Sunday was a fun-filled eventful day here in boringville. After getting halfway through shovelling my driveway so I can go to work today at 15:00, the neighbour across the road lets me use his snowblower. I kinda felt like a wuss, but I didn’t exactly want to blow my whole day shovelling anyway. So, yeah, rock on.
Then, after getting in, looking forward to a nice, hot shower to remove the sweat and smell of 24-1 mixed fuel, I discover that there is no hot water. Hasn’t been any all morning, apparently. So I went downstairs to ask the neighbours if our pilot light is out. Yeah, it was out all right…
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Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 9:59 AM EST
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Today, eMachines finally decided to roll out a new BIOS for this M6805 laptop that Meghan bought in July 2004. The purpose of said BIOS? To provide compatibility with Windows XP Service Pack 2. About fucking time, I’d say.
When we finally got a replacement unit for the first one, which had a defect in the audio system causing the left speaker to crackle loudly, the first thing I did to it was upgrade to SP2, and voila, suddenly it would lock up cold whenever I unplugged or plugged it back in. Naturally, I troubleshot the hell out of it, and scoured the web for solutions. The company’s online support was completely useless, nary a support bulletin to be found anywhere on eMachines website.
After fiddling with it for several days, I called tech support and they were all like, “yeah, there’s a known issue with SP2 and that unit, so you should uninstall SP2 until further notice.” Nice.
So finally, today, after about 6 months, they pump out a new BIOS, complete with nifty Windows Flasher utility, to fix it. It works. Yay. I’d still have to recommend avoiding eMachines in the future though. I thought I’d give them a try because the value was there, but in the end I think we’d have been better off with a Compaq, hp, or basically any name but Dell. Don’t get me wrong; I have no problems with the overall performance of this machine, but the customer service and support is more or less terrible, and there were a few flaws, as I’ve experienced. One likley a manufacturing defect and the other a design flaw. Should have been a recall.
Posted by Ron as Computers at 3:50 PM EST
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In keeping with my theme of media-industry bitterness, today I’m going to talk about music. I have quite a lot to say, just so you’re warned.
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Posted by Ron as Music at 12:52 PM EST
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Lately I’ve started to realise something that scares the living daylights out of me. Maybe I’m just imagining things, or perhaps it is due to other factors, such as the stagnation of the industry, or my soul-destroying job, but regardless, it seems to be occuring anyway. I think I’m getting bored of video games.
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Posted by Ron as Games at 11:11 AM EST
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For a nice, random surprise, yesterday I got called back to work. That’s a little earlier than I expected, since I was told that they’d be restarting on the 17th. Not that I’m complaining. Being able to buy things is nice. For example, I like being able to open my fridge to feed every once in a while.
I was a little bit disappointed however, that some of the friends I had made there were not back yet, if at all. I hadn’t known these people very long, but I’d really like to see them again. In particular, there were these two people from the former Yugoslavia region, one guy from Macedonia, and another, a lady, from Serbia. Two of the nicest folk I could ever hope to meet.
At one point, I had a huge amount to say about them, and how they’ve inspired me and such, but I think I’ll just leave it for now (again).
Posted by Ron as Work at 4:40 PM EST
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Today the mail carrier delivered a package that I had been anxiously awaiting for several days. It was a new controller for my Gamecube. I still have two others for it, and for most GC games, there is nothing wrong with either the ’stock’ Nintendo-branded controller, or even the Hip Gear knockoff one, for that matter. However, I play a lot of Gameboy Advance titles through my Gameboy Player, and I originally bought the knockoff controller in hopes of alleviating my biggest gripe with the GC controllers: the tiny, little, designed-for-a-5-year-old D-pad.
Unlike the Hip Gear controller, which is only a marginal improvement to the D-pad on the name brand one, this new controller actually does the job.
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Posted by Ron as Games at 3:12 PM EST
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I’ve been really lax about the updates. No need to announce that, really; it’s rather obvious. I never liked making entries then dating them back. Feels like cheating.
I was working on an opus of an entry about some really positive experiences I’ve had talking to some really nice immigrants where I work, which somehow started turning into this huge bloated ramblefest so I kinda abandoned the idea. I’ll just try to keep it to the bare minimum when I do get around to it.
Now for today… two totally unrelated things.
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Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 11:12 AM EST
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