zen's journal

**My overall Approval Rating is 76%, my post strength rating is about 1.9, and my Geek Factor is exactly 50%.**

Note to Self:
Talk more about Linus. And cheese. Everyone loves cheese.

E-bay update:
Par puzzle
Complete Pastime puzzle
Incomplete Pastime

Dad has a bunch of items that'll get posting in the ensuing months. Some are really cool, and neat. Others are are in a category by themselves like a Roseville pinecone vase. (Hands for those who've heard of Roseville.[Expect a story about listing Roseville in the near future.])

The cost of Christmas
I heard on BBC World News Report a story about a man who keeps track of the actual cost associated with the "traditional" twelve-days-of-Xmas gifts. In current costs, for all twelve of those days it will run a person between 12 to 15 grand to take care of his loved one. This is up slightly from last year, due mostly to the geese.

True, this is a fluff story. But goddam it was so interesting I had to stop to listen. He was interpreting these wonderful christmas gifts as if he was talking to financial backers to a major Braodway production. It was really neat.

(How about we add "Bowel Movement" as a Post Type?)

What's new?
I have to ask myself that question so I can remember that I'm still alive. Other than computer problems, there's little interesting in my life there days. Things are fairly boring. This isn't something that I'm very used to. I'm not getting high, or drunk these days. And I'm not working.

Maybe that's the most exciting thing going on. I talked a little bit about going back to working in the Mall, but that doen't look like it's happening anytime soon. This company that I worked for 12 years ago is now giving 50-question tests to measure an individual's psychological profile. It's a job selling leather coats, and pays 7.00 an hour! Can you believe this?! They pay $7.00 an hour, no commission, and they want to test you first! Unreal.

Her name is ____.
A white woman in ND is missing. Read it on AOL news. I say, "So?" Not that it's not sad, or whatever, but why,here in New England, should this matter? There's not enough mysteriously missing from Conn.?

More to the point: there was a man found in the trunk of a burning BMW in the woods near my house (about 5 miles away). The trunk was locked and the man was found in the back when the smoke cleared, so to speak. This happened early last week. Just yesterday it was officially determined a homicide. Was there ever any doubt? Could it somehow pass the "Duh..."-test? But we extend the logic to my new friend El Jefe in Texas, why or how is relevant to his life? It might be "of interest", but does it effect him? Probably not a bit. But here it is, I have to hear about another white woman considered missing.

E-bay
I'll probably be posting more about the on-line auction service. Not quite yet. The "good" puzzle is still at 79.53. One of the others (the complete Pastime) is at 14.50 already. The other Pastime is at 9.99 with only one bid.

And that's my two cents. (BTW, I vote that we get more "post types")

(After my post to Worrieddreamer, it feels like I already did an entry for today...but I'm not about cheating anyone these days...so thusly do I post and bore whomever'sconcearned with more of my problems.)

After about a week, I finally finished resolved the modem issue. (Yes, I now know much about "strings", having located the PDF manual to the problematic modem.)

Last post I'd transferred the Intel blah,blah modem over to mom's computer, in which it's working fine. I got the vxd and inf files from hers and have a fully working Jaton modem in my computer. I like very much. But with this, I had to re-active my (former) D-drive (40G WD Caviar, rather than the now-current 80G d-drive)[If you've ever swapped drives you know what I'm saying]. But the thing is that I was using this thing for back-up, so it's about half full.

{On a side note: I have two more 40s in the case, but not powered-up. The IDE cables are attached to the Iwill Raid controlled, but the fucking thing isn't working. Altogether there's around 200Gigs of storage when all platters are spinning. But I don't care what anyone says, Window 98SE just can't recognize 4 drives doing 200Gigs. No matter which RAID I use there's problems. <This Abit KR7A has on-board RAID, which also causes problems.(And don't tell me to upgrade the bios/HPT bios; tried it, doesn't signifigantly help.> Essentially the drives keep stopping and starting. They're supposed to be on CS setting on the drive, but nothing is working right. I really HAVE to get Win2K!} Actually I will pose the RAID question over at Hardware. (When I have a chance.)

At any rate, the reason that the modem is important is the point of this post. I started doing e-bay with my dad. He sells antiques. Some of them are very nice. This week we've posted 3 antique hand-cut puzzles. The good one is already at about $80., and it has 4 more days. It's a really cool puzzle. When the auction finishes, I'll talk more about it. Dad and i were talking about this for some time, and now it's finally happening. I'm really happy. I finally got a sit-down computer job. It's great. He has a DSL, but since his unit is a Compaq w/ a P2, it's a dog.

11:29 pm. This is actually the revised version of this post!
Thank Vishnu for cut-n-paste. The other half that I'd JUST posted got wiped with the stroke of the space bar. Isn't technology wonderful? (I'll have to tell the funny story about helping dad with his comp problem if I get a chance later.)

Well, with that said, It's late and I have to take Scrappy, my dog, out to leave a brownie in the yard. I'll bring a stick out there to measure it. I know you're all dying to find-out how much snow NL CT has.

"The Public Library is Full of Information Except for What I Need (excluding internet time)," edition of today's journal.

At the risk of polluting the Journals Forum, I blither-on more on my computer woes. (BTW I'm using Win98, a woe in itself.) So I'm in "Setting@this-modem-blows.fuck Windows" looking for all sorts of hardware issues. Can't reconfigure the protocol, can't local a listing for strings. Everything i can think of and nothing. I bite the bullet and asked my schweetie for help.

He asks, "are you cranky because of the computer problems."
"Well, I should be able to figure-out my own problems without having to ask you."

The problem is pride, and frustration. But the fact of the matter is that he just has more experience with computers, but AOL and modems than I. I have the books and the interest to work on these things, but he has more experience. That little sting than I feel in the back of my neck is my pride stinging me, not a mosquito. (It was with his help that I found the "slots" for the strings.[And I'll be damned if I know how to get good ones for this-stupid-box.]{And I'm not ashamed to admit that})

So after being cranky, and taciturn, we both reach the conclusion, at 12:43 am, that I should call AOL. And I did. And he told me to uninstall 9.0 and reinstall 8.0. And I did. And told me my modem was fine. And upon installation, promptly got a Blue Screen. And then upon restarting, the computer fully booted-up, got to my desktop, and then shut-down with no warning. This happened 3 times, and then I booted into DOS and commanded "scanreg /fix". that didn't seem to work as it should've. Reloaded windows, again. Yet again...

<paragraph>In fact, I've reloaded Win98 somanytimes that I now know the serial number by heart. Seriously. J3mkck9bph...by rote I tell you.</par>

That solved the immediate (new) problem, but not the first one. Well, I took the dam thing out, and installed it in mom's computer. Upon recognizing it, that dam box got a blue screen, before getting through the process. This happened twice. On the third shut-down I was able to complete install. So, despite what the machines tell us, I'm inclined to think the modem is slightly off.

At this point I'm thinking that if it was for a customer, or another person, how much would this have costed in time/labor? I mean the modem only cost me $12.00. So why not just go and buy another one? Well, this is good diagnostic practice for me. I also don't have an extra $12.00 to spend on one.

But also, and this is the whole point, this problem just kinda crept-up on me. Time just flew-by while working on this problem. And that's the most important thing to take from all this. We can spend a few minutes working on something we hate, and it's too long. In my case, contrarily, I work hours on computers and the next thing I know it's bed time (and I stay up past it still working on the problem.) I'm thinking there may be a few people here who can identify.

Be this as it may. The baffling thing for me is that I'm basically a very creative person. I love arts, and doing art. I want to create movies. I've always drawn and painted. So why should i love working on these "machines" which are, essentially, devoid of creativity and artistry? (And I'm not talking about software, and what one can do with it. I'm refering to hardware and troubleshooting.) It's this dichotomy that is interesting and baffling.

Dam this confounded box!
I'm told that the painter's house "needs painting," and the cobblers' kids walk around barefoot. In my case my computer is acting funny. Up until 2 days ago it was fine. Now, I can't get online. Fuck Windows, I say.

The computer is telling me that it's fine; all of it in fact. No problems at all, it's telling me. It can detect the modem. There are no conflicts. I've reinstalled the modem drivers 3 times. I've reinstalled AOL 9.0 2 times. I get a dial tone on the other end of the modem. So what's the problem? AOL just can't initialize the modem. In fact, when I'm listening to the phone while trying to dial-up, I get no outgoing dialing tones. So why can't I get on-line?

Alright, I'll concede that this isn't the place to ask "technical" questions. I'm not trying to do that. The point here is that I love working on these accursed, god forsaken machines; er, electronic devices. Barring my difficulty finding things on-line, I normally love working with computers, even when they're misbehaving. This is probably because these things work in predictable ways, which is generally more than I can say about human beings. In fact, if the problem is intermittent, or unpredictable, then that tells the tech that the problem is in hardware, not software.

But then it's actually deeper. I lose sleep over computer issues, and not just my own. I lay awake thinking of different possibilities of what the trouble may be. Usually it's hardware based. On the one hand it maybe compulsive. On the other, it just may be the fact that I've actually found my true calling. As such, I shoulod be able to find-out the root cause for why my modem isn't working. It should be simple to me, but it's not. I've been asking myself all day, why can't I go on-line?

2:16 am
It's more like the day-after entry. This'll be short. I'm T-I-R-E-D. And I did have something more interesting to talk about.

Pictures
My older sister and her two daughters came over. Everyone behaved. It was very nice, over all. Took the two girls, Kelly 10 and Lily 8 for a walk with my camera. Had a lot of fun with Kelly showing her how to compose a picture, rather than just shoot pictures. What, at her age, she got from that, I don't know. BUT, her pictures were fabulous. If I had a way to store them of the web I'd do that so I could link to them. Can you just take my word for it they were awesome?

My schweetie's friend Peter, from PA, came-up and is spending the weekend with us. He's a nice enough guy. Granfather-aged, he seems more like a buddy than a retiring grandfather. He's been working as a radio station engineer for 40 years; obviously at different ones. If I mentioned the call letters, you would've heard of at least one stations, that's the level he's at. So I love talking with him about audio, and new projects, and the future of professional broadcast. The great thing is that he's been askin ME questions about computers and video equiptment. It's sweet. This is the gentleman i went to New York with about 2 months ago to do the AES convention. (That was a blast!)

So we got everyone on camera, but not much of the table, or peripheral stuff. Got my schweetie about 20 times, once while he was sleeping. (Actually that was Lily's doing.) It was only when the girls and I went out walking that that we got the non-people stuff. I don't know how I feel about so many people shots. I usually take so many non-people pictures because nearly all the people in my family hate getting their pictures taken. It was different this year, and I'm grateful for that.

Happy thanksgiving everyone.

This post was edited by zen on Nov 28, 2003.