WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

I rebooted my pc this morning after being on for a few days. My bluetooth phone couldn’t connect to the pc and a reboot usually fixes that.

It rebooted and the POST check RAM counter stops at 1024K OK. I tried removing each RAM chip but got the same results. I even tried Rebecca’s RAM chip but it’s still no good. She’s dead, Jim!

Since my pc was the new Internet gateway we’re offline until I can set up Rebecca’s pc with the adsl connection. At least I can post blog entries via email on my mobile.

While I had her pc open I put the old server 40Gb hard drive in Rebecca’s pc so she can copy down some music to it for when she moves into her spinster pad. (is that what you call the opposite of a bachelor’s pad??).

I was about to flash the firmware on my mobile to a newer version to hopefully fix all the issues I am currently having with it. That’s why I needed to reboot in the first place.. to get bluetooth to work and let me synchronise my calendar and contacts on my mobile before updating it.

Sigh.. this month keeps getting shittier and shittier!

Adsl modem .. dead.  Mouse .. dead. Pctv card .. dead. My pc (motherboard?) .. dead. My marriage .. dead.

Keep piling the shit on, 2005! I love it more and more each day!

I think I already requested a refund on this year, right???

EDIT: This wasn’t posted from my phone after all. I finally got Rebecca’s PC set up to be the ADSL gateway and got her PC on the internet.. came to my site to see if this post was here and it wasn’t! The email-posting plugin for WordPress "Postie" isn’t working… AGAIN! It stopped working for a couple of weeks about a month ago.. then started working again. Now it’s stopped again.. with no errors to trace the problem. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I logged onto the email account that normally auto-posts blog entries here and cut and pasted this entry.  More stuff breaking!!!! I didn’t really mean to keep piling the shit on, 2005.. it was SARCASM!

This morning the linux server I use at home keeps coming yup with the above error and the kernel panics. It happens as soon as I choose the kernel to boot from. Normal booting shows no error but the failsafe option shows this problem.
I disabled the printer port as some sites I found discussing this issue suggested it but that made no difference.
Anyone have a clue?
Problems come in threes right? My adsl modem, mouse and now this. Let’s hope it’s the last!!!

By now many of you will know and some may have guessed that Rebecca and I are getting a divorce. She will be moving out some time in January after Blake is gone and we will share looking after Sienna.

Now you know the reason behind my being upset and depressed lately (as seen in some posts). 

I’ve just received this spam email supposedly from "Administration <admin52@schealth.co.nz>":

Attention:

Based on your present knowledge and past life experiences our University administration
office has been trying to contact you.  We feel you may qualify for one of our Univsersity
degrees in your area of expertise. 

 Emphasis added by me.

So, you see, there’s proof right from the University. They somehow know about my past lives! I wonder if they can give me some excerpts so I can work out what kind of karma is coming my way.

It also appears the Uni doesn’t have a spell checker..

Here’s some more of the interesting email telling me what I’ve qualified for:

We have been qualifying people based on thier experiences in past and present jobs and
are offering qualified degrees with transcripts for those that qualify.

If you call our offices now we can confirm our information and send you either a Bachelors’,
Masters’, or Doctorate within 2 weeks. 

I finally caught up on some tv show watching. I watched Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. Not too bad. I think I missed the last episode.

I watched a movie called The Island. It’s not too bad. I think it could have been darker though.

Speaking of dark movies.. another I watched was Memento. Damn that plays games with your head.  I had to watch it again straight away to pick up all the references and bits I missed the first time.

If you like puzzling movies shown out of sequence which really makes you think and HAVE to watch it at least one more time (if not more) go check out Memento. 

I also finally watched the end of Kung Fu Hustle and recommend that to anyone. You really have to turn on English subtitles to get it, but it’s hilarious and so over-the-top! 

I will upload Christmas photos soon.

Blake’s present:

A soccer swingball

He really loves it and has been kicking it all over the place.

Sienna’s presents:

The bath toys above as well as a couple of rubber duckies. They call came in a set from KMart. 

She also got a pink bike with training wheels.

Rebecca’s present:

The Logitech MX510 gaming mouse. It’s got a way high precision and Bec loves it. It also has all these programmable buttons which is great for her World of Warcraft game.

Unfortunately, it seems the lightning strike which took out the ADSL features of our modem also took out my Evoluent vertical mouse (?!?!) go figure! Today I turned on my PC and no matter how many times I rebooted the mouse wouldn’t work. Now, the Evoluent vertical mouse is a pain in the arse anyway. It’s only detected properly by Windows XP about one in every two to three boots, so that’s why I had to keep rebooting just in case. Well, after a few reboots it still didn’t work so now I have Bec’s old mouse. Unfortunately even though her old Logitech mouse is an infrared one, it needs a mousemat or something under it as my desk must be too shiny for it to work properly. We don’t have any spare mouse mats so I’m using a piece of scrap paper under it. It works so-so but is still a pain as the piece of paper moves around sometimes too and the mouse isn’t that responsive. No wonder Bec was soooo happy to get a new mouse that actually works! 

I’ve just spent the afternoon trying to come up with some way to get us back on the net.

I couldn’t find info on setting up Mandrivalinux with my Alcatel SpeedTouch Home adsl modem. I’m sure the info is there but I don’t have all day to stuff around.

In the end, I set up my computer to connect to the internet. I already had a network card in my PC along with the built-in network card from nVidia. I plugged the nVidia network card into the old modem to use it for just a switch/router and plugged the network card into the modem. I shared out the internet via the XP Internet Connection Sharing software and stuffed around until I got it going.

Now the three computers can access the internet so long as my computer is turned on. It’s a small price to pay, but it gets us going again which is the main thing. Since it’s Christmas holidays I don’t know if any computer shops are open. We are probably going to have to purchase a new modem at some stage. If I can find out how to configure my linux server to share out the network connection then we can put it off for a much longer time.

So Rebecca’s computer connects like this:

Bec’s PC -> Billion 5100 modem switch/router -> My PC -> SpeedTouch modem -> Internet

I had hoped I could somehow get the Billion to dial the internet through the Alcatel but I don’t think that’s even a physical possibility. Oh well, so long as we’re going again taht’s the main thing.