April 2007 Archives
No, I haven't yet found a place. I am looking, though. In fact, I will be calling a place I've been looking at tomorrow to see if any 'houses' have opened up. It would be nice but I doubt any have. Well, none within my income range. I'll still be asking.
Well, my loyal internet reader(s), my new job begins tomorrow. I should be waking up at about 5AM in order to get ready and get there about a quarter to 6.
I would like to say that I'm not worried but worry comes naturally to me. It is my first real job. It sucks that it took me till I was 22 to get my first job.
It will be nice to be pulling in a significant amount of my own money, though. I can finally take the 'Stang to the shop. Yes, it will be nice. I hope, at least.
For instance, the picture above is from one called Pocket Battle. You could make your own map and play against the computer or just let the computer fight itself. Fun times.
I actually made a disk image of the Performa's hard drive in order to run under the 680x0 emulator on my B&W G3. Sadly, the emulator is rather crappy and doesn't even support sound. I might try to bring the Performa up with me to Troy in order to play around with it.
Speaking of the Performa, I've upgraded it quite a bit since the olden days. Its got a FPU, upgraded memory, upgraded VRAM, and an ethernet card. I still have to get it a bigger hard drive in there, though. That 'ole 80MB one just doesn't hold that much. It doesn't hold very much at all.
The Radeon 9500 Pro that I flashed has been declared a success. It performed perfectly in the G4 I tested it in. It easily trumpted the Geforce 5200 I pitted it against. I hope that it pulls in some money from the eBay auction.
I hope to get back the money spent on finding out it doesn't work in my Gaming PC's motherboard due to some various incompatibility.
Another quality creation by Thomas.
The flashing of the 9500 Pro took only less than a minute but it was quite successful. Well, I haven't yet tried it in a G4 yet. I'm going to have to go down to my parent's house to retrieve the G4 I left down there.
I wish that flashing would have taken a little longer. Now I'm just sitting here unable to do anything else with the card. I do hope that it works. That way, I can get some money back on the damn thing.
I think I'm going to post up some Mac OS X icons I made for your use. I'll make a special place for 'em too. Probably a whole different 'Mac' section over there on the right. Yea, that's what I'm going to do.
I've gotten tired of the Radeon 9500 Pro being troublesome under Windows. So, I'm going to flash it and give it a shot running in a Mac.
If it continues to be a bother, I'll then end up selling it on eBay and getting what I can for it. I hope it doesn't come to that, though. I would enjoy using it on the G4. If it works, that is.
Well, it seems that my Quick Chat feature stopped working. So, I disabled the link for now. The ChatCreator also seems to be down. It might be that the whole 'system' is down.
I always thought it weird that there was apparently no way to get in contact with the creators of that site. No email address, no forum, no nothing. Strange, wouldn't you think? I'm not really suprised that it suddenly stopped working.
Well, tomorrow I'm going to go by the Wal-Mart Distribution Center to apply for a job. Hopefully, I'll have more luck at this attempt than my last. I ever do hope so.
In anticipation of me getting a job, I went looking around town for some cheap places that I can live alone at. Sadly, there wasn't much success there.
I have received the 'Paths of Darkness' book. Took long enough. Not really, I suppose. I needed my fantasy fix.
I'm currently contemplating bringing that 'Sawtooth' G4 up here and plopping some various flavor of Linux on it. I want to give it a shot at being my personal server.
Sadly, Linux won't support my Applescript CGIs like my previous Beige G3 Server did. Mind you, I could install OS 9 on the G4, but I wanted to give a Linux server a shot. I want to see how well it does.
I'll have to go look and see if I have any relatively large hard drives lying around. I don't think that I do. But, I might as well go have a looksy.
Much like the title, I don't keep the cleanest house/rooms in the world. Well, I like to think my rooms are usually quite clean and well organized. I'm in the middle of packing up my stuff again (slowly) and let myself get away with not vacuuming it for a bit.
Usually, the thing stopping me from doing an extra bit of cleaning is just myself. I can be one lazy-ass bastard sometimes. Sometimes, though, I'm not the reason for lagging behind in my cleaning duties.
This is especially true with my current roommates. They are diligent with keeping the floor clean and all their crap in something akin to order. Sadly, the two sinks are usually absolutely full with dirty dishes with half-eaten food on them. This makes it difficult for me to wash my dishes with no sinks avaliable. Rather difficult, wouldn't you say?
Not only the dishes. They apparently like to leave cloths in the washer and dryer. I don't even want to know how long they have been sitting in there. Just like the dishes, its somewhat difficult to do my laundry without a washer and/or a dryer.
I ever do hope that I get that job I went and saw about the other day. I would like sufficient funding to get my OWN place, without anyone else living there. I can only hope. Yep, I hope the hell I get a good job soon.
I suppose it was inevitable that I would come to the conclusion that I simple lack the abilities to fix my Mustang. I realized that today when I was out emptying the oil seperator on the PCV line. I have to empty it out even if I only take a short 5 minute or so drive.
It isn't that which angers me. It's the fact that emptying it out doesn't really make a difference. It might add a delay, at the most, till the oil flows freely again.
Why this worries me all of a sudden is because the engine knock has been getting progressively worse. The knock was something you just happened to hear every now and then, at first. Now it is constant during acceleration, once the car is warmed up (doesn't take very long).
I don't want to give up hope. I believe that I will eventually get around to fixing it. At the moment, though, I simple lack the knowledge or necessary equipment to do anything at all about it. The situation does seem hopeless to me sometimes.
On the bright side, I plan on taking it by a reliable shop somewhere to let them take care of it. Once I get a job and some money, that is.
I've got a couple of state job applications ready to ship off. I'm going to try to do it tomorrow. I suppose I could just take a drive by the Post Office to send 'em off. I'll have to see if I feel like it soon.
I didn't know what it was. I just felt kind of crappy this morning at around 11AM. It was a kind of depressing feeling. The BAD kind. That damn whiney ass baby wasn't helping out my mood either. So, I went for a drive in the 'Stang.
I ended up just driving around for 30 to 45 minutes. Still somewhat relaxing, though. I was actually looking for somewhere without anyone around where I could get out of my car and just read my book in peace. Sadly, I have yet to find such a place. I might try again another day.
Even after giving my BenQ wireless optical mouse a good review, I've had to switch back to my good 'ole trusty Logitech one. The BenQ hasn't been acting weird or anything. It's just that lately it feels like I'm having to drag the thing around the mousepad area.
Plus, that damn delay in responding when it goes to 'sleep' after a long idle time has become annoying. I suppose the delay might be becoming more noticeable as the batteries wear down. Nevertheles, I've relegated it to my Gaming PC. I still think it was a good deal, though.
It has been a while since I last reviewed any type of software. Mind you, its been a while since I've really 'test driven' anything. I've pretty much been sticking to the software I usually use.
On an almost daily occurence, I'll skim over the latest software shown on MacUpdate for any free goodies. Sometimes, even, I'll find something worthy of praise. I have found a simple budgeting program called iBudget to be such a program.
It is still at version 0.3 and doesn't support importing any financial records, but it does what it does well. It even supports a simple sort of budgeting where you can set a monthly allowance for a certain type of category.
The thing that I most liked about this application was its polish. Unlike others I've seen in the early stages of development, this app doesn't have any weird GUI problems or strange errors. It has more than performed up to my expectations in the time I've been using it, in fact.
Why don't you, loyal reader(s), give this program the good 'ole college try?
Well, it seems that all is going smoothly (or close enough) at the moment. Nothing too momentus to report on. Here goes some points, though.
1. My search for a job may be coming to an end. Well, I can't really be too sure on that, though.
2. I'm starting to think that the expensive 'oil seperator' I'm using on my 'Stang, to solve the oil-thru-pcv-vavle problem, isn't actually doing anything. There is still oil in the lines after it. Its still getting oil but it seems to be just acting as a delay mechanism. Once I get a job, I'll get it by a shop and get this fixed once and for all.
3. I finally have a DVD of 'Big Trouble in Little China'. My life is complete.
4. I'm still waiting on that book I ordered. Its been about 2 weeks now. Cheap ass bastard...
I suppose there might be other items to tack onto that, but I can't currently think of any.
Well, after some extensive work into it, I have determined that the Radeon 9500 Pro I got recently is just incompatible with my motherboard. I've installed/uninstalled/reinstalled so many things that it was a horibble mess of things.
So, I simple removed it all and started back again with the Radeon 9100. It took me about 30 minutes to get everything situated back again properly and the Gaming PC is humming along just fine now. It sucks but failure is the victor in this battle. Not the war, though. I'm not done trying to upgrade my video card yet.
I should have kept that Geforce 6800 somehow. Damn...
I'm being trying to determine why the flashed Geforce 5200 I flashed for my Dad's G4 doesn't make it past the blue screen. Hell, at least it works. I did test it in the G4, running 10.3.9, I have up here and it ran fine the whole time. Must be something I have to do especially for 10.4.x. I'll have to go looking on the flashing forum to see what others did about it.
EDIT: According to this, I only have to do a little tinkering to get it to work just right. In fact, this makes almost perfect sense, sort of.
Well, I tested the video card again and the fan on it seems to work just fine. I don't suppose that is the source of the problems then. Hmm. I even tried an older version of the Catalyst software/drivers and that didn't make any difference either. I might try some other things. I don't know what I plan on trying, though.
EDIT: My brother suggested that perhaps a third party cooling solution was used on it. Thus, when they put the stock heatsink/fan back on they did it incorrectly, causing it to overheat. I suppose I'll be focusing on fixing that. Perhaps I'll even try running it on another computer to see if it exhibits the same problems.
I will probably try some other things tomorrow to see if I can get it to work right. Perhaps it is just the drivers. I don't know. I fear that I will just have to just try to get something back by selling it on eBay. I've got to go kiss my 'ole Radeon 9100's ass to see if it will come back to work for me.
I would have tried some other stuff before I finally gave up on it but it is hot as Hades in here.
EDIT: Perhaps the fan on it isn't working anymore. I noticed that its heatsink felt a bit hot when I took it out. I'll have to see if it is working and replace it if not. Mind you, how much stress should the GPU be under just doing 2D work in Windows. Hmm, I'll have to give it a try later. Not now, though, it is too damn hot.
I have decided to set up a loose schedule of when I'm going to be on the Quick Chat thing. The times are 10AM, 4PM, 7PM, and 9PM. I'll try to check on the chat at each of those times. In case anyone wants to contact me.
