The Toothpick's Blog » Computers

My laptop finally kicked it

Kevin — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:03:44 +0000

Well… that’s not an entirely accurate statement. First, "finally" isn’t the right word, because the underlying cause had been going on since the thing came out of warranty (funny how that works, isn’t it?). Also, it didn’t really "kick it."

It started about… oh, say beginning of this year. I have no idea really, but that sounds about right. Anyway, I’d have it off, or in hibernation, and it would shut down entirely. As in I couldn’t turn it on. At all. The power button didn’t work, the little lock switch next to it wasn’t next to the little lock, the battery and power cable were both properly connected, and the charging light wasn’t lit when plugged in. The first time it happened, I just waited. I used my old laptop (the one who’s screen broke. I just propped it up on something). Anyway, it eventually started working again, and everything was fine. For a while. Then it happened again. And this time, I waited for a couple days. And it still didn’t work. I contacted Gateway, and they sent me back a suggestion to send it in to Gateway to be fixed. No thanks. They also gave me an 8 step process for taking out and reinserting the memory, which might fix the problem. It did. Temporarily. Then it happened again. And I repeated it. And it kept working. Then I started getting lazy, and I forgot to detach the battery one time (which was incredibly stupid of me, I could have shocked myself…), and it didn’t work. So I did it again, taking out the battery, and it worked. Some time later, I forgot to unplug the power cable from it. It didn’t work. With power cord: doesn’t work. Without power cord: works. With battery: doesn’t work. Without battery: does work. Seem like a pattern? Finally, one day, I decided to try just taking out the battery and power cord, waiting a couple seconds, and reinserting each. And, sure enough, it starts working again.

And so I finally figured out that all I had to do was remove the battery and power cord, and then put both back in. Which was good, because it started happening more and more frequently. Whenever I leaned on the area of the hard drive a little too hard, the whole thing would crash. I was annoyed, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

One day, I was a bit pissed at my computer, because it was lagging more than I had ever seen it lag before. I couldn’t even get to the restart button. So I did it the fast and easy way. I whacked the area above the hard drive, and it crashed. But when I started it up again, it was in pretty bad shape. Explorer took forever to load, and when it did, almost every program was slower than it ever had been. So I restarted it (I could at least get to the button this time), and it shut down and powered back on. I signed in, and was greeted with a blank, blue screen. Then it restarted. and the same thing happened. This time, it failed to boot. And it failed to boot in safe mode. So I booted the Vista DVD and selected "Repair." It couldn’t find the Windows installation. So I got to the main menu, and it couldn’t find any system restore points. I clicked "Detect and Repair," in the hopes that it might find something, and it did. And it repaired it. I booted the computer, and the same thing happens. I repeated the boot from DVD, and this time it detects the Vista installation. "Repairs Unsuccessful." I try again. This time it said it worked. Reboot. It failed to boot normally, so I tried in safe mode. And it works. I sign in, and it works. Barely. As soon as I try to open something, Explorer crashes. And it won’t recover. I hold the power button (because I couldn’t get there in Explorer), and it boots in safe mode. Repeat. The third or fourth time, I get a chance to press the "restart" button in Windows. It shuts down, and the next time it starts, there’s a message: "WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent." Fuck.

So, when backing up my hard drive, I found a number of files that were unreadable (corrupted). Which leads me to think that when I hit it, either the disk head scratched the surface (which isn’t theoretically possible, seeing as it’s designed not to), or files were open, and Windows hadn’t finished writing to them (which isn’t likely, cause the thing’s done the same thing about a hundred times without this happening once).

So, in conclusion… My hard drive is partially corrupted, and my laptop is the biggest reason. Which makes it easier to convince my parents to get me a new one (plus the fact that it’s been spiraling downhill for the year it’s been out of warranty…). And, at least most of my data isn’t corrupted, so I’ll just be able to transfer it over when I do get a new computer. Of course, the laptop isn’t completely unusable, and I do have my old hard drive… And as long as I’m not using it regularly… What I’m planning to do with it is set up Web Server 2008 on it, and tuck it away somewhere where it won’t get hurt. I can then run my SharePoint site off of that, instead of a 10 year old machine with a 20 GB hard drive and 256 MB of ram. That’ll make everything a whole lot easier…

god that was long…

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Hearts of Iron

Kevin — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 06:23:40 +0000

Some of the people who read this (by the way, who exactly is that?) might have heard me talk about Hearts of Iron. If you have, you know that it’s more of an obsession than a game.

On the surface it looks, feels, and plays a lot like Risk. But comparing Hearts of Iron to Risk is like comparing Halo 3 to the original Pong.

In this and all future screenshots, click on the picture to view a larger version.

That’s just the top bar. Yea. I’m not explaining the game in any more detail than that, cause it’d just take way too long…

Ok, so lets walk through a game! In this, I’m playing as the USNA (blue) in the scenario “The Abyss,” and I’ve declared war on The Confederates (black).

The Confederate’s Capital is Mexico City (it’s the one in the middle, surrounded by blue). I’ve landed troops in the surrounding provinces, and thus cut off all supply lines (they all stem from the capital). Now every one of their divisions is out of supply, making it easy to defeat them.

I’ve taken most of the southwest, and I’m starting to advance into the southeast.

I’ve taken the entire south except for one province. That gets taken soon.

I take Mexico City (allowing supply chains to resume. whoops), and push south into northern South America.

And there you have it. I’ve conquered the entire continent of North America, and some northern South America, and annexed The Confederates. Notice the date: It took just a little over 2 years.

Again, that’s barely scratching the surface. In this case, I didn’t have any allies to compete with (yes, I compete with my allies), so I was able to take the entire country. In other cases, such as the one below, you’ll see that that’s usually not the case.

Now, that doesn’t come with a before picture, but just pretend there is. APR (orange) originally extended from Cape Town (South Africa) to the Ottoman Empire (light green) border (there are still some APR controlled provinces there), and north to Roma (green) (again, still one province there), then west to the Atlantic, where it bordered Bourbon (gray) to the north. So, basically, everything there that is now brown (Republic of China), blue (USNA), off-white (Australasia), and light blue (I think that’s Sweden), and some parts of the gray (Bourbon), was once orange (APR). By the way, the big message window? A peace offer made by APR, offering some large amount of territory in exchange for me backing off. Well, sorry, I already had most of the country…

And another desperate offer, when all they actually still controlled was their capital (so they wouldn’t be in supply). Which is about to be taken. “Decline.”

So yea. After that, I declared war on Prussia and let my allies in Europe (mostly the Cossacks and Sweden, and a couple provinces for Bourbon) fall in on it. The Cossacks took most of the country. As the leader of the Axis (a required alliance even if the timeline’s been screwed with), they didn’t want to let the alliance die, so they allied with the Empire of Russia near the end of the war. The Russians started chipping away at the Cossacks, so they rushed back to defend the eastern border. Meanwhile, I went north, around Sweden, and landed in northern Russia. I surrounded Moscow, the capital, and next went south, then east to capture most of western Russia (the Chinese got eastern Russia). After that, I declared war on the Empire of Persia, and took almost the entire country (the Cossacks got a couple territories. Now, I’m preparing to invade the European Soviets (Stalinist Britain), Roma (Stalinist Italy), and PRRS (Stalinist Japan) (their all allied). And the people in South America (also Stalinist, I forget their name) might join them. So, a war on four different fronts. This should be interesting :).

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thetoothpick.com Design Update

Kevin — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:55:30 +0000

Did I seriously neglect to post about my design overhaul? Oh well…

I changed the layout of http://thetoothpick.com/ from the kind of blocky, straight thing it was to… well, kind of like a capsule. It’s easier to show:

I’m going to experiment a bit with the header (I’ve given up trying to include the desert picture I had before). I’ve found an image editor for Linux that will let you create/modify images (including adding text), from the command line, and someone’s created a PHP extension for it. Now, all I’ve got to do is figure out how to install it on my server (I don’t own/control it). I guess I could just ask IX, but I’m not sure they’d do it. In all honesty, I’d prefer to host the website on my own computer, but that’s more or less out of the question (my SharePoint site is already unbelievably slow. I didn’t post about that either, did I? I’ll get to that later).

I’ll keep changing this from time to time, but it’s gonna look a lot like that for a while. My change log’s looking unused (yea, I’m keeping one. And I’ve managed to almost lost it twice…). If anyone’s got any suggestions, let me know.

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August 31st, 2007

Kevin — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 02:43:40 +0000

This post has no specific topic.

School started. A while ago. My schedule:

Biology with Willats
Spanish II with Leskowski
Computer Programing TA for Mattix / Modern World History with Cowherd
Algebra II with Hayden
English 3-4 with Hill
Modern World History with Cowherd / Social Psych with Blanpied
LC with McCarthy

I’m not going to talk about them. If you want to know, ask me. I won’t finish this blog if I start talking about everything…

Cross country is… alright, I guess. Things hurt from time to time, but I’ll live… Fuck, the freshmen are annoying. There’s this one dumbass punk wannabe that’s just so annoying… He won’t stop talking to us, even though there are plenty of freshmen on the team, and he seems incapable of saying anything intelligent. I was asking Stephen what he thought the middle school XC team was doing (they were like… hopping 5-10 yards down the football field, not staying in any sort of recognizable formation [aka they're line kept braking apart]. he said he had no idea), and the freshman kid is just like “Well, you know, when you run, it hurts. So maybe they’re just trying to get used to pain, so they can go faster!” (It looked like they weren’t close to breaking a sweat). The he continued. “So, like if you stab your hand with a knife, you’ll be able to run faster!” Stephen and I just kinda looked at him. I was like “you know, that’s really not a good idea…”, and Stephen says “Actually, it’s a great idea! Go try it!” Anyway. He’s a pain in the ass. I’m sure he’s just trying to fit in or something, but… cmon… go fit in with other freshmen or something.

Florida was fun. Pictures!

Mine:

Troop 4 – Florida Sea Base Trip

BTW, I did a lot of cool things with that. You can view a map of the pictures, and you can view them in Google Earth.

Amos’s:

http://picasaweb.google.com/grace.namaste/SeabaseTripAugust2007 (I can’t imbed it…)

God damit Amos… I put up 83 pictures, so he puts up 92. Granted, he did take like 600 to my 285… whatever.

http://picasaweb.google.com/grace.namaste/SeabaseTripAugust2007/photo#5104294802603934914

xD I look weird in that…

I might do some sort of post with stories and stuff. Maybe.

Waterworld on Sunday! Elaine and Justine want to strap sandwiches to me and have me wear a baggy shirt, so it just looks like I’m fat or something. It’s mainly Justine though. Thomas doesn’t care xP. Donno if that’s going to happen xD.

Owell, I’ll write more at some other point in time, I guess.

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Windows Genuine Advantage

Kevin — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:32:27 +0000

On July 24th, the FBI and the Chinese Public Security Bureau seized almost five hundred million dollars of counterfeit Microsoft software, making it the largest single counterfeiting bust in history. Microsoft estimates that the total software produced by this group over the past several years values at over 2 billion dollars. Microsoft’s dedicated anti-counterfeiting team, Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), helped track down more than 1000 people across 12 countries who had purchased the counterfeit software. These people turned the software over to Microsoft, who gave it to forensic specialists, who traced it to the group based in Guangdong province, China. Without WGA’s help, this group would still be at large, making millions off other people’s work. For those of you who are unfamiliar with WGA, their the ones who are behind all the security precautions in the Windows packaging (the holographic disks, the product keys, etc).

Here’s a picture of the fake and the real Windows Vista Business disks, side by side. See if you can tell which one’s which.

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Never mind then

Kevin — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:31:26 +0000

It seems that the Vista DVD can’t find the driver for my new HDD. Or, more likely, it’s corrupted somehow. Grrr…

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Final goodbye to Windows Vista RC1

Kevin — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:06:23 +0000

I’m in the middle of a post about Camp Oljato. But that can wait. I got a new hard drive, and today, I’m installing that and installing Vista Ultimate onto it. Clean install. Which means that there will be no lingering traces of an operating that was supposed to not work. I’ve got an external casing for the old HD, and I’m just going to use that to transfer files. Which makes this incredibly less painful :D .

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School is out!

Kevin — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:25:05 +0000

It is. It doesn’t really feel like it though… Well, kinda does. But whatever. It is. Which is why I’ve started playing Rainbow Six Vegas. Dam that game’s fun…

Fuck. I still haven’t gone back to Deviant Art yet. I’ve been kinda putting it off… cause there’s going to be so much to do. I’m sure I’ve got tons of stuff to catch up on at WL, if the sarge hasn’t kicked me out yet =/.

Running. Started running again yesterday… Dam I’m out of shape… but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I guess.

Cub Scout Day Camp. Incredibly fun. I’m an assistant den chief, so I just sit down and watch the kids being dealt with by some other person who’s running a station or something. Owen (the den chief) just kinda leaves sometimes, so i’ve got to take care of them. 11:45-5… :(

I might start Drivers Ed at some point. Soon. I hope. :D.

Anyway, Oljato (scout camp) next week, then free time :D. Maybe I’ll work on my website a bit more (which, by the way, got a logo), and explore Linux (I’ve got it installed on another machine, and whenever I try to run Firefox, it tells me I’m missing a library that is most defiantly there, with a link to it in multiple bin folders. -_-). I guess that’s all for now :D.

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Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate RTM (Microsoft Windows 6.0.6000)

Kevin — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:21:01 +0000

Upgrading to the final version of Vista fixed some problems I had forgotÂ even existed.Â I wasn’t able to print from my computer, because Windows couldn’t connect to the networked printer. I assumed that this was because of a Vista-XP problem. Well, I was wrong. I can now print without any trouble at all.Â There were some new problems, most likely caused by me changing the OS on several jumpy programs without telling them. The first couple times I loaded the OS, it was incredibly slow, yet the RAM usage was below 50%. I checked the processor, and sure enough, it was at 100%.Â I looked for a while, and It seemed McAfee was using way more than it should. I reinstalled it, and everything returned to normal.

Windows Ultimate Extras is an amazing system. It gives Microsoft a chance to go back after Vista was finished and add things that would make it better. The first two ones they released were Texas Hold’em (yes, poker. It’s actually amazingly fun, and oddly real), and enhancements to Vista’s Drive Encryption program (BitLocker). I don’t use BitLocker, so I haven’t checked on the enhancements yet.Â Microsoft also has a third extra on the way, which they released a preview for: DreamScene. It allows you to use movie files as desktop backgrounds. Stardock (a Windows customization company) released a program, developed with Microsoft, that allowed people to create .dream files, which made distribution easier.Â This is all made possible by Windows Vista’s hardware acceleration, which uses as little CPU and RAM as possible, while still projecting a moving image onto the desktop. PutÂ a couple semi-transparent windows on top of that, plus a semi-transparent taskbar, and Vista barely even sweats.

Of course, there are still some problems that need to be fixed. I think I’m getting a bigger hard drive soon, so I’ll do a clean install of Vista on that. When school gets out.

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