Andrew Underwood

Dying young is overrated

Today I cooked one of those big shank hams in my oven. Sure to last far into the winter.

I had quite the time getting my computer up and running, it’s never simple. There were some complicated aspects of this particular installation I had to deal with stemming from my power hungry video card. It actually draws so much power from my power supply that it browns the power connector. As a result I only had one working connector left and I needed to use it for my floppy drive which I needed to get XP setup to use my RAID array. So I had to take out my video card for the installation. Then I had to format my new drives, that took a really really long time, about 2 hours. Luckily my old drive is working so I am in the process of moving everything over. It hasn’t died yet which I’m glad of, usually my data is taken from me, never to be seen again.

The Dentist

So I went to the dentist thismorning, 7:00am appointment, what was I thinking? The thing is, I hadn’t been to the dentist in over three years. Last time I was there was before I went to Scotland. Usually when I’m there they tell me that I need to floss more and they ask me if I know how and ask if I want a demo. I say “fool, you know I floss good, and like it’s all up in my mouth and junk, it’s all good.” ‘Cept this time they were like “wow, your gums are really healthy and stuff (healthy being a key word here seeing as how it’s flesh). So the lady did my cleaning and told me that fluoride isn’t covered under my insurance but she thought I was cute so she gave it to me free, right in the dentist chair. After that I watched TV for a while until another dentist underling lady came to give me X-rays. It was one of those panorama machines where it pumps you full of high energy photons and you hold on to bars and lean back… It feels like you’re water skiing actually. It circles around your head and makes *wirrrrrr*ing sounds. Best thing evar! Finally after that I watch more TV, CBC Newsworld, it’s not too often I get to watch cable. I had a good time flipping through the morning programming until I realized that it’s not really that entertaining unless you’re hopped up on coffee or enjoy puppets. So finally the dentist comes and he greets me with a hand shake. And I ask him: “Is I bling?” He says “yeah man”, takes a look in my mouth and says “this is going to be quick, you have really nice teeth.” He continues “your teeth are really nice and your gums are in good shape.” He goes on to emphasize that I have good genes and that I should thank my Mum and Dad for them. So thanks Mum and Dad for good genes and insurance!

My Photoshop for today

I did this Photoshopped image of Duceppe for the Rick Mercer Report photo challenge

Hard Drive Dying Dance Tracks

In the spirit of my hard drive dying today, here is a bunch of music made with the sounds of dying hard drives. Enjoy.
Odeo: Gizmodo Hard Drive Dying Dance Tracks

Floppy drive? Anyone?

Ok, so I went out and bought 2 200 GB hard drives today and installed them in a RAID 1 configuation. The sucky thing is that Windows XP needs to load RAID drivers off a floppy disk at install time. You might be wondering why this is so sucky, the reason is that I built my computer without a floppy drive. Not to mention that I have zero floppy disks. So if anyone can lend me a floppy drive for a few hours, get back to me.

NOOOOO!

My hard drive is dying again! I swear, this computer goes through hard drives like they were just snack food. I woke up in the middle of the night to find that my computer wouldn’t come out of the screen saver monitors turned off mode. I just flicked the switch and didn’t start it until morning. After about 5 mins of running it in the morning I got that all too familiar “click” -> freeze -> BSOD -> restart. It restarted by itself which is kinda new. Anyways, this is why I bought a motherboard with SATA RAID cabability so I’m going to go buy a couple of SATA hard drives today and I’ll finally have my redundancy. I have not budgeted for this but I’ll have to find a way to cover the costs. I almost feel like throwing my computer out the window, but I live on the second floor and that’s too harsh… first floor maybe, but then again my car is parked below my window, and I could never do that to my precious anyways… my precious…

Celica Burnout

I found this video on google videos that is labeled “Burn out”. It’s a new Celica, the thing is that when he does it the wheels don’t seem to spin. He sure gets alot of smoke though and I’m guessing the poor guy think’s he’s awesome but really he’s just totally frying his clutch.

Shaw called

So Shaw, my ISP called me yesterday. I thought I was going to get told off for over use of bandwidth seeing as how Azureus records 58.07 GB downloaded and 60.26 GB uploaded, not to mention normal Internet browsing and other activities. Turned out they just wanted to offer me cable TV for $10 a month, but I declined. As much as I’d love to have cable, I don’t have time to watch it. Plus I just got those awesometastic rabbit ears for peasant vision. After that the Shaw guy said he could give me a free month of the high speed Extreme Internet. I’m sure you guessed that I agreed. Anyways, I can report that there isn’t a huge noticable difference so far. What I have noticed is that my upload speed had doubled for uploading things to my web server from 60 kb/s to 120. Also in online poker the cards get dealt out like a machine gun where before it was more like a casual flip… flip… flip…

Roommate Wanted

I’m still looking for a roommate, so if anyone is interested or know someone who might be interested give me an email at andrewu[at]gmail[there’s a small circular thing here]com or leave a comment.

Are all men from the future loud mouth braggarts?

I vacuumed today, with a new (to me) vacuum. When my roommate left she took her vacuum so my parents got me another one. I’m not sure where they got it, but it seems to work well despite being old. I’m not sure how old it is but I imagine it dates back to the 70s or 80s indicitive by it’s “shag” setting option. The only date I can find on it is a patent date of 1951. Anyhoo, I like it because it’s retro tech. Much like these rabbit ears from the seventies I bought from the Junque Cellar on Whyte. It’s really stylish and feels solid, a feeling far from any other set I’ve ever laid hands on. It’s a Zenith Chromantenna, I adore the loops at the top.