorts.
See, as some of you may know, my family was out at the beach last week while I stayed home to work my summer job. A part of my wanted t'be at the beach instead of at work, but (a)my job isn't really all that intense -- hell, I'm online writing code and reading about computers for 8 hours a day, working with a few other interns who are really pretty decent guys. What's not to like? Also, (2)a part of me liked being on my own again. I mean, I've been 'on my own' for most of the last two years, it was good t'have that again. It's almost like, not matter how I grow or whatever, At Home I'm still, mostly, just A Kid. I donno, it was just nice t'be able to have that sense of freedom, to run out to Blockbuster because I wanted to, and to be able to open up my computer and mess with it without having to explain my motives to anyone. And it was even nice just cooking my own food, proving for myself, being my own person. I really kinda enjoy that, whenever the opportunity arises.
<technogeek>
So, over my 'break' I was building a couple computers 'from scratch,' as I've mentioned on this journal a couple times so far. The one, mine, Unicron, was doing really well -- she didn't recognize her Floppy drive, but I had an XP CD for her to load up, and so I got Windows running, loaded my software, played a little Morrowind, set up Achaea, everything was going smooth. Except that she was a little 'touchy.' If I'd bump her, she was liable to freeze up on me, which isn't cool, and generally shouldn't happen. I think this situation progressed until she was just freezing and restarting for no reason yesterday afternoon. Randomly, too -- sometimes she's go fine for hours at a time, and others it'd be off ever five minutes... Anyways, last night it just died. In techieTerms, it isn't posting, or booting the BIOS, or it's failing a power-up test, or whatever you want to say -- in layman's terms, the power comes on but it doesn't beep. Additional concern comes from the fact that the ATX switch -- the power button on the front -- is being bypassed or something. When power is plugged into the box, it turns on, without the switch being pressed. The switch works for turning it on and off afterwords, but it should not powerup by itself like that. I tried a different power supply -- and even a different switch! -- and I have the same issue. So I think there's a short somewhere or something...
On the plus side, small as it may be, the other one, my dad's, UnitZero, is now up and running. I talked with my friend Curtis (who I'm rooming with next year), and he figured that the BIOS just wasn't setting the clockspeed of the CPU correctly, so we went into setup and manually set it, and now it works 'fine' (still no Floppy there, either), and it's got Windows Loaded, and may be good t'go.
</technogeek>
In other news, Claire was online momentarily on Saturday -- apparently she was home for the day. We chatted briefly, and she told me that the payphones at Camp aren't working. It was nice to 'see' her, even if each of us was a little preoccupied -- me with getting food and she with chores. I rather miss her, and wish I could get her on the phone, just to chat.
And finally, I've started doing so housekeeping with my LJ-Friends. Trevor, my Old Roommate, has just been removed from my Friends List. As an excuse, he hasn't been posting much at all recently, at least not that I can tell, but I've been wanting to drop him for a while. His pseudo-intellectualism, while admirable for his effort, is a bit too... stale after living with him. I can't speak bad of him, for the simple fact that I do think he's trying, even if he's failing miserably. Egocentricism only begins to tell the tale, and I fear he may be rather unhappy until he can get over that. Nancy has also been removed. She, too, never posts, and when she does she doesn't really say anything, nor does she ever comment. I don't have any hard feelings towards the girl, generally, but I don't even really have a connection to her, either. And, as a final note, I've made the first step towards 'fixing up' my Security settings, so that it's easier to get new friends and let them in on some of the more personal posts of olde. In techieTerms it's called modularity, but for everyone else it's called making groups and just adding people to that. What I HAD been doing was giving each friend their own 'group,' and then customizing security on certain personal posts (of which I have very few, just on principle). Unfortunately, (1)LJ only allows you to have 30 Friends Groups and (b)this meant retracing my whole journal for locked posts every time I get a new friend. At the moment, I have created a three-tier security model, and deleted a few oft-unused, oft-unneeded Friends Groups. Now, until I go through and alter my old posts to work with these new Security Groups, some posts of olde may be inaccessible. But I figure no one reads my backdated entries, anyways, so there's little to be lost.
And that, as the Minnesotans say, is that.
See, as some of you may know, my family was out at the beach last week while I stayed home to work my summer job. A part of my wanted t'be at the beach instead of at work, but (a)my job isn't really all that intense -- hell, I'm online writing code and reading about computers for 8 hours a day, working with a few other interns who are really pretty decent guys. What's not to like? Also, (2)a part of me liked being on my own again. I mean, I've been 'on my own' for most of the last two years, it was good t'have that again. It's almost like, not matter how I grow or whatever, At Home I'm still, mostly, just A Kid. I donno, it was just nice t'be able to have that sense of freedom, to run out to Blockbuster because I wanted to, and to be able to open up my computer and mess with it without having to explain my motives to anyone. And it was even nice just cooking my own food, proving for myself, being my own person. I really kinda enjoy that, whenever the opportunity arises.
<technogeek>
So, over my 'break' I was building a couple computers 'from scratch,' as I've mentioned on this journal a couple times so far. The one, mine, Unicron, was doing really well -- she didn't recognize her Floppy drive, but I had an XP CD for her to load up, and so I got Windows running, loaded my software, played a little Morrowind, set up Achaea, everything was going smooth. Except that she was a little 'touchy.' If I'd bump her, she was liable to freeze up on me, which isn't cool, and generally shouldn't happen. I think this situation progressed until she was just freezing and restarting for no reason yesterday afternoon. Randomly, too -- sometimes she's go fine for hours at a time, and others it'd be off ever five minutes... Anyways, last night it just died. In techieTerms, it isn't posting, or booting the BIOS, or it's failing a power-up test, or whatever you want to say -- in layman's terms, the power comes on but it doesn't beep. Additional concern comes from the fact that the ATX switch -- the power button on the front -- is being bypassed or something. When power is plugged into the box, it turns on, without the switch being pressed. The switch works for turning it on and off afterwords, but it should not powerup by itself like that. I tried a different power supply -- and even a different switch! -- and I have the same issue. So I think there's a short somewhere or something...
On the plus side, small as it may be, the other one, my dad's, UnitZero, is now up and running. I talked with my friend Curtis (who I'm rooming with next year), and he figured that the BIOS just wasn't setting the clockspeed of the CPU correctly, so we went into setup and manually set it, and now it works 'fine' (still no Floppy there, either), and it's got Windows Loaded, and may be good t'go.
</technogeek>
In other news, Claire was online momentarily on Saturday -- apparently she was home for the day. We chatted briefly, and she told me that the payphones at Camp aren't working. It was nice to 'see' her, even if each of us was a little preoccupied -- me with getting food and she with chores. I rather miss her, and wish I could get her on the phone, just to chat.
And finally, I've started doing so housekeeping with my LJ-Friends. Trevor, my Old Roommate, has just been removed from my Friends List. As an excuse, he hasn't been posting much at all recently, at least not that I can tell, but I've been wanting to drop him for a while. His pseudo-intellectualism, while admirable for his effort, is a bit too... stale after living with him. I can't speak bad of him, for the simple fact that I do think he's trying, even if he's failing miserably. Egocentricism only begins to tell the tale, and I fear he may be rather unhappy until he can get over that. Nancy has also been removed. She, too, never posts, and when she does she doesn't really say anything, nor does she ever comment. I don't have any hard feelings towards the girl, generally, but I don't even really have a connection to her, either. And, as a final note, I've made the first step towards 'fixing up' my Security settings, so that it's easier to get new friends and let them in on some of the more personal posts of olde. In techieTerms it's called modularity, but for everyone else it's called making groups and just adding people to that. What I HAD been doing was giving each friend their own 'group,' and then customizing security on certain personal posts (of which I have very few, just on principle). Unfortunately, (1)LJ only allows you to have 30 Friends Groups and (b)this meant retracing my whole journal for locked posts every time I get a new friend. At the moment, I have created a three-tier security model, and deleted a few oft-unused, oft-unneeded Friends Groups. Now, until I go through and alter my old posts to work with these new Security Groups, some posts of olde may be inaccessible. But I figure no one reads my backdated entries, anyways, so there's little to be lost.
And that, as the Minnesotans say, is that.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-30 12:44 pm (UTC)I want to do something about my friends list, but I'm not sure what. It's somewhat unsatisfactory. Everyone seems to be spring cleaning, and I just might have caught the bug, or something.