ehowton ◾ ◾ Flip Woes Stick Woes Drax & Mac Woes

I performed the surgical procedure on my teh max0r myself, with a highly sharpened #2 pencil, and my glasses off so I could visualize the extremely tiny holes where the capacitors used to be. The light comes on and it chimes (the two key identification features of a mac with no hardware problems) but it will no longer init video, and I don't know why. I've already reset the PRAM and PMU to no avail. The next step in all the troubleshooting guides is, "Contact Apple." I can assure you, that isn't going to happen.

My XP box is going on four years old. Oddly enough, the 2.8GHz Hyper-Threaded CPU is still a viable chip. When

drax0r and I built these boxes several years ago, we chose (to our determent at the time) cutting-edge hardware. It seems to be serving me well now. However, I'd like to double my RAM to 2GB. I cracked the case this afternoon to find 2x512MB sticks of Patriot DDR3200 Dual-Channel memory. Ordering a similar pair looks like its going to run me about $50. Remember my external iTunes volumes which I replaced with a .5TB drive on Black Friday? Well that turned out to be a 7200rpm drive, and I had earmarked it for insertion into the XP box. Since it was not only down but cracked open for the first time in at least two years, I added that as well. Shiny. I pulled another 160GB drive from my DirecTV DVR after discovering it can't do anything linuxwise to put in my Ubuntu server. It ran at 5200rpm.

Finally unboxed my 7-port USB 2.0 hub and attached it to my Belkin Flip. See, Belkin makes a USB (required for mac mini's) + Audio KVM. Nice. It has two USB inputs, one for keyboard, and one for mouse. Not wanting to follow the crowd, and having drivers for everything cross-platform, instead of plugging my mouse into that USB slot, I plugged in a USB hub, and plugged my mouse into that. Now every time I hit the "Flip" button, everything (scannner/printer, thumbdrives, and mouse) goes with it. BAM! Unfortunately, its USB 1.0, so I sent Belkin an online form telling them so. Such small minds.

At $60, they damn well outta support USB 2.0!

Speaking of online forms, remember my back-ordered desk? I rec'd an email from them telling me I may not ever get it. Fine. I asked them to cancel the order and make preparations to send a truck to retrieve the corner piece they delivered. I sure hope they don't try to argue with me in by suggesting I keep it. There is zero use for it without the second desk.

Back in 2000 I made several business trips to Andover, Massachusetts, eventually pulling a three-month TDY over there. I was transitioning between contracting companies while our client was transitioning between accounts. It was a tumultuous time, and I asked for backup. They sent me

drax0r, and the rest, as they say, is history. This afternoon I dropped him off at the train station for his two-day rail trip back. I'll miss you buddy. Hurry home.

They flew my wife and boy out to Mass for a visit.

In conclusion, I'd like to welcome back my wife

catttitude who has begun posting again after her two-year hiatus.

Took the kids to the grocery store and we picked out some Blue Bell and all the fixins for banana splits - they've never had them before - and just like my father with me, I introduced them to marshmallow creme! We came home and the children were flush with excitement.

We sat on the couch and I was going to "make" them sit and watch The Sound of Music with me. Turns out I didn't have to. As soon as we got the first scene out of the way ("Is the whole movie adults singing on the mountain?") they were glued. We turned it off at intermission as it was already 2300, but they're both excited to see the exciting conclusion, and that makes me happy too!