Brandon's Blog

11/22/2005

Google Quotes

These Google Quotes are great:

“Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.”  – James Thurber

I guess the Thoreau fans are going nuts today when Google starts up.

11/20/2005

Hmm

I wonder how someone more media-adept would have handled this situation.

Honestly, that could have happened to anyone.

11/20/2005

By the way

If you’ve looked at the comments page and you see that dorky underlay on the comments block, please don’t be offended.  It’s part of the theme.

I’ll probably drop this theme in the near future, anyway.

11/19/2005

What?

“I won’t stand for the swift-boating of Jack Murtha,” Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, responded Friday.

Okay, so why would he bring this up?  I mean, it’s obviously to get going on the Presidential thing, but why bring up your weaknesses from the past election before you’ve had a chance to emphasize your strengths?

It would be like Ford standing up and saying, “Yeah, these new cars are nothing like the Pinto.”

I really hope the Democrats manage to get someone up there better than this.  Yeah, there’s a 95% chance they wouldn’t get my vote, but at least I won’t have to write in agony as they self-destruct in front of my eyes.

11/19/2005

Beautiful Slashdot

The best times in Slashdot are when the jokes circle around on themselves in real life

11/18/2005

Dreams

Alicia Keys is awesome.

I’d never really want an album, but it’s a real treat to hear her on TV or the radio.

11/17/2005

Ick

I think I would have preferred a lower grade so that I could be authentically mad.  In my current position, I have to be happy with a near-perfect score while my comrades are lectured about how they should have understood things in advance that were being taught as graded papers were returned to us.

It’s also possible my one deduction was retaliatory in nature.

Whatever.

My power switch is on order from Shuttle.  $20 deeper into the hole, but I think I’m good to go after that.  I also need to get ahold of a shorter screwdriver while I’m at home so I can get the motherboard screws in properly.

The FreeBSD Project was postponed pending Thanksgiving due to these technical difficulties, in addition to two fairly important (okay, just one important) midterms before the break.

11/17/2005

Hum

I laid down last night
I was trying to take my rest
Yes I laid down last night, Lord
Just a-tryin’ to take my rest
But my thoughts they just kept wanderin’
Like those wild geese in the West, hey yeah

Did that blockquote work?  Let’s see.

Computers in class are great.

11/15/2005

Oh, and Did I Mention?

Read the lower post if you haven’t yet.

From free.grisoft.com:

AVG Free Edition is for private, non-commercial, single home computer use only.

From my customer service e-mail from Shuttle:

Checked by AVG Free Edition.

Burn, baby, burn!

11/15/2005

Had a Bad Day

Well, maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t received my package at 4:55 PM yesterday.  Shuttle’s are small, and it’s really hard to get the motherboard out.  Okay, once you figure out that you have to disassemble the WHOLE case (front plate, probably back plate… stuff you normally don’t have to take off), it’s easy.  Let’s just say, it took just under two hours to get the board out.  The new board slid in okay (the screws are impossible to reach straight up-and-down, so it actually required me to crossthread one).

Then, I broke the switch cable tying the main power switch to the header on the motherboard.  I would blame this on the tight fit of the motherboard (30%) and shoddy manufacturing (70%).  Yeah, you think I’m complaining.  It was frickin’ hot glued to the front mount.  Yeah.  Frickin’ hot glued.  A $300 case-motherboard combo with a cheap chipset and they hot glue the switch.

So, I’m not a pansy.  I know what to do.  I get some alligator cables, some thin-gauge wire, and my soldering iron.  I managed to identify the correct pins and soldered on the wire.  Then the heat from the soldering iron snapped the el cheapo lugs on the switch.

Fudge it.  Fudge it to heck (I’ve changed, I’m trying).

I’m going to try to sell them back their board and buy a mid-tower, a real graphics card, and a real frickin’ motherboard.  If they won’t take it back, I’m going to try to buy a new switch and repair the machine, then buy the same stuff I was going to anyway and use that.

Heck, I might even buy a new hard drive just so they can shove it all up their butts.

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