Archive for June, 2004
Computer Running; TravelCLICK Not So Much
Big Monster is running now, thanks to a lot of elbow grease and money for new parts. I have yet to see if the terrible disk error problem or the even more terrible blue screening problem will return. Time will tell, I suppose.
TravelCLICK… sigh. Kim from H.R. called and started telling me about how I can start next Tuesday, they’re working on a computer for me right now, and oh, did they tell me they’ll give me $35,000? No? Oh, well how much were you looking for? (me: …upper range of 30-60k…) *laughs* You won’t get $60k. I’ll see what I can do. In short, I’m not going to get enough money from TravelCLICK to make working there an experience I want to have. Not that I wanted $60,000 a year, but I certainly will not do the job they are asking me to do for $35,000 a year. I’d rather be doing some of the advertising marketing stuff (which pays about that to start).
June 29, 2004
Two Mornings After
So I’m still using this really slow computer that can’t play Gunbound. It’s depressing, really.
Saturday was a lot of fun. I went to Stratford with Nicole, and I spent way too much money. I bought myself a nice skirt for work, a cute shirt, a necklace and matching pair of earrings with a toe ring, and a keychain. Nicole insists that it wasn’t a result of her influence.
Saturday night, Nicole, Michelle, Renee and I went to Friday’s for karaoke. Before we left, I had most of a margarita, and once I was there I had a Fridays Freeze, three Cosmopolitans, and a shot of Tequila that some nice guy bought for me after hearing me sing karaoke. That was one of my goals in life, so I was in a great mood when that happened. I sang And All that Jazz (by request), Roxie, I’m the Only One, I Want you to Want me (with Nicole), No One Needs to Know (with Renee, Michelle & Nicole), and Man, I feel Like a Woman (with Renee, Michelle & Nicole). So much fun.
Sunday I talked to Alan on the phone, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard or been that red before. When I saw my face in the mirror, I could hardly tell where my eyes stopped and my face began since they were both such a violent shade of red. A few songs come to mind, but I’ll keep them to myself. We’re still together, same as always.
On top of that, Sunday night I felt the earthquake. I was freaked out, and I thought it was my house falling apart. I didn’t know that it was an earthquake, but the first thing I did was go to the bathroom and stand in the doorway. I guess I just have good instincts.
June 28, 2004
Computer: Make that "Non-Functional"
Well, so far the score is Big Monster 5, Karen 0. The problems that I have had with it have led me to (1) send back the BenQ FP731 for a replacement, (2) buy a new power supply to replace one I thought might be faulty, (3) buy a new hard drive to replace one that failed, (4) buy a new motherboard because it appears to be causing these past failures, and (5) buy a new video card because that may have been causing blue screens as well.
As you can see, what was once my $2 grand monstrosity is now an increasingly more expensive catastrophe. Currently, I’m using an AMD K6-2 550 – for those of you who are not 100% leet, that means a 550mhz computer – with a whole 192mb of RAM. To give you an idea of how much of a downgrade this was for me, I was previously running a 3 Ghz computer with 1 Gb of RAM. Painful at best.
June 25, 2004
Computer & TravelCLICKness
My dad got a new Samsung 19″ flat screen CRT monitor. Good deal at newegg.com. So now I’m using the 17″ flat CRT that he was using. At least I have a monitor. The BenQ people should have gotten me a refurbished FP731 by Tuesday or Wednesday, according to their warranty policy. Oh well, I’m getting a new CPU fan (QUIET) in the mail today, as well as an external hard drive case and some thumb screws to play with.
I got my DVDs yesterday (Matrix 3, Futurama seasons 1-3 and Simpsons season 4). Turns out I saved about 50% off of the list price. I know I saved about $30 off of the Amazon price. I was up late last night figuring out a way to tastefully display the dvd cases I’ve collected over the years. I believe I have found it.
So, one of the people I know from TravelCLICK called me Tuesday to tell me that they are going to give me a job offer in the next week or so. However, it’s not going to be for the job I talked about before. It’s going to be the analysis and coding stuff. Once the position is filled, I will do some marketing communications work. I figure this is mostly because I’m still “fresh out of college” to them, in spite of the fact that I worked there for three years. A lot of people would be offended if I took that job “fresh out of college.” Such is the business world.
June 24, 2004
Champaign visit, version 3.0
Well, some things worked and some didn’t. I tried to post from Alan’s and I couldn’t, just like I couldn’t send email or post on my forum (which I will do shortly). Something was wrong with the internet (not his, the internet as a whole), Alan was telling me.
I just got back today, because my car had a check engine light. We took it to AutoZone, which is awesome because they’ll tell you what the check engine light is on your car for free (on the hopes that you’ll buy the parts to fix it yourself at the shop, although this is not necessary). They said it’s the spark plugs, but we just changed them 3 weeks ago. I don’t know what to do, but my dad told me to run it with “overdrive off” for 20 minutes on 57 (so that the RPM would be up really high, about 4k) to blow all the crap out of the engine that has built up (carbon?). The light hasn’t come back on since the guy at the Champaign AutoZone cleared it.
The worst part of my trip by far was the drive there. It took me four hours and forty minutes, when it usually takes two and a half hours. You don’t think that’s all that bad? Well, to give you an idea, when my car broke down an hour and a half away from home and my dad had to come down with a tow dolly on his truck to pick me up, I got home faster (counting the time it took for him to get there, etc). Everything was terrible for no reason other than rush hour and an exit backed up on 57 that went all the way through interstate 80. I’d rather not remember that terrible trip, which probably caused the check engine light that happened the night after this drive.
Alan and I went to see the Chronicles of Riddick and Lexi and I saw the Terminal. See my opinions of these in the forum. He showed me the first five episodes of Taken, the mini-series on SciFi, which is interesting. We went to a LAN party and played Warcraft III (without the expansion!). That was weird, because I hadn’t played in the longest time (maybe close to a year). I missed Alan a lot, and I’m glad I got to see him.
I made many purchases before I left for Alan’s. I bought the first three seasons of Futurama on DVD as well as the fourth season of the Simpsons on DVD. I also bought the third Matrix movie. (I had a 20% off coupon for deepdiscountdvd.com) After all that, I bought some thumbscrews for my computer, an external hard drive case for the little drive that could (the only drive that made it safely through the power fluxuation), and a new CPU fan. I bought this huge apparatus that is mostly heatsink with “heat pipes” (look them up they’re cool) and mounts the fan on its side, so that it blows out directly to the exhaust fans in the back of the case. It’s bigger than huge. Anyway, it’s supposed to be only 21 decibles, which is MUCH MUCH quieter than my current fan setup. That was really important to me, in spite of my 3 ghz processor which needs to be kept below 120 degrees Farenheit because I said so. Making my leet box leeter by massive equipment.. aww yeah.
June 21, 2004
Computer update, TravelCLICK "update"
My computer is functional. I purchased a 250gb drive from CompUSA for $209. The old hard drive is still full of disk errors and every time I turn it on it gets worse, so I’m going to wait to turn it on until we purchase the software to attempt to recover it. Hopefully I’ll get some of my data back, but I have no idea how much will actually come back. I lost so much that I can’t even think about it anymore.
TravelCLICK hasn’t sent me so much as an email after I sent them that email revision on Friday (a week ago today). My dad tells me I should work under the assumption that “no news is good news.” In any event, I really dislike people asking me about the job and if I heard anything yet. If you want to be notified what happens with TravelCLICK when it happens, rather than annoying me, post a comment with your name and you’ll be one of the first people I tell. Thanks.
1 comment June 18, 2004
Terrible Terrible Computer!
So last night I was minding my own business when all of a sudden the power fluxuated. I was concerned, as the light that was over my desk burnt out, and so I turned off my computer. Later, when I thought it was just the bulb and everything else was okay, I turned the computer back on. I got a bunch of errors, as if a good quarter of my disk was corrupt. I decided to restart, and if that didn’t fix it, then I would install my burning software to my D: (which seemed to be fully functional) and copy as much stuff to dvd from my C drive while I still could.
After the reboot, the windows got stuck in an infinite loop. It would flash the taskbar on and the desktop picture on, then flash them off (so all I saw was the desktop’s color). I couldn’t do anything, not even control alt delete, while this process was going on, so I turned it off.
I tried to boot from CD in order to run a disk check, but that wasn’t happening, since Windows XP sucks. So, I went to bed. When I woke up this morning, I went to CompUSA and bought a new Maxtor 250gb SATA hard drive and a new power supply (to be on the safe side). I moved the computer and accessories to a different power outlet (the one they were in before I moved into the new desk). Then I formatted the new drive. That’s where I am right now. I’m intending to install Windows on the new drive and try to access the nonbootable drive that way, to see if I can save anything that was on my C drive.
The thing that really gets me about all this is I bought that hard drive in August. I bought that power supply in August. This is some new shit that just failed on me, and I had to replace. It makes no fucking sense, and it pisses me off a lot. I’m thinking that maybe I should check into the warranties on these things, if I can’t get them working again. FYI, Enermax power supplies have been really shitty to me, so I won’t buy them again, even though they’re supposed to be the good brand.
June 16, 2004
If you really wanna know…
Well, yesterday Renee and I went to Best Buy and I helped her pick out a webcam. She really likes it, and even uses the geeky heaset thing for talking to people over messengers. FYI, I pointed her towards the Creative Labs NX Ultra, pictured here:
After that, she made me dinner (shocking, if you know Renee, that she cooks). Chicken kiev, even though she couldn’t spell it.
Today we (me, Renee, and Kelli) went to Applebees for dinner. It was pretty good. I never get to go there anymore since Alan acts like he’s allergic to anything remotely related to the restaurant. He called me today, which made me happy.
June 15, 2004
New Desk & Cabinet
Well, today was really busy. I woke up and changed Brian’s water (cuz the surface was all covered in fish spit from him making his bubble nest). After that, I decided I’d had enough of the crappy O’Sullivan lateral file cabinet I bought (their customer service response was prompt but it did not fix any of my problems), so we returned it. Yeay! Except, in the process, my dad sprained his ankle. Boo!
After that, we went over to the OFFICE MAX cuz it’s awesome and we bought a WONDERFUL filing cabinet and a new desk. After an entire day’s worth of rearranging, emptying, refilling, etc., this is what has become of my room.
You’d better be impressed. Especially if you’ve ever seen my room before.
June 13, 2004
Planning
Well, I turned in that email for John. I think it was in real good shape, relatively at least. Monty helped a considerable amount in the final stretch (props to Monty). I haven’t heard from them yet, but I did give it to them on Friday so I’m guessing it might take a while until I hear stuff.
I’m still working on that cleaning my room thing. I want to get the room repainted and get a new border (to replace the dancing panda bears). New carpet couldn’t hurt either, but that’s a much larger fish to fry.
I just got back from karaoke with Renee and Michelle at Fridays. I sang “All that Jazz” again, and it was good, but I need to do a new song next time. I’ve got two weeks, since I’ll be at Alan’s next weekend, so that’s good.
Last night I had a few friends over (Renee, Michelle, Kelli, and Chas), and I made margaritas and daquiris. They came out very well if I do say so myself. They were really sweet. I even liked the margaritas (which are made with tequila and lime-flavored), and I didn’t expect to. Huzzah to the good blender I have at home.
2 comments June 13, 2004
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