Monday, April 28, 2008

Yours For Now in NYC, running through a downpour, and computer issues

I went to NYC last weekend, from thursday through saturday. It was a good time, I saw a bunch of cousins and a bunch of my sisters friends whose names I didn't remember, and probably won't remember again next time. That's the problem with having only met people when you're drinking. My brother in law Doug and his friend and my two cousins Brian and Linda are in a rock band up there called Yours For Now. And they were really good. I was expecting more garage-band level stuff, but they were like standard indy-band quality like you'd hear in a paid-for concert. Maybe some day they'll be my claim to fame, since Eric's musical aspirations have apparently petered out (I'm still uncertain about Banjolina Jolie, but that might be just because it's not my style of music).

I got dinner with Dave Saturday and tried to go to Kate's birthday at Marvin aftwards. On the walk to the bar it started raining, brewing itself into an unbelievable downpour in like 5 minutes so that we were half-soaked by the time we had run to the bar. When we got there Jamie gave a disbelieving "Is that the line!?!" A good 20-30 people were waiting outside in the rain to get into the bar. It was pouring down super hard, and most of these people didn't have umbrellas. In retrospect maybe I should have stuck around for the wet t-shirt contest which was sure to follow. But instead I huddled for a few minutes under a tiny overhang around the block with Dave and Jamie, and then ran home and worked on my computer for the rest of the night. But I finally fixed it.

The computer was doing this thing where it'd get about 1/3 of the way through installing Windows and then power shut off. I unplugged everything, tried installing on different hard drives, tried with different Windows cds, reflashed the BIOS, but nothing worked. I was confused becsause the computer had been working fine until I uninstalled Windows, so it didn't seem likely that it was a motherboard issue. I was frustrated for a while. Finally, Saturday night, on a whim I took out the second RAM chip, leaving only the primary, and then it miraculously installed smoothly. Apparently this motherboard can't cope with dual-channel memory without special windows-level driver software installed (I had assumed it'd be in the BIOS), and it can't just ignore the second memory either. Anyway. Now I just need to find the right driver for this onboard network card. I love how foxconn doesn't collect, mirror, or even link to the drivers you may need for their motherboards, they instead tell you to go hunt it down from the manufacturer. I don't even know who manufactured this thing. I'll figure that out later.

Maybe I should start tagging some entries "nerdy" or "computer" when I talk about that kind of thing. I know you're all anxious to get my collected technical wisdom onto a single page.

(from a netflix user review of Dead Man Walking)
Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn are sensational in the lead roles. (Sarandon won an Oscar and Penn wuz robbed). By the end of the movie, when you look at Susan Sarandon you see a nun, which is an achievement in itself.

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