I did it! I did it!

December 5, 2003

Victory! Sweet victory is mine! Forever in the annals of history will December 4th, 2003 be known as V-C Day. That’s right: Victory-Computer. I finally triumphed over my Dad’s new computer that’s been causing troubles for close to three months now. I swapped out or disabled literally every component in the system at one point in time in an attempt to find the culprit of the problems. The problem finally turned out to be a rogue cable inside the system, of all things. I had disabled the devices on the cable, but I hadn’t ever removed the cable itself. It was too long for the devices on it, and the signal was most likely getting corrupted on the way down to the motherboard. Either that or the cable itself was bad. But when I finally took the cable out, the system worked perfectly, and I got everything installed and set up properly. So now for the first time in a long time, my Dad’s got his fast computer working the way it should. All it cost him was a good chunk of change–two additional motherboards and a new CPU–and a lot of time. But all the extra parts are getting put to good use, at least. One of the two motherboards is going into his other machine, as is the old CPU. But most importantly, he has his main computer working again, and he can go back to work on his video-editing project without waiting a long time for the computer to work on the data.

So yes, obviously I’m back over at my Dad’s, but it’s not just a social visit since I finally had the tools to finish up the troubleshooting on his system. I wush I’d thought of the cable earlier, but it hadn’t even occured to me. It was one of those “can’t see the trees through the forest” situations. Or maybe just Occam’s Razor? I dunno. But I was really starting to get frustrated with that machine, because the mental flowchart in my head telling me the cause of the problems wasn’t working. When you eliminate all the usual suspects, so I’m told, whatever remains, no matter how ludicrous it is, must be the cause. Well at one point yesterday, I thought I’d eliminated everything and I was starting to think of other problems that I couldn’t see or change, like some sort of interference from electrical equipment or the like. I would have had to move the computer and the monitor elsewhere to test it, and I was about ready to when I thought of swapping out cables. Whew. Good thing.

So now my task is to fix his OTHER computer, which started causing problems last weekend. Easy to fix since we’re just going to replace the older components in it with some of his extra parts, but I have yet to get going on it. I didn’t sleep well last night–I had a lot on my mind, I guess–so I got up late, and in about 30 minutes I’m going to go meet my Dad downtown. At Pioneer Courthouse Square, apparently there’s a Winter Ale Festival being held, so we’re going to taste some beer and then stop by Whole Foods on Burnside to get a few bottles of their special imported ales to take home with us. They sell the extra special ale, like the kind from Belgium brewed in an abbey, that sort of thing.

Speaking of a monastary-like place, I was channel-surfing last night and came across a movie I haven’t seen in ages–actually since it was in the theater: The Name of the Rose based on the novel by Umberto Eco. This movie caused some particular trouble between my parents, because while my Dad took my sister and myself to see it, my Mom didn’t think it was appropriate for a child of my age. It did have a few scary moments as well as a little nudity, so it’s a parental call as to whether it was appropriate for a child of seven years old, but nonetheless it was interesting seeing it again. Part of it, at least. I remember Sean Connery being in it, but I got the supporting actor wrong, and I thought that it was Matthew Broderick and not Christian Slater playing his apprentice/disciple, whichever. I saw a few scenes that brought back memories of seeing it, and it’s really a trip to have these memories dragged up but now recognize the actors in the roles. If someone had asked me yesterday before I came across it to describe the plot, I really would have had difficulty, but once I watched about 30 minutes of it, it all came back to me: the plot, the details, even the person in the end responsible for all the murders. Not only that, but the mechanism of the killings came back to me, as well. Now that’s pretty good for only having seen a movie once, seventeen years ago. Too bad I can’t remember to deliver phone messages on time.

Yesterday after fixing my Dad’s computer, I decided to celebrate by exercising. Yeah OK, that sound silly, but I haven’t had a good workout in literally months. I’ve exercised, but I haven’t had one that really made me sweat. So I took a three mile walk on the treadmill at a good fast pace, and I got my wish. I took it at a brisk clip that on pavement would have hurt my knee, but on the treadmill felt perfectly fine. At one point I tried speeding it up to jogging speed, but as my left leg came down I could tell from one impact on the treadmill that my knee wasn’t going to like it. Back to the brisk walk. In fact, I did just about all the exercises I could and my knee was fine throughout it all. That’s a good feeling. I guess my knee just doesn’t like three mile walks on pavement, but it can handle to repetitive motion just fine. A few parts of my body are a little stuff today, but not my knee for once. Huzzah!

Last night also saw the end of the Thanksgiving leftovers over here at my Dad’s. We warmed up the last of the stuffing and wild rice and ate it with a couple of Gardenburgers, and as he pointed out, exactly one week before we had been eating the same food. Not so much anymore. All gone!

So now I have to get ready to take off. I need to stop by Albertson’s before I head downtown on the bus to get a pack of tickets, as I have no cash on me and no more tickets for myself. Normally when I take public transportation, I raid my change jar, but I don’t have that here. Shucks, gotta pay for it with real money. Oh well, I’m off. Have a good weekend, all.

Posted in Geekery, General