Blog

November 2006

Viewing posts from November , 2006

digital mall

Been to the new digital mall in Section 14, PJ twice already, with last night being the latest trip. It sure looks nice, but it just lacks the atmosphere and variety of Low Yat.

All IT is OK, but it’s not specialised enough. There’s no place for me to buy cheap computer fittings like Sri Computer. No place for me to get overclocking gear and tools like Overclockers’ Paradise. And I don’t get to see the friendly faces of staff from my favorite shop, Cycom.

And goodness, rework the damn escalator! It was bad enough having to walk among clothes to get to the top when it was Metrojaya. Now that the way is barred by stalls selling handphones and PS2 gear, it’s quite a workout to get upstairs. And you know I’m not fit. 😛

not quite back to normal

Sure had a wonderful time trying to get my PC in its new casing up and running. So much so that I didn’t even do 1 hour of Final Fantasy XII over the weekend. And no BF2142 either.
An additional annoyance that I discovered was that the Viper’s front panel audio inputs were lacking speaker return connectors. This seems to be more of a manufacturing defect that anything else (it’s a Singaporean/Malaysian product, go figure). Had to do some rewiring for the front panel stereo minijack to work without losing sound from my normal set of speakers.

Other than that and the fact that the side mounted fan is a little noisy, things are quite dandy. I’ve moved back to my Abit IS7 motherboard, since it has better support for all these extra IO headers and its onboard audio has enough connectors for my 5.1 speaker set AND a mic AND a line-in from my PS2. Hence no more need of Winamp to route my PS2 audio for me.
Yet, you always discover new things, even with the old stuff you’ve had for months. The motherboard’s Wake-on-USB headers don’t seem to be compartmentalised as stated in the manual: if I turn it on, all USB devices plugged into the back of my computer will have the ability to wake my computer up from standby. This includes the USB hub on my Dell 2405FPW monitor, which somehow sends that wake up signal when it goes into standby. What can I say? It’s a Dell.

With that said, I might need to pick up something for extra USB headers for the Dell hub. The front panel USB doesn’t seem to be affected, but it’s awkward having the hub connected via the front.

Put that with two 12cm fans, and hopefully, that will be the end of my computer expenses for now.

Except for that Twinhan VisionDTV Sat-Ci card. 😛 And a corresponding CAM. 😛 Oh, and we need a webcam as well, dammit!

1 year with the dell 2405fpw

It’s been close to a year since I purchased my 24″ Windescreen LCD from Dell. It’s been very nice overall, except for a few quirks:

  • While backlight bleeding is consistent, it’s bright enough that watching movies with ambient lights turned off that it washes out the color.
  • Emits a high pitched squeal (kinda like when a CRT is turned on, but worse) when ambient temperature is slightly warm. Squealing becomes more consistent with dark pictures.

And the latest addition: it squeals when it’s off! Turning it back on and off again stops it temporarily. Today’s noise reached an all time high score when I actually heard it while I tried to sleep.

Now the dilemma: leave the monitor on in standby mode 24/7, or call Dell and screw them in a friendly manner?

compulsive

After only a few hours scouring LowYat.NET, I picked up a somewhat second-hand Powerlogic Viper case for my gaming machine from garagesell/alvinchong. Supposed to be brand new, but written up for insurance claim. Anyways, I got it somewhat lower, because it wasn’t brand new, as promised. Luckily, I can probably manage to fix up all the things that’s wrong with the case.

Thing is, they tried to sell it off at the original price. :

Anyways, I’ve already managed to work around the broken mounting screws for the front plate, the disconnected power LED, and the defective thermal sensor for the LCD display. Next I gotta look at the broken off side fittings, and the missing side window clips.

I’d have finished sooner, i.e. yesterday, but the morning’s nagging backache turned into a full scale muscle twist. It hurts mid torso, towards the right. And the pain is usually felt from my back, altho sometimes I can feel it emanating from the front. The pain slowly builds up, and once the peak is triggered, it stays there, with the slightest move constantly triggering a painful attack. Fortunately, I managed to stay rather still while sleeping last night.

Felt better in the morning, but the pain slowly built up again. Managed to keep it at bay this time.. cold showers seem to help. Managed to turn up for Rizal’s open house, thanks to Az for picking me up (had to pay him in peanut butter M&M’s tho :P). Besides the usual ppl, Noris was there, whom I’ve not seen since Std 6. He seems the same as always. 🙂

labrador needs home

sarah says (1:11 PM):
anyone want a healthy white labrador, trained overseas and worked for govt narcotics dept. Retiring and gonna be put down. Very urgent. Only given 1 day to find her a good home. Please pass this on. Call Carolyn 0123827995