Category Archives: malfunctioning computers

bizarre, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, spam

penis enlargement

i have been getting comments in my blog that are spams recently. it’s a very good thing i have a moderation queue, and only accept comments from people who have registered, otherwise i would be bitching more about it.

in other news, my brand new power supply that i bought less than a month ago as part of my ongoing battle with the computer, failed yesterday: i cycled the power, and when i tried to start up the machine again, it didn’t even budge. i panicked, asked advice from my net-geek friends, and then took the whole CPU to re-pc this morning and had it officially diagnosed. it’s a good thing it failed yesterday, though, because if it had waited until today to fail, then i wouldn’t have been able to get a refund from re-pc, because it would have been more than 30 days since i bought it.

depression, malfunctioning computers

bleah

another round of The Battle of The Computer begins…

i reinstalled and everything looked like it was going according to plan, until i got to creating the desktop printers. through some miracle, it actually found the laserjet, which is local to my linux box, and i didn’t even know that it was shared. on the other hand, the deskjet installed more or less like it was supposed to, but when i tried to print from it, there was that old familiar “lost contact” error message, and then it wouldn’t empty the trash when i tried to toss the test print, and then it wouldn’t shut down because something was “busy”… so it’s possible that the problem is actually the deskjet and not the mac itself… although it won’t see my external CD-RW drive, either… although that could be because of the fact that i only paid $5 for the actual drive at re-pc. another indication that it might be the printer is that when i ran disk doctor, like i had to do before, it didn’t find any disk errors at all…

sigh… why won’t the computers just do what i want them to do for more than 3 months at a time, and not break… 8/

malfunctioning computers, players

random

1 Comment

i keep finding splinters of broken glass on my desk, but as far as i remember, i haven’t broken anything glass on my desk recently. weird.

the mac is in the process of reinstalling. i’ve started out by erasing the system disk and reinstalling OS 9.2.1, which is the newest old operating system i have, and i’m hoping that’s going to take care of the problems i’ve been having. i started out yesterday by doing a clean install of OS 9.1, which fixed the problems that i’ve been having with photoshop almost immediately, but then i realised that i have a newer system disk, and i decided that starting over from scratch, with a clean hard disk, would insure that any future problems i had would be more likely hardware related. besides, i’m confident that, with the mac operating system the way it is generally, i could get the whole thing reinstalled and running far more quickly than i could with linux or windoesn’t.

sandy asked me if i could make a poster for Puss In Boots, but then she remembered that she asked another friend of hers to come up with a poster, so she said that mine would be a poster that we could use if her other friend came up with something horrible. this is the same sandy that i had to deal with earlier in the year for the moisture festival program, so i’m not expecting to get paid, and i’m not expecting her to have much regard for whatever artwork i do provide, and i’m taking my time about coming up with something. it seems incredible, but i’m actually considering asking about doing the moisture festival program again this year. i must be totally out of my mind. perhaps it’s just as well that she’s going with the idea her friend had… 8/

i got a paypal payment from eva, which i transferred to my bank account, but i wonder why it is, when i transfer money from paypal to my bank account, that it takes two to three days to show up. if somebody pays me using paypal, supposedly the money is transferred immediately, and if i had a paypal credit card, supposedly i would be able to access that money as soon as the person made the payment. but, for some reason, it takes two to three days before the money is transferred from my paypal account to my bank account. i assume that the reason for this is because the paypal people want me to keep the money in my paypal account, so they deliberately take their time about transferring money out of my account, but it’s still bizarre, from my point of view.

art projects, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers

hybrid elephant, non-incense stuff

i’ve got a potential client, the society of veterinary behavior technicians, who wants a (as in “one”) 24″x30″ white foamcore sign, printed in three colours, black, green and purple. so far, i’ve gotten five estimates, from around $55 (for 2 colours) all the way up to $90, with most of them falling between $60 and $75. i’ve also discovered that it’s fairly easy to buy foamcore, canvas, grommet machines, and other sign making materials from a variety of web sites out there, which makes me want a vinyl cutter more than ever. some day…

also, i’ve got a postcard order from eva funderburgh, who got postcards from me earlier this year. this time she wants 1000 4/4 matte cards with an aqueous coating on one side… and, wouldn’t you know it, the old mac has gotten to the point where i can’t even rely on photoshop to work correctly most of the time. it’s now, officially, time for 1) reinstall the old operating system (clean install), or, possibly 2) install a newer operating system (OS10.4), or even 3) install the new hard disk that i got during the last battle of the computer, and install, but at that point i’m not sure if i’m going to install the old system or the new one. one step at a time, as always, but i don’t hold out much hope for the mac at this point… it’s a good thing i got linux working as well as it is… 8/

hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers

grr!

2 Comments

paypal has changed the “add to cart” button from the one that i like – infernal button – to one that clashes with my nice, clean web site – infernal button, which means that i have to go through and change all of the buttons in my site. i wish they would give me a “heads up” before they just do things like this… 8/

geek links, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, shameless self promotion

help for those addicted to microsoft

2 Comments

i have decided that i’m going to become a community distributor for OpenOffice.org, as a way of making it easier for the computer illiterate to get things accomplished without having to resort to using microsoft products. OpenOffice is definitely preferable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that most computer virii in existence these days are made to take advantage of “features” in microsoft office that leave the affected computer open to all sorts of nasties. others are, of course, that it is cross-platform compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux/UNIX, it is 100% compatible with microsoft office, and that it is completely free of cost. to that end, i have added a page to the Hybrid Elephant web site containing FREE downloading information, and i am downloading ISOs of the three disks required, so that i can start out by giving copies of them to my (computer illiterate) clients.

malfunctioning computers

hooray!

2 Comments

i have actully won the Battle of The Computer™ this time! i bought a used 64mb AGP video card (for $15) and installed it, and now my monitor actually does higher resolution than it did with my previous mother board. i can crank it all the way up to 1600×1200 without any problem at all, although i’m pretty happy with 1280×1024 because of the fact that i have to squint to see it at any higher resolution.

please note, for all you people that bought brand new computers recently: i am running the same processor and memory that i had 10 years ago, with a modern operating system, and instead of spending anywhere from $500 to $2,500 or more for a fancy new box, 7 years ago, i built this computer from bits and pieces that i had lying around from other, dead machines, i have recently spent a grand total of $75 and i’ve got a computer that kicks ass! it’s got adequate audio (for someone who composes and records his own music), more than adequate video, and standard network capabilities, and i only spent $75 for the whole thing. admittedly, recently, i had to wade through a week of misery to get here, but all in all, i think it was entirely worth it.

malfunctioning computers

yay, it’s finally over… 8P

7 Comments

i’m still operating at 1024×768, but it is so much better than operating on my tertiary computer which uses an operating system that i hate. i took the opportunity to run all my cables more efficiently, so now my desk doesn’t have the rat’s nest of cables behind the monitor, and i’ve still got to figure out what to do with the 6g drive, figure out which driver i should download, download it, and recalibrate my monitor, and it would be nice to get my mac cd-rw drive working again, but all those things are not entirely necessary and can be done at a much more leisurely pace. props to Silver Adept for all the helpful suggestions.

depression, malfunctioning computers

so close, yet…

13 Comments

i bought a ribbon cable and a 6g hard disk yesterday, got it installed and, after geeking around with jumper settings for most of the morning, got both drives recognised by CMOS, and installed feisty on the smaller one, but when i get around to booting from it, it looks like it’s confused by the second, now slave, hard disk, which, if you’ve been following this miasma from the beginning, has another instance of feisty installed on it which used to be the main OS on this particular machine.

i got feisty installed and running on the primary disk, but so far (not very far along at this point), whenever i try to boot with the secondary disk plugged in, it looks like it’s going to boot, but stops about halfway through and, after some things which could be error messages, but i’m not sure because they don’t stay on the screen for long enough for me to read them, they’re replaced by a flashing cursor with no prompt, and, while i can see the commands i type in, nothing happens.

does linux have difficulty recognising more than one hard disk? i don’t think so (in fact, i sincerely hope not), but i’ve never tried it before. does linux get confused when both the primary (master) and secondary (slave) hard disks have bootable operating systems on them, despite the fact that the primary (master) hard disk has the current GRUB on it?

currently the 6g drive is updating and the 80g drive is unplugged, but it’s got all my data on it. how do i get it off? will i ever be able to use both drives at the same time?

depression, malfunctioning computers

when will it all end

1 Comment

i got the linux box running again, for about 2 hours. then i stupidly believed the system settings when it said that it had detected a different video card – stupidly because, although i am fairly sure it has vesa video hardware, it said it detected sis video hardware, and i don’t know how to change it back using just the text interface. also, it lost the cd-rw drive, but i’m hoping that it is just a ribbon cable, because when i switch ribbon cables, it appears to work. i’m going to buy a hard disk and a ribbon cable at re-pc this afternoon, on my way to rehearsal… and i also have to get another $5 cd-rw drive… 8/

it’s a little easier, though, because i know i’m going to get my data back eventually. when it was actually running, the hard disk seemed fine, and it actually ran the system updater without any problems. also gliz from NBAC called and ordered more business cards, so there’s a bit of money coming in to pay for it all.

malfunctioning computers

almost to the end of argh, this time

1 Comment

i found a manual for the matsonic MS8308EP, which has important things like jumper settings and which pins take which connectors – i had it all hooked up and ready to fire up last night, but i couldn’t figure out which pins the power swich was connected to, so i couldn’t actually fire it up until this morning. but it does POST, and now all i have to do is make the correct settings in the CMOS and then i can start putting the office back together again.

depression, malfunctioning computers

argh part 5

1 Comment

i took back the asus mother board, because i didn’t want to spend time geeking with the dip switches in order to get the damn thing running again. it turned out that, during the intervening time between the time that i brought the asus mobo home and the time that i brought it back, re-pc got a whole bunch more socket A mother boards in stock, so i traded it straight across for another mobo (a matsonic MS8308EP), brought it home, got it all plugged in, but nothing works…

now i know that it works, because i watched the guy (the friendly one with the lip-ring named jake) at re-pc POST it with my processor and my memory while i was at re-pc.… at this point, i’m thinking it was a combination of fried mobo and fried power supply. fortunately the check from australia cleared over the weekend, so now i have $72 in my bank account now, so what i’ll probably do is go back to re-pc on my way to rehearsal this evening, buy the power supply that i took back last week (again) and give that a shot when i get home… 8/

depression, malfunctioning computers

argh! part 4

6 Comments

so i went to Re-PC yesterday and bought a new socket A mother board which is an Asus A7V. i got it installed and fired it up and, apparently, the mother board sent a signal to the power supply that said “shut down now, before you start frying things”. not only that, but i had to get a video expansion card because it didn’t have onboard video, like the previous mother board had, but i neglected to get a network expansion card, because it doesn’t have onboard network, like the previous mother board had, because i neglected to think of it until i got it installed, so even if it was working perfectly, i still couldn’t get on the network. not only that, but there are two rows of switches, one component with 4 switches, which, according to the review, has something to do with the front-side bus (whatever that is), and one component with 6 switches, which has something to do with the CPU speed, or something like that, but i don’t know what. there’s a good bet that they have something to do with the fact that the mother board thinks the power supply is going to fry something.

depression, malfunctioning computers

aarrggh!! part 3, continued

3 Comments

it’s an ASRock M810LMR mother board, and after clearing the CMOS on it, it still doesn’t work, which is a solid indication that the mother board is defective…

which i don’t get at all… how can a part of the computer that has no moving parts “wear out”?

presumably, if i buy another socket A462 motherboard (because i don’t want to have to buy a new processor), something more than what has been happening will happen. also i have to be careful to get a mother board that takes DIMM memory chips, because i don’t want to have to buy new memory as well. my recollection is that the mother board itself cost around $40, but if i have to buy a new processor and new memory, it will be significantly more.

now it’s just a matter of drumming up enough customers to pay me so that i can actually afford to buy a new mother board… which could be later this week, or it could be early next year. 8/

depression, malfunctioning computers

aaarrgghh! part 3

2 Comments

it’s not the power supply. i just went out to Re-PC and bought a brand new 500 watt AT/ATX power supply, plugged it in, and it didn’t work.

also, boeing surplus is closing it’s doors as of december 21. the guy said that, after that, there will be a few items offered on internet, but most of what boeing surplus sales is now will go in the scrap heap… which means that if you want that sun machine for $25, you’d better go get it now.

depression, malfunctioning computers

aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggghh! part 2

2 Comments

okay, this is getting really frustrating:

one of my two remaining computers is a blue and white G3 mac with a “Sonnet” G4 upgrade chip, running Os9. i keep it running Os9 because all of the software i have for mac is stuff that’s Os9 native (quark xpress 5, photoshop 7, fontographer 4, kai’s super goo, etc.). however, either the computer or the operating system is becoming more and more sketchy as time goes on: i can’t keep the computer running for more than a day without having to reboot it, even with nothing running, and frequently, when i try to print something, it starts to print and then it says it has “lost communication” with the printer, and instructs me to try again, but the document in the queue stays in the queue, it doesn’t get deleted. when i try to delete it manually, it says that it’s “still in use” but it doesn’t print, and nothing else that i have sent to the printer after it will print, and very shortly after that, the whole computer freezes, or doesn’t freeze but loses the keyboard. it won’t shut down when i select “Shut Down” from the menu (presumably because it thinks it’s still printing) and when i use the “programmer’s switch” to shut it down, i have to run disk doctor, because it has developed “serious” errors in the B-Tree directory which only get worse if i don’t run disk doctor.

also, when i first boot up, if my external, USB CD-RW drive is hooked up, it says that it can’t find drivers (?) for the "non-specific QT processor with JG" (whatever that means), but can’t “connect to internet”, despite the fact that i can connect to internet at exactly the same time. admittedly, i get almost exactly the same error from windows when i connect the CD-RW drive to it, so that’s probably a problem with the CD-RW drive and not the mac, but still, with my linux box not working, it means that i can no longer burn CDs, which is a royal pain in the neck.

i’ve been seriously considering “upgrading” to OsX, but then i would have to run all my software using the emulator, which would only slow things down, and i don’t know enough about OsX to be able to do any good at all if something screws up.

meanwhile, i’ve somehow been able to crank out a phone book advertisement for a client, but i have been unable to print invoices, and i have had to run disk doctor eight times since 8:00 this morning… 8/

depression, malfunctioning computers

aaaaaarrrrgggghh!!!!!!!

4 Comments

something is wrong with my linux box – my main computer is offline, and i don’t know why!

i’ve noticed over the past few days that, when i run any one of the seven HTML browsers that are on it, that the HTML browser crashes intermittently, and occasionally the whole computer freezes up and has to be rebooted. i know that the 7.1 upgrade for feisty fawn is due out on friday, so i’ve been biting the bullet and not running a HTML browser on that machine except when i absolutely have to, and then shutting it down politely when i’m finished with it. i had also noticed that, occasionally, the power supply doesn’t completely turn off when i turn off the power switch, but continues running for a half-second or so before it turns off. then, yesterday, i did something on the web and the whole computer froze up, and when i tried to reboot it, there wasn’t even the “BEEP” sound to indicate that the POST had completed successfully.

so, i took everything apart, which meant totaly tearing apart my office, and plugged it directly into the monitor, to see if something was wrong with the KVM switch (i have three computers, but only one monitor), but it’s not that, because the KVM switch works perfectly well with my windoesn’t box and my mac, and the linux box doesn’t work, even when it is plugged directly into the monitor…

so, now, i have the linux box completely separated from the rest of the computer systems, and i don’t know what to do. i don’t have ANY money, so taking it somewhere is out of the question, and even if it was, i don’t have ANY money to buy new parts, no matter how inexpensive they are. also, my schedule is on the linux box, and, apart from an appointment with ned at 3:00 today – for which i have a paper reminder separate from my schedule – i have no clue what rehearsals are when. i think i have a trolloween rehearsal on sunday, and i think i have a banda gozona rehearsal on the 25th, but beyond that, i’m totally lost.

malfunctioning computers

grr!

2 Comments

in spite of the fact that i’m overall very pleased with the new operating system i put on my linux box (i upgraded from a 5-year-old version of mandrake – which is now called “mandriva” – to the debian distro called Kubuntu – specifically Feisty Fawn), i’m beginning to suspect that there’s something wrong with the current version of the HTML display library that – i believe – it just updated a few days ago. my suspicions are primarily because ever since i ran the updater the last time, my computer has been crashing and freezing on a regular basis, about 3 or 4 times a day. it’s not because of firefox – although it seems that with firefox it happens more regularly – because i’ve downloaded and installed 5 different browsers (amaya, galeon, kazehakaze, dillo, and lynx, which are in addition to the two – konqueror and firefox – that i already had installed: take that, windoesn’t!) and i get exactly the same behaviour whether or not i’m using firefox. it also may have something to do with xscreensaver, because it seems that when i’m not running xscreensaver it happens less frequently.

i hope whatever it is gets fixed soon, because i’m getting tired of rebooting, and restarting my browser… 8/

geek links, hybrid elephant, imaginary pooperty, livejournal, malfunctioning computers

The Battle of The Computer is over, and, once again, I have won!

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i’ve resurrected my computer: i got the operating system installed: i’m now running a shiny new version of Feisty Fawn, despite what walt mossberg says, kubuntu linux is vastly preferable to anything micro$not ever produced, if for no other reason than it is free, but there are many other compelling reasons it is preferable as well, such as it installs more quickly, and is easier to configure than any version of windows that i have ever worked with. not only that, but apparently SCO has filed for bankruptcy, which means, at least for the moment, that we can continue to use free, open source software with impunity, while having a hearty laugh at the expense of those who would have made it otherwise. after i got feisty installed, i searched around and discovered that sigrot isn’t a part of debian any longer (for what reason i know not), but signify is, however signify isn’t as easy to configure, so i found an archive that had sigrot on it, installed it, and now i have my email signature, complete with rotating, random quotes again. i even got xscreensaver working better than it was before.

meanwhile, SixApart has seen fit to let barak berkowitz go and get themselves a new CEO, which makes me even more glad that i bailed from livejournal when i did.

i didn’t make that much money at the punk rock flea market, despite the fact that i was there for almost 12 hours, but i did manage to make $30 without realising it (it was 6:30 in the morning when i arrived, and there’s a good chance that i was, for all intents and purposes, asleep when i did it), which makes me wonder if i could do any better in tacoma. if nothing else, it would mean not having to get up at a ridiculously early hour and drive fourty-fiive minutes before getting there. my boxes of stuff are still in the car, but moe’s car is blocking the driveway, so i’ll have to get them out tomorrow.

i’ve also got some “i am a terrorist” articles to post as well, but they’re going to have to wait until tomorrow as well.

ganesha chaturthi, malfunctioning computers

hooray… i think…

1 Comment

my disks from cheapbytes arrived today, and feisty fawn is installing at this very moment… which gives me the very strong impression that it actually was the disk from canonical that was wonky, and not the CD-ROM drive or the hard disk.

also, tomorrow is the first day of ganesha chaturthi… so… happy ganesha chaturthi everyone! 8)

now, back to my install. hopefully i will have a functioning computer again shortly.

malfunctioning computers

finally… sort of… 8/

8 Comments

moe and i went camping last week. two days before we were supposed to leave, i tried to log into my (new) blog, only to discover that it had been shut down. apparently the blog software increases the server load enough that my host service thought i had been hacked, so they shut down the whole domain until i called and straightened them out. they removed the block on the main site almost immediately, but they kept the block on my blog until they could figure out what was going on. i said that would be fine, because i was going on vacation for a week, which would give them plenty of time to straighten things out.

also, i figured that, as long as there was a possibility that my personal computer(s) had been coopted as well, i would use the opportunity to upgrade my operating system from a 5-year-old distribution to a more current one, so i made a backup, and went camping for a week, intending to do the upgrade when i returned.

when i returned, the first thing i did was upgrade my OS. i figured (for a variety of reasons) to upgrade to dapper drake (kubuntu 6.06), which i got up and running fairly quickly, although there were some things that i thought strange. i should have known that if something appears wrong, it probably is, but i blissfully ignored it, thinking that it was just something that was named differently between the mandrake OS i was used to and the debian OS to which i had upgraded.

specifically, the “problem” (i don’t know what else to call it at this point) was (is) that, for some reason, the installation of dapper that i got running with no problem, didn’t have some packages that it was supposed to have, including gimp, firefox, ark, and a bunch of other, more arcane stuff. no problem, i figured, i’ll just install the packages separately: no dice… both firefox and gimp “BREAK” when i request their installation, but there is no obvious indication of what “BREAK”s, or how to fix it… ark is installed, but it doesn’t work, so i remove the package and try to reinstall it, but it ignores my requests to install. all during this time, i am blissfully supposing that my installation will work out in the end, and doing things like reinstalling my mail, schedule, address book and so forth.

finally it comes to a head and i decide that reinstallation is the best option, so i reinatall again and get exactly the same thing!!!! 8/

so i tried the old, 5-year-old installation disks, thinking that it was running before, so it should run now. i went through a somewhat more difficult install that ended the way i thought it should, and rebooted…

it started to boot the way i thought it should, but then, when it came time to start initialising the graphics, THE COMPUTER FROZE!!!!!!!!!! >8/

i went through the first part of the install of dapper on my windows laptop (without actually installing it), and determined that it does, indeed, have firefox preinstalled, as well as a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t showing up on my other box. i also went through the other disks on my laptop, which appeared to work okay. so i figured maybe it’s because of the fact that i have a “no-name” generic plug-n-pray monitor. so i just happen to have a sony 17″ monitor lying around (thanks to my mother in law, who said it was a “flat screen” even though it isn’t), so i pull my no-name monitor out and install the sony monitor and try again…

Disk error 10. AX = 4280, drive 9F.
Boot failed: press a key to retry

this is from my dapper “live” CD… 8/

i’ve spent all day, two days in a row geeking around with various computers and computer parts, and the only thing i have accomplished is to replace my monitor with this big, ugly silver monstrosity, which, while it does work better, it’s only on my windows and mac machines. i’ve now got a box that used to have a mostly functional installation of mandrake 9.2 on it that is now blank. i stayed up until 2:30 am yesterday, it’s 10:20 pm now, i’m so tired i can’t see straight, but i can’t go to bed without trying something… anything to get my linux box up and running again.

on top of that, i downloaded an .iso of feisty fawn (kubuntu 7.04) to see if that would work, but… on my windows box, the .iso is bigger than the blank CD will accept by a few k, which means that i can’t burn it, on my Os9 mac it fits and it’s all there, but it won’t boot, and when i tried it using the live CD of dapper (before it died), it said that it was going on okay, but when it was finished, the first time it froze before it completed the burning process, and the second time it said it was successful, but when i looked at the disk, it was blank… }8/

however, i also processed three rolls of film from our vacation, and they finally got whatever was wrong with my blog sorted out, so if nothing else, i can bitch about malfunctioning computers…

malfunctioning computers, rants, spam

1102

1 Comment

one of my paypal accounts was compromised, which resulted in about $100 being withdrawn from my bank account for “purchases” and “subscriptions” i did not make. fortunately paypal was on the ball, and fortunately i check the account on a daily basis, otherwise it could have been much worse. also, really fortunately, it wasn’t my hybrid elephant account, but another one. unfortunately, it was an account that i had used to buy a new DVD from The Bobs, and that purchase got caught up in the group of purchases that were cancelled when they realised something screwy was going on. i have to give paypal credit for actually noticing that something was screwy when the person who compromised the account changed the default language to chinese, and limited access to the account at that point. it’s also a good thing that i don’t actually keep any money in my paypal accounts, otherwise that would very likely be in the hands of some chinese hacker at this point. i still have to wait a week while paypal waits for a “response from the other party” before they declare it a fraud and refund my money.

malfunctioning computers, rants

1098

7 Comments

i’m thinking of moving this blog to my own host, and possibly changing the format to wordpress, so as to get away from the bizarreness caused by sixapart and their childish rule-making. i’ve got a server with a lot of space, and the ability to create subdomains, so why not? it would mean that i don’t have to pay 6A for an account, i could let this account lapse back to a free account, so that i could comment on friends’ posts, and there’s a good chance that i could turn my wordpress blog into a RSS feed, so my livejournal friends can keep up with my posts as well.

i’m learning more about this tomorrow.