Post Labor Day ramblings

September 8, 2004

Last weekend primarily dealt with my struggle of good vs. evil. That is, I was working on my computer. The blasted thing just won’t work properly, and I really have no idea what’s causing it. I got into a stress test for the game World of Warcraft, and so I tried playing that, but my computer would reboot randomly, the game would crash frequently, and I was left with a blood pressure that rose just ever so slightly every time it crashed as I was trying to finish a quest.

No normally my computer runs fairly smoothly. I’m known for having the more stable of the computers in the family, due equally to luck as to skill in maintaining it. My sister’s computer probably comes next, then dead last is my Dad’s, always something going wrong. Since I inheirited the RAM, CPU, and motherboard from his old computers, I blame him for my current crop of troubles. At first I thought that it might be hardware-related, but I can’t seem to pin down what would cause the problem. The RAM checks out, the CPU works OK, and the motherboard’s been working flawlessly for the last year. Then maybe I thought it was cooling, and I cleaned all teh dust from the air intakes of my case, made sure that the CPU and heatsink were in contact with each other, etc. Everything seems fine, but I just can’t play that game.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking “Sure, the game’s in beta, it’s probably because the game is unstable.” Wrong. Every game I’ve tried to play in the last month crashes on me eventually. Random applications will crash with no warning, not caused by any particular bug. To me that spells hardware problem, but as I said, I can’t find out what the heck it is. Sigh.

Friday I used my rotisserie for the second time and made a 6-pound chicken. It came out very well. I got off work two hours early on Friday, too, which made for a nice afternoon of rising blood pressure. I planned on jogging, but didn’t. I’m scheduled to jog this afternoon, too, so we’ll see how that turns out. Sunday was spent similarly fighting with my computer and trying to make it work with every ounce of strength left in my body, but with little luck. It’s very frustrating, and if I could afford it I’d go buy a new computer. As of now, though, I’m planning on using my tax refund next spring to do that. With my computer acting up, though, it’s hard to restrain myself from just throwing in the towel. It’s not often I give up with computer problem, but when you wrangle with something as much as I have, release is what you look forward to the most.

Monday morning I went over to my Dad’s at his invitation and stayed there for the day to watch a “Night Court” marathon on the Biography Channel. Memorial Day and Labor Day are notorious for marathons of different shows, and this Labor Day didn’t disappoint for channels running marathons of shows I like: USA had a “Monk”-athon, TBS had a “Seinfeld”-athon, TNT had a “Law & Order”-athon, and my marathon of choice, “Night Court”-athon. I haven’t watched “Night Court” in years, and it was good to watch it again. I miss zany, madcap shows like that, and it’s one of the few shows that got disagreeable when they tried to tackle serious issues. Stick to the hijinks! I think the REAL reason why I was asked to go over, though, was to make one of my famous pizzas. My Dad practically begged me. “You should come over and make a pizza,” was how it started. That progressed to “You haven’t made a pizza in the new oven, you should try it out!” Next came the bribe: “There’s a ‘Night Court’ marathon on the Biography Channel [which as a side note I don't get at home], you could come over and watch that!” All that effort for a pepperoni, mushroom, peppers, and onion pizza. Well it did turn out well. I need to get in the habit of cooking my pizza for longer on the pizza stone I got for my birthday last year, but that will come with time.

I have more cooking equipment than room at the apartment. That must change.

Something I’ve been forgetting to mention is that awhile back I took a trip in my browser to the well-done TerraServer site that archives and links satellite photos from years past. You can literally navigate from the sky and look up landmarks from around the world, your city, even get down as far as your street. In the past I’ve used it to zoom in on the city of Portland and find both my Mom’s and Dad’s houses, which when you think about it is no mean trick. Try navigating on how roads look from the sky. I had to start big, then progressively get smaller, track particular roads, etc. I was particularly proud of how I found the Beloit campus given how little I know the area surrounding the town. Well, roads at least.

Anyway, I went there again in the last couple of months, and I found that the pictures of my Mom’s area had been updated. Previously they’d been black and white pictures taken in about 1992, but I found that they were now brightly colored pictures from 2002. Lo and behold, zooming in on my Mom’s house found a red car sitting in the driveway. Not only did I know when the picture was taken, but I knew exactly where I was. Pretty cool, eh? Too bad it didn’t catch me walking between the house and my car or something. That would have been too freaky. I didn’t investigate further to find out if I could see ANYONE on the street level, but that was interesting enough for me. If I get bored, I may go back and try to find it again. That’s a good challenge.

That’s about all I have for now. I had a pretty good but largely uneventful holiday weekend. Hope yours was a little more exciting.

Posted in Beloit, Geekery, General