Well, I’ll have a lot more free time than I thought I would.
Thus perpetuates the sickening realization that anything I actually put effort into, I fail at.
Hopefully I’ll complete the prophecy of the previous post and get the dispatch job this time. Should be easier now that I have a reasonable schedule.
Green = work
Red = class
Purple = Opera rehersal
Blue = BLESSED FREE TIME THAT I’M GOING TO MAKE MYSELF TAKE IF IT KILLS ME
Managed to leave my Saturdays free too. Of course, this is all subject to change, I mean, I may not get cast in the opera, and I may have a job change this summer… we’ll see.
P.S. Can’t see it? Stop using IE. Get Firefox.
The Stars are going to the playoffs! Wheeeeeee!!!!
Well, I celebrated prematurely. Yes, I get good DVD playback with the new version of Multimedia Center. But, the TV quality went to hell. I mean, EXTREMELY worse than it used to be.
So, I think I’m officially giving up. This box works GREAT, except for the TV stuff. So, if anybody’s interested in a slightly old but still very sprightly Athlon XP box, let me know, I’d definitely like to sell it.
And after much consideration, I think my next HTPC is going to be a Mac Mini. Several reasons:
1) Choice. I can run any damn operating system I want on that thing. Period.
2) Price. $669, plus $149 for an external TV tuner (which isn’t much more than some of the cards I was looking at). Not bad, and certainly not much better than a space-hogging PC.
3) Upgradeability. At this point, you’re going, “What?” Well, I’m not afraid to open the computer up, so about the only thing that can’t be upgraded is the video card, which really isn’t a huge deal for an HTPC. The one thing that really caught me is that you can drop in any pin-compatible CPU, and it will work. So, I can save money now and buy the Core Solo version, and in a year (or less) when the price on the Duos drops significantly, I can go instant dual-core. PLUS, the word on the street is that the next generation “Merom” CPUs from Intel will work without any other tweaking in the Minis. That’s enough to set a guy on fire, there.
OK, so I’m trying to get home from class. I get on the bus. Request my transfer. It’s a Blue to Red transfer, so the Red bus is supposed to wait back at Student Services. Red forgot to wait and is at Beyer, so Blue lets me off at the corner and I start running, and then Red pulls away. I’m a little ticked, and I want to let base know what happened, so I run and find a phone, and call them. I’m perfectly content to wait for the next one, but he insists on sending a bus out, so I end up feeling guilty, and then on top of that the supervisor in the bus hardly says two words to me.
Should I feel bad about this at all? I mean, if I screwed up like that, I’d expect to get a complaint about it, and it’s not like this transfer isn’t a common procedure or anything, the other driver messed up.
Woohoo! Kind of. More comments to come as I have a chance to use it a bit more. According to the parts sheet, they replaced the logic board and the speaker assembly.
Pros:
CPU noise has changed. Instead of being a high-pitched whine coming from the back-right of the case, it’s now a barely-audible hiss coming from the left side of the case. I can barely hear it in situations where I clearly heard the whine before. A definite improvement, but the fact that there is still noise is disappointing.
The backlight is different. No more flicker at ALL at any brightness setting, and silent, where there was inverter buzz before.
Cons:
The speaker, which is the reason I sent it in in the first place, is still busted. Maybe after school is out I’ll take it down to the apple store and see if they have any better luck telling the guys at the repair center what’s wrong.
Working on installing 10.4.6 and the firmware update now; apparently those also fixed some issues people were having.
//Edit: OK, 10.4.6 installed, firmware update installed. Still gets hot, but not to the point yet where it’s uncomfortable through pants like it used to be, even after 45 minutes of Warcraft. Still wouldn’t use it on bare legs though. Airport picks up access points waking from sleep, unlike before. I did pick up inverter buzz, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was before, like the CPU noise. I’m still kinda ticked about the speaker, though. Oh well.
For the first time since I put this computer together almost two years ago, I’m playing DVDs with high-quality DIGITAL (!!!!) surround sound output.
I probably didn’t need to buy Windows to do it, but a small part of me feels a little less like I’m going to hell. 
And, I may put off my upgrade plans for awhile (though, a new case would be nice.)
OK, so you all know that I sent my MacBook Pro in last Monday, and am missing it dearly. Well, On Wednesday I got an e-mail that the repair was on hold while waiting for a part.
Now, I had just sent it in for the blown right speaker. I mean, it had other little minor things (kinda hot, little bit of processor noise), but I guess they didn’t bother me as much as some other people. So, it’s a speaker, what’s taking so long? Seems like a pretty easy-to-obtain part to me.
Well, I found out today that they’re waiting on a new logic board, and that when they were diagnosing it they found the following wrong, and fixable by replacing the logic board:
I’m still kinda ticked that I don’t have my computer at the moment, but if it comes back with all these little minor things fixed that I wasn’t even worried about, I’m going to be a happy, happy panda.
