05.07.03 :: 16:47

Okay, so there hasn't been much blog action in May. There probably won't be either since I'm about to leave on a 10 day vacation ^^; I've been busy getting ready for that (both at work and getting my own crap together). I'm going to be going to visit friends in Sacramento, my bro in LA, Disneyland, E3, and Anime North. In other words, I'll be running myself into the ground ;) If anyone else is going to one of these events, maybe we'll run into each other.

I did a ton of SeeDfic writing about a week ago. There are two main story threads going on in the last part. I finished writing one thread complete and I'm onto the last scene for the other thread. That feels good. I wanted to get the final draft whipped up before I left for vacation, but that's not going to happen. Ah well, I'm still glad for what I've gotten done :)

Yes, Sean, I know I need to archive :P

05.09.03 :: 13:49

Last blog entry before I got on vacation (not that I've gotten a lot of entries done lately). I'll try to keep a journal like I have in previous years. (I'll do one for E3 at least, I'm going to need more notes from it so that I can write some articles!) Everyone take care while I'm gone. No taking over the world without me.

05.25.03 :: 00:55

I've got to get back in the habit of blogging (and go back and put in blog entries that I wrote on paper while I was on vacation ^^; ) I just finished an all day marathon of Azumanga Daioh. Good series. I would recommend watching it at least once, but I'm not sure I'd rush out and buy it. It strikes me as more being anime club fodder. [Flees Sean and his Azumanga Daioh obsession]. Sakaki is my favorite, with Yomi and Nyamo close seconds ^_^

Hmm... What else has happened recently... I got a promotion at work on Friday. It doesn't change what I'm paid or even what I do, it's just matching the title up with what I do ^^; But still, I'm happy.

My aunt called me tonight to ask if I was going to my cousin's wedding next weekend that I didn't know about until she told me this evening ^^; That's a big fat no since I have to work on the day of the wedding ^^; I have yet to make it to one of my cousins's weddings. Half of them are married now, I've still got a few more to go before I'm a total family loser x.x;

My computer is still giving me problems --; Grr, and it only annoys me when it's too late in the evening for me to start with the reformating / install process. Just you wait, Baku, I'll get you reformatted if you keep this up...

05.25.03 :: 00:55

Pickles (the neighbor's cat that has adopted me) gave me a scare this afternoon. I hopped in my car to leave and I saw her twisted body laying in the driveway o.O I looked her over and her eyes were shut, poked at her and they opened. The stupid cat was twisted in a way no mammal should be o.o; I can't imagine the position being comfortable, but she was sleeping with her body flopped over one way and her head the opposite way. I'm not describing it as bad as it looked, but trust me, you'd wonder if she were still alive too if you saw it :P

I beat down .hack//INFECTION thoroughly this evening and started on .hack//MUTATION. I don't know what it is about these games. I play them and am sitting here knowing that I'm bored with the story and the gameplay, but I can't stop. I guess it's kind of like Animal Crossing. You do the same thing over and over, and you know that you have other things you should be doing but oh well ^^;

05.26.03 :: 21:11

I need to get my paws on FFX-2 again. Lusting after Yuna would be easier if I had more than wallpapers and a couple movies :P [Waits impatiently for November to roll around.]

I was minorly productive in a 'not really' sort of way today. Did laundry (for work), made some CDs for a co-worker that I promised him, like, 3 months ago ^^; and played .hack//MUTATION. I went over to my parent's place to watch Spirited Away with them, but mom was asleep o.o; I said I'd come over another time when we could all watch it together.

05.27.03 :: 21:56

The word for the day is "Peevish". That well describes most of the people I spoke with today and includes myself. I won't rant (because I've already done that to a few unfortunate souls) I just hope tomorrow is better and doesn't progress to the "pissed" stage :P

The weather has finally turned nice. I know that most people are complaining about the 90+F weather, I find it to be perfect ^_^ I think I have a bit of reptile in me (some would say I'm cold blooded, or was that hearted?, after all..). If I could find myself a hot car or warm spot to lay in and take a nap I'd be all over it. B'sides, 90F is nothing when, during the peak of summer, we hit at least 105F. Then their complains have some merit ^_-

05.27.03 :: 22:57

[This was going to be in my Live Journal, but since it's being so flakey lately, it's going here.]

Ysa-chan and Chris talk about this a lot, so here's mine (as if I don't smack of it x.x; )

What I found most interesting was how the personalities are broken into triads and how they seem to hit right on (at least for me). Especially the dominant emotion for my triad, "Anger or Rage".

Ones attempt to control or repress their anger and instinctual energy. They feel that they must stay in control of themselves, especially of their instinctual impulses and angry feelings at all times. They would like to direct these energies according to the dictates of their highly developed inner critic (superego), the source of their strictures on themselves and others.

That hits the nail so on the head --; I get so frustrated and I fight (it seems like every day) to bite my tongue and not lash out with what I'd *like* to say. It's like Must. Control. Fist. Of. Rage! And I feel bad when I can't control it (but at the same time feel justified that if someone / thing pushed me to that extreme they probably deserved whatever I did to them... I rarely feel sorry for my outbursts o.o )

Reading up on it some is fascinating stuff!

05.28.03 :: 21:00

Work was kind of fun today because we made it that way. I showed Lincoln some Japanese music videos, commercials, and tv program segments. It was all very amusing :) Because the tech room currently has no AC, the bosses went out and got us 3 big fans to move the air around the room, then got us each one of this little handheld fans [laughs]. It was very amusing to see us all playing with them, sticking our fingers into the foam blades, and whatnot ^o^

I took a nap this evening, then woke up in time for my favorite part of the day: dusk. I love dusk, especially during the summer. It's so pretty, when the sun has just dipped below the mountain line but it's still bright out. I like how, when the valley is in a shadow, it's really cooled off. It's like, mother nature has let out a sigh of relief at another hot day having gone by. It's definitely the best part of the day :)

05.29.03 :: 20:41

Today's stupid person is distressing because he claims to have gone to the same tech school I did =( Poor idiot-chan who got admitted to Oregon Tech.

Anyhow, the problem. Two of the three mail servers are horked right now because of of a spam deluge. (The boxes are trying to filter it and losing. If we turned the filters off it would be okay, but then people would complain about the spam. One of those lose / lose situations). It got really bad this week and our admins have been scrambling to build new servers and bring them online to help take the load. Needless to say, we've been taking a lot of calls about email being delayed anywhere from an hour to 48 hours o.O; (I know, it sucks). I'm completely sympathetic to the complains 'cause I'd feel exactly the same way, but some people don't need sympathy, they need a boot to the head.

Guy who claims an OIT education [after having the problem explained]: "Why didn't you schedule your downtime?"
Bean: "Unfortunately, we can't schedule when problems happen, but it would be grand if we could."
Guy: "How come you didn't send us an email saying that you were having problems?!"
Bean: "We considered it. Then realized that sending an email telling people that their email wasn't working wouldn't accomplish much :)"
Guy: [click]

Sometimes stupid questions earn equally stupid answers...

05.30.03 :: 16:35

Oi oi, I woke up this morning feeling pretty good and ready to be productive. I figured that I'd spend a few minutes fixing the ongoing sound problems with Baku and then I'd work on rebuilding my aunt's machine.

Haha, a few minutes, right. In fact, I spent about 3 hours working on Baku. The problem was that audio CDs played fine, but everything else came out distorted or crackly. This happened regardless of the media type or the media player. I tried uninstalling the sound driver and installing an updated one. I put a new soundcard in the machine that I had laying around. I swapped out the speakers with new ones straight from the box. I swapped the card into another slot.

Riot, bless him, spent part of the morning brainstorming ideas with me and gave me some good directions to go in. Namely, a list from Creative that pretty much had everything under the sun that might affect the soundcard working properly. So going through that list I had the video card and sound card as far apart as possible on the motherboard. Made sure all the cabling was in there nice and neat (easy to do with a Dell machine). I carefully mapped what IRQ, bus, and device every piece of hardware in the machine was using to make sure there were no overlap or conflicts. I turned off the video acceleration and anything else I could in case other devices were taking up all the resources (which would be sad for a 2.6Ghz machine with 512MB of RAM x.x; ) I disabled all the CODECs and tested them one by one in case one of them was causing it. I also flashed the BIOS with an update that came out a week ago.

NONE of this solved the problem. Now, I admit that I'm not a soundcard techie. My forte are Internet related issues, so feeling defeated, I gave Dell a call. I'd called them regarding this before I went on vacation and hadn't gotten very far, but I might as well try again.

I dialled the 800 number in the machine, hit 3 for tech support, sang along with the hold music, got a person, gave them all the identification info they wanted, and was told I got the wrong department. I ended up in the laptop Tech Support. While I do have 2 Dell laptops under my name, neither has been giving me grief. The guy was nice and offered to transfer me to the right department. Okay. [click] Oops. I called back again, repeated all the steps above, only I got a woman this time and the laptop Tech Support again. I explained that the last gent tried to transfer me and I got disconnected. She said okay and that she'd do a warm transfer. [click] Oops. [sigh]

I called them up a third time. Same steps as above and got another guy who was in the laptop Tech Support. He offered to transfer me and I was like "Noooo! I've gotten disconnected twice already! ;_;" He was very sympathetic and said he knew a bit about desktops, at least I could explain my problem to him and he'll note it down. So I explained everything I'd tried already and he boggled. "It sounds like you've done all of the basic troubleshooting steps... o.O" He was apologetic that he couldn't offer anything else, but he did get me another number for tech support and an extension. No menus. Yay, that was great. I thanked him and hung up.

While talking with him he'd asked me if I'd tried the card in another slot. I had, but then I got to thinking that I hadn't tried it in *every* empty slot. So, I pulled Baku open again and started moving cards around and testing them. Lo and behold I found a configuration that worked (that avoided one of the PCI slots entirely)!

After spending all that time trying to fix a sound problem I took a break 'cause I wasn't sure my brain was telling me the right thing about the file not being distorted. The crackling had stopped, that's why I thought it worked. But I needed a break. I went down to the print shop and worked for mom for a while doing errands and small chores. The park across the street is looking great. The city worked quickly to get it cleaned up :)

When I got home I had an allergy attack ( :P ) and tested the sound card some more. I think the problem is fixed and that it was caused by a wonky PCI slot. I called Dell to tell them the results and to have them note in my file about the PCI slot. (I don't need it right now and I don't plan on adding any new cards to the machine, but if at some point I do and I need the slot I want them to know about the problem so that the motherboard can be exchanged).

So now Baku's sound problem is fixed. Thank you for your help Riot and Dell laptop guy who tried even though he didn't have to! :)

Name: Amanda Anderson
Nickname: Greenbeans
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