The Unclean One...

Bah! Got letter through yesterday from landlord. Apparently the house is filthy, garden unkept etc. etc. etc. You guys get the general idea.

Some of you may or may not know I have a housemate so you would think chores would be shared...right? Wrong. Sure the housemate cleans HIS room but the communal area that none of us really use...nope. So I have the thrilling task of ripping out 5 foot high weeds in the garden that none of use.

Best bit of all is how pissed off he looked at me when he told me the bad news like it was all my fault the house is in that state. Shared responsibility...eh? Oh and his solution, hire someone in to clean and garden for us...I mean WTF??!!! Spend shit loads of cash to clean the house OR just spend some time at home cleaning? Of course the housemate will use the excuse he works long hours but no-one forced him to work from like 6am till 11pm Mon-Fri.

I'm fustrated more than anything.

/Rant

Transitional Transistors Torment / Sanders Salvation

A few days ago I recieved back my parts from vendor after being tested with "No Fault Found" (and also paying the testing fees due to no fault found).

I spent the weekend and yesterday (monday) slowly installing components, testing, if it passes, install more components so on and so forth until it was almost completely assembled...only on a piece of cardboard!!! I should have taken a picture but I was too hacked off to even tidy up properly let alone clear things up for a photograph. Obviously I had to now get the bits into a PC case which is no simple job when you are trying to have tidy cables.

So far, it seems to be a-ok but I have not fiddled with anything in the BIOS. I have left the BIOS as it is from when it returned from vendor after bench test.

So far I have successfully re-installed Windows XP but on the wrong HDD. The HDD I wanted to use it on has data on it and fearing the worst I used the larger HDD that was supposed to be used for data storage, as it was empty. So the 500GB WD HDD which has 5 partitions is now the data HDD and the 750GB Samsung F1 HDD is now the OS drive (2 partitions). What a mix-up but it works so probably keep it that way. For now.

Last night I got as far as managing to install video and audio codecs to watch anime again AND managed to install Clive Barker's Jericho and play that with max settings at 1280x1024 resolution. That game looks good.

So what's left to do? Alot. Patch up windows, install anti-virus, install firewall, install web browser firefox, install drivers for the wireless keyboard & mouse, install the games I want to play, copy contents from my old PATA HDDs to one of the two larger drives, index all the data, review the indexed data and re-organise, verify the files against files already burnt to DVD, install CD/DVD burning software and most importantly install winamp 2.81. Yes, 2.81 because anything newer looks crap and is bloated. There is probably more to do but right now I can't think of it.

I read an article today that baffled me, as a general consumer of PC goods. As a general consumer I use a PC for various tasks ranging from video and audio editing and encoding, playback of music and films, web browsing and gaming. In reference to gaming that is mainly GPU (graphics card) limited, generally speaking the more expensive the card the more oomph it has...the current king is the AMD ATi Radeon HD4870X2 and that costs between £330 and £400! Expensive. Even more so as you can add two together in what is known as Crossfire setup. In reference to most other jobs a PC does that is driven by the CPU (the brains of the PC as it were). My old setup reached its limits when tasked to decode h.264 encoded 1080p material; at times it stuttered and lagged. So I upgraded my PC (actually almost built a new machine) and this is the one that has been giving me hassles. Anyhow going back to the article I mentioned, it's about the upcoming CPUs being released by Intel at the end of this year. Take a look at the article for yourself here, http://www.hexus.net/trk/rt.php?item=15015&company=198. I cannot for the life of me fathom why I would need a CPU THAT powerful. I barely make use of the potential sitting in the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 I have in my current machine. Technology is moving at a rate of knots far greater than what is needed by the general consumer, or at least that is how I feel. This is why the article baffles me. Unless I am going to run benchmarks all day to brag about how great and fast my pc is there is little other reason why I need something with that much computational power. Remember I said games are reliant on the GPU which leaves your run of the mill jobs to the CPU. You certainly need something powerful if you are into video editing, audio sampling/mixing etc. but those are all specialist stuff that you can buy external parts to do those specific jobs (and do the job better to boot). I'm sitting here thinking, "Why Intel, why?". Simple answer I suppose is that there is a market for it and it just stamps down their authority on the ailing AMD offerings.

Rolling back on to the subject of my PC...it'll be a lottery to see how long it lasts in a stable condition.

I am thankful that Paul decided to visit the weekend just gone after flying back from Bahrain. His company has been most welcome and appreciated by me. Gaming, chatting, hanging out; the weekend flew by and reminds me how well we get on ever since university. It's a shame his job takes him all over the world but probably a good thing as we can then spend hours chatting about events. Hoping I can persuade him to goto Japan with myself and Tee; it'll be a fantastic trip. \\(^_^)// We should plan to do stuff for this coming weekend; after all he will be flying off to his next job soon after that.

Time to sign off for now, enough of wasting company time by writing on here (well in notepad in preparation for upload at lunchtime).

From Here to Eternity (of troubleshooting)

I got the news back from vendor. The CPU, RAM and Motherboard all passed memory test together, running overnight for over 103 passes. 103!!! So that leaves me with a "no fault found" testing fee and shpping fee to get the parts back; which I've done. The only component left in the system happens to be the heaviest, the PSU or Power Supply Unit. It would cost me far too much to ship that to vendor on the slim chance it is causing the memory issues I have with the build, especially if that is found as "no fault found" as then the total expenditure would total the cost of a replacement PSU!!!
The parts are planned for return to me by Thursday 14th so it'll be a busy night for me building a ghetto PC. Cardboard box, minimalistic peripherals installed (CPU, RAM, GFX, Mobo and an optical drive) and start to locate where I, at home, am going wrong.

Oh good news! The laptop I ordered is STILL in Pre-Production stage. Yay. Not.

So I have absolutely NOTHING to show for at home which is REALLY depressing.

Work has been grinding me down lately too. We got a boss who seems determined to bring the place to a grinding halt or bring the company to failure. Our QAEs are interested in finding as many problems (no matter how small) as possible and not addressing the larger issues. At least that is how I see things. So now disillusioned and un-motivated, I spend my days surfing the net in between pushing buttons into our IT system which at the end of the day won't help us one bit as there are people in commanding position who always circumnavigate their way around it which leaves the department I work in exposed and...amazingly enough...it's OUR fault.

On a much brighter note, with so much spare time I bought an external HDD enclosure for my internal HDDs to sit in so I can use them as external HDDs. This means I could rescue the fictional stories I started and continue while I am bored at work. I'll start a new blog either one for each story or just one as the author and add hyperlinks to where the fictional writings can be downloaded and read.

Also my mate Paul is visiting the UK for two weeks! \(^^)/ Banzai! \(^^)/ It's a shame his wife isn't arriving too (she's going to Singapore). His two week visit isn't a holiday though, it's a transition period for him to sort his stuff in the UK before contracting elsewhere in the world so no idea how much spare time he'll have for farting around.

For those of you who been patient enough to stick around the months of zero entries and reading, Arigatou Gozaimasu.

m(-_-)m

Never Ending Weekends (in the bad sense)

I have been having problems with my home PC lately. Infact the problems have been there since the day of the build (November 2007); I attributed that to software configuration as past history with me has always shown Windows can be fussy over certain drivers (or rather the 3rd party drivers are fussy with being incorporated into Windows). So roll on the start of July 2008 and after months of head scratching I asked for some help and someone suggested to start hardware fault diagnostic. sure enough, the first tests showed I have bad RAM. As the parts are still under purchase warranty from the vendor, I routed it back. Initially it tested "No Fault Found"; the vendor could get the parts to install Vista 64 Ultimate Edition, run Prime95 for a few hours successfully and had no problems along the way. Being the very nice vendor they are, I asked them to perform a specific RAM testing utility called "Memtest86+". They tested and found the motherboard to be faulty and they replaced it free of charge. I recieved it back and slaved the parts together. I ran the RAM testing utility and low and behold...it failed. Once more I routed the parts back to the vendor, this time only the motherboard and RAM. The vendor ran the same memory testing utlity and it passed.

Again, being the nice vendor they are they extended the returns/testing to now include the CPU, which I shipped on the 8th August. I hope they recieve it today and test sometime soon. If this passes with No Fault Found then I have no idea WHAT is causing the memory errors at home.

For someone like me who "lives" on the internet, 6 weekends WITHOUT a PC is driving me crazy. Each weekend seems to be a never ending story of boredom. I have occupied myself with a few DVDs, Mangas and figurines but it only goes so far. I miss playing my games, miss chatting to people online (it doesn't cost a penny (with exception to the ISP monthly charges) to talk to friends versus calling them) and I miss being able to fiddle with the PC.

Time without a PC has made me dig through some old boxes and found a few DVDs. This was after I spent hours watching Transformers Season 3 and Season 4 and Transformers Godmasters series. In the old box I found The Hole, Donnie Darko and Irresponsible Captain Tylor. I've not re-watched the two movies yet but I have started watching Tylor again. I love that series; probably because the Captain is a fair representation of me, ie I want the easy life. The centre of why I really like Irresponsible Captain Tylor is that you initially wonder if he is a complete idiot or military genious and if the former...what amazing dumb luck he has! As I re-watch the series, you can also take it that what Tylor does and gets in return is almost Karma like. He treats people (even the human's AI systems and the enemy Raalgon commanders/assassins etc.) the same nice way, even if it is not protocol or following regulations.Best of all, he is true to himself, so yes, he can be quite lecherous which adds to the comedy factor; after all he is a Captain of a Destroyer class ship, the Soyokaze.

Tylor won't suit to everyone's taste, it is light hearted and cheesey and those looking for some scf-fi drama won't find it here (aka Macross / Gundam).

Anyhow, that won't resolve the issue of no internet at home.

I've managed to finish the 8 volumes I purchased of School Rumble. That has only spurred me to want to re-watch the series (but I can't without the PC!!!;_;). What I am disappointed in is that Amazon sold me a couple of American books and not the official UK books. I'll have to dig around to see if I can find the officual UK books. I'm not too fussed about keeping the US books, I can use them for travel/lending and can get beat up. The other Manga I have been reading is "Negima!". Not fantastic reading but I enjoy it although the huge character list can get confusing when trying to discern who is who (30+ main characters...a few who look similar!). That and with a few large story arcs, it's not quite something you can drop and pick up unless you have quite a good memory. I still got another 4 volumes of that to go (books 11 to 14 I think) so that'll entertain me for one solid night or several if I space it out.

Where does that leave me now? At current rate, the laptop I purchased won't be delivered for upto 2 weeks, so that is another 2 weekends of boredom. What will happen with my parts at vendor under returns testing, I hope they can emulate the problem I have. If not...I'll keep the discussion open however I may have to resign to the fact I am doing something wrong at home.

More boring weekends, here we come.

;_; Boo Hoo ;_;

Introducing the new Combatants...

...hailing from the land of Lucky Star!

It's arrived...it's all arrived!!!!!! Well it arrived yesterday and only getting round to blogging it now.

In total we have 11 Nendoroids from Lucky Star (the 11th being the secret Minoru)as well as 2 limited edition multimedia packs of Konata and Kagami WITH a bonus item in the parcel. Yes, the guys at www.neonmartian.com gave me a freebie as well as arranging a bulk buy of all the above parts. Top notch service from query, to purchase to delivery!

Let the pictures commence!

First off here are some pictures of the as of yet unopened multimedia packs (I am still debating if I ever open these limited edition boxes).

Front:

















Right side (or left if looking at the above picture):





























Back:

















Left side (or right side, relative to the front picture):





























Next is the Lucky Star Petite Nendoroids!

The box they all came in:





























The box in display mode:





























Ten of the eleven figurines out of the box (I was so excited I build Minoru before taking the picture):

















All eleven assembled and sat on top of my (empty) PC case:
Part A:

















Part B:

















Also in the parcel was a bonus item...

What is this I wonder...?


























































Inside was this:





























An A5 cel portrait from Haruhi Suzumiya. Fantastic bonus.

Stay tuned for Battle Royale as Ichigo and friends (from bleach), take on the YF21 (Macross Plus), Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star! Who will win??!


Introducing...The Army...