Was killing time in Virginia yesterday morning and decided to visit Sterling BMW / MINI just up the road from my crashpad. I wanted to inspect the Mini Cooper close up so I put my butt in one and it was fiiiine. Sticker shock though. All of them are loaded up with leather and accessorie options bringing the base from 16K to 26K (!) Too much for that go-kart. B.O.U.R.Girl still lusts for the S2000, which is okay by me 🙂
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old parts cache
Stayin’ alive. It should have been a paper weight by this time but the 7 year old desktop with a 300 mhz PII and running Win95 keeps on going. No longer supported by anyone, parts come from hand-me-down machines. For instance, the graphics card went tango uniform over the weekend but I was able to swap it out with a donor. Restored. B.O.U.R.Girl, without losing a beat, pointed next to the wood scars where desk meets careless chair. Hey! I’m the computer guy from upstairs! Don’t look at me!
praise
No. 1 daughter, undergoing some kind of stress test assignment hazing, was nervous. Afraid that she might be singled out or embarrassed in some way. She was tasked with going to a Sunday Church that was not of her own choosing and one that was somewhat foreign (way different). “Listen, if you happen to get up before the group DO NOT let the grand master of ceremonies place the palm of his hand on your forehead. You will go down..”, I advised preying on the butterflies. “For sure don’t give out your contact info — recruiters will soon be making rounds. How ’bout a little donation!
a-okay
Went lights out just before my face hit the keyboard. I was a tad concerned for the non-bootable hardrive challenge — as I was running out ideas. The issues:
- normal boot – no chance
- last known good logon – no go
- safe mode w/without prompt – no go
- Recovery Console wanted admin password – huh?
- XP OEM disc clean install would wipe all – poor choice
Need a wizard. Support desk? Must sleep… Zzzzzzzzzzz.
A Google search in the morining AM sparked the idea to remove the HDD and slave it on another XP machine . Bingo. Data salvaged. The day saved, the faulty OS can now be overwritten, departitioned, formatted, folded, spindled, or mutilated! Now if I can only coax Norton Security to come back to life 😮
coming to a plasma screen near you
From the list of things to-do someday (like today): Preserve 9 hours of HOME MOVIES to save for posterity or until the popular world again changes media type (which ever comes first). The general belief is that analog tapes will eventually begin to decay, not to mention that VHS players may go dinosaur in the near future. Remember 45’s? LP records? 8-track? the floppy disc? Planned obsolescence. 16mm –> 8mm –> Super 8mm –> Betamax –> VHS –> VHS-C –> CD –> DVD. What comes after DVD? Luckily, we still have a functional VCR which when connected inline with a DV Cam functions like a Video Capture card. The digital stream will output via FireWire to a PC hardrive. Next step will be to edit the raw footage (or who in heck could stay awake watching them?) and burn to DVDs. I’ll put a man on it…
house call
Dear PC Guru: A loved one is having bootup troubles. She’s spent hours on the landline with the techies and I’m not convinced that they have a handle on the situation – advising that her c:disc was-is corrupt…
Neat trick how they deduce that over the phone. Most folks don’t practice safe computing or data backup so my primary mission is data rescue, and secondarily, to restore the OS and install a CD burner so that there won’t be a crisis next time. Committed to the challenge, I hope it isn’t too much of a basket case. I’ll either be a hero or a zero for my $200 idea to box it up and ship. The UPS man should have the machine at my front door by manana.
Heathkit 3
Lawd it’s a real mutha for ya… Yeah! The son/pop tag team sloooow pc build, after 4 months in neutral, is back in gear with this hardware component added last night. An MSI K8N Neo4 mutherboard will serve as the heart and soul of our project featuring the nVidia chipset. The nForce4 features SLI specification for dual PCIe GPUs. This board has the Socket 939 which accepts the latest and greatest from AMD, the next big ticket item on the must have list.
california here i come
i Air announced its anticipated transcon Tender Loving ServiceTM today.
New Airbus non-stops via:
Washington to San Diego San Diego to Washington Departs Arrives Departs Arrives 9:15a 11:35a 12:35p 8:30p Washington to San Francisco San Francisco to Washington Departs Arrives Departs Arrives 9:00a 11:40a 6:15a* 2:21p 6:45p 9:25p 12:35p 8:30p Washington to Los Angeles Los Angeles to Washington Departs Arrives Departs Arrives 9:15p 11:35p 12:35a* 8:15a Washington to Seattle Seattle to Washington Departs Arrives Departs Arrives 6:45p 9:45p 11:59p 7:40a Washington to San Jose San Jose to Washington Departs Arrives Departs Arrives 6:45p 9:30p 11:00p 7:05a
or as you like, here is a visual presentation. GoFlyi 😮
if it can be broke – – it can be fixed
The case shroud for the mechanism was filled with snow white powder. The motor ran with its usual hummmm but the door and hardware were immobile. First generation automatic garage doors had a belt drive which would have been simple to renew but the latest iteration use a roller worm and nylon gear arrangement. Compact but somewhat more expensive when they wear and spectacular when they self destruct as did mine. The snow flakes in the cover shield were the finely ground remains of the sprocket’s teeth. A google search returned a part identification and now the replacement bits are on their way via UPS ground.
- parts – $30
- sweat equity – ??
- elbow grease – ??
- grease on Levis – $50
time for this one to come home
Must be wearing the correct shade of winter tan — the tourists are starting to seek local knowledge and ask for directions. Welp, it was another glorious day in (winter) paradise but my mission here is complete and its nearly time to head back to be with the gang. I miss ’em.