Chaudair? Chaudair? It’s chowdah! Chowdah!

Current Mood: Alarmed

So I was in the right-hand lane on Clearbrook Rd. and stopped because I didn’t want to stop in an intersection, as the law says you’re supposed to when other cars ahead are stopping just beyond it. There was a lady in a car in the crossroad to the right wanting to turn left in front of me, starting to nose out and looking at me.

Er, let me show you in ASCII art:

I figure she just wants to make sure I’m okay with her going in front of me so I wave her through…right into a sideswipe with the car rushing by in the left lane. Facepalm.

No injuries, but a sizable dent in the front of the second car. Stayed to fill in the police officer who seemed disinterested because he talked to another witness just before me…didn’t even want my personal details. Okay, seeya!

Current Mood: Borg-like

I posted a while back that I was having problems with my wireless networking. Sometimes I just couldn’t connect with my iPod and other times my laptop couldn’t connect. It seemed to be random. I blamed the D-Link router, and replaced it (with another D-Link I was given), but the problem continued.

For the last little while my wireless had no problems whatsoever, then this weekend it started acting up again. In addition, my XBox360 was getting disconnected from the wired network, and it seemed to coincide with when the wireless network was in use. Looking online, it seemed a few others noticed the same problem. Yahoo Answers suggested adding the XBox to the static DHCP assignments on the router. The only problem was that the XBox didn’t appear in the list of hosts. Finally I figured out that it wasn’t missing; there was a blank entry in the list. I found that in the XBox’s advanced network settings there’s a way to set the hostname, but it’s off by default and says not to add one unless your ISP needs it. Well, it looks like your router needs it, too, otherwise new devices that connect to the network will “stomp” on its networking.

Once I set a hostname for the XBox and added it and all the other devices to the static DHCP list everything worked. It may be that just the act of setting a hostname on the XBox was all that was needed. Some of my friends have XBox360s and sometimes flaky wireless, so they may be having the same problem.

So, apologies to D-Link, and a big frowny to Microsoft…the XBox should come from the factory with a default hostname of “XBox360″, not a blank value!

Current Mood: Confused

“…and I’ll chase those pants round American Eagle, and round Mark’s WorkWear World, and round the BlueNotes maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give them up!”

Anyone know where I can find black jeans, preferably low-rise, boot-cut? My job doesn’t allow blue jeans and I HATE/LOATHE/DESPISE slacks because every time I sit down everything falls out of the pockets, and don’t get me started on pleats…

I managed to find a great pair at BlueNotes a few years ago, but I’ve worn them out and they haven’t had any available since. I’ve searched online…Amazon.com won’t ship clothes to Canada, and all other merchants seem to be U.S. only. I found some at Wal-Mart but they’re not boot-cut (I prefer my shoes be covered a bit by the pantleg).

Current Mood: Happy

As expected, the PCS Wireless manager didn’t call me on Monday. I found his e-mail on their web site and left him a nastygram stating that I’d be contacting Telus to explain why a customer who always pays their bill on time, barely uses their system and rarely complains (the best kind of customer for service providers) is moving to another provider when my contract is up in a few weeks.

Got a call today from his employee, not him, saying that they tracked down my phone. Given that I had stated that I wanted a new phone or credit towards an iPhone, I was less than enthused. I think she picked up on that, as she called me back a bit later to tell me they were going to replace my phone with a Motorola Rival.

Pro: Slideout QWERTY keyboard
Con: No flash for the camera
Everything else is about the same: 2 MP camera, voice control, Bluetooth. Guess it’ll keep me going until the iPhone 4G comes out.

Current Mood: Angry

My cell phone was sent to the factory in early November.  6 weeks ago I called PCS Wireless (my local Telus whozzawhatsis) and left a message…no callback.  I did it again the next week…same, and the week after.  Finally, I went down there and asked where my fscking phone was, since the temp phone I have now doesn’t even have Bluetooth and the handsfree ban is in play.

The guy said he’d find out where the phone was and get back to me.  Nothing.  I went back 2 weeks later and asked again.  The lady said she’d have her manager call me the next morning.  Nothing.  I went in Friday evening and basically said give me my phone, a new phone, or credit toward an iPhone.  The manager will call me back on Monday.  I don’t have high hopes.

The phone’s still under warranty.  Given that it’s had to be sent to the factory 4 times already, each time for weeks on end, I think I’ll invoke replacement anyway.  I went online and found that lots of people were having the reboot issue.  Even if the phone comes back, the problem will return within 9 months…it’ll be a ticking time bomb.

My contract is up in March, I think.  Telus has the least expensive iPhone plan, so it’d be nice if they gave me credit toward one of those and I don’t have to go somewhere else.  Maybe one of the competitors will match it…they can’t have worse service than this, right?  Right?

Current Mood: Borg-like

I think you should use AVG instead of Norton’s bloatware, but these guides are great for your non-tech-savvy friends and family:

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/guide-scary-internet-stuff

Current Mood: Confused

Yesterday I upgraded my CPU and added more RAM to my computer.  Today I tried to stream some video from my computer to my XBox360 using media sharing and it just wouldn’t see the computer.

Windows Media Player’s Sharing settings could see the XBox360 just fine.  I reset my router, turned off media sharing and turned it back on, I rebooted…nothing seemed to work.

Turns out that even though I didn’t make enough changes to the computer’s config to require a re-registration of Windows, Windows’ DRM settings didn’t like it.  I found the fix here (search for DRM).

Stupid.

Current Mood: Playful

Current Mood: Borg-like

My original power supply had a 4-pin square connector, like this, that fit into a 4-pin receptor on the motherboard. Apparently it’s called an ATX-12V connector:

My new power supply didn’t have one of those, so when I tried to power on the computer it didn’t POST. No video at all.

I thought that my motherboard was too old, so went searching around for an adapter. The 2 computer stores I went to were both confused that my brand-new power supply didn’t have one of those. Uh-oh, I thought…have I missed something?

Yep. There was an 8-pin connector coming right off the PSU and I wondered what it was for (thought it was for newer boards) and it looked like this:

Except mine could be split into two 4-pin connectors, one of which fit nicely into the ATX-12V port on my motherboard. I’m up and running!

Next up:  the new video card!