Andrew Underwood

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…

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.

That bird

Has anyone else noticed that graffiti drawing of a bird with the word ‘Listen’ beside it around Edmonton, particularly the Strathcona area? I seem to be seeing this everywhere, walls, newspaper boxes, buildings, and other. I haven’t gone to check it out for sure, but I seem to remember that this sybmol is that of Blackbird Music on Whyte Ave. And if it is their symbol, is it store employees going around painting the town with birds? Is this some kind of modern advertising stunt where companies pay off kids to go gleefully into the streets with spray paint in hand? Actually, some seem to have been done with a paintbrush, rather than spray paint. Quite a curious matter.

Monitors for sale

I am selling two 17 inch computer monitors, because I am getting new and better ones. They are the two seen in the post below. The one on the left has a handy liux commands table, but the horozontal width can’t decide where it wants to be sometimes. There are two widths it chooses from and might snap from one to the other from time to time. It’s not terribly frequent, usually going for a few hours before changing. It’s only about an inch of change so even if it does happen you aren’t disturbed too much. The monitor on the right works fine and has a few Japaneese stickers along the top (not shown in pic). I’d like to sell them together, for $100. If you want them and live in Edmonton, send me an email at andrewu[at]gmail.com .

Redundant

It just struck me that the word redundant has positive connotations, for me at least. Most non computer people probably see it as a unfavorable descriptor. When something is redundant, it means that there is something extra in place in case the primary system fails. Like a power supply, or a hard drive. Or maybe a battery or some sort of computer storage device.

Commonly Confused Words Test

I don’t think I’ve posted results of an on-line test on this blog before because they are usually pretty bogus or immature. This test is different, be prepared to spend a few mins doing it. Try it out

My score: You scored 92% Beginner, 92% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 86% Expert

I can’t belive that it’s actually this bad

I had to laugh out loud multiple times when whatching this video clip [hackcanada.com]. It’s snippets of the worst (I hope) arrogant and ignorant news casts to air on Fox news and CNN. Apparently we’re ‘allowed’ to exist on the same continent and “Canada is essentially Honduras except colder and much less interesting”. The one guy goes on to say how dependant Canada is on the US. I’m pretty sure that we have the resources and economy to sustain ourselfs if the US fell of the map. I’m guessing that US on the other hand would not do very well if we put an embargo on even one of our exported resources like lumber, energy or water. Well, I had better get back to dog sledding.

Bigfoot

Here is a link to a video of the new bigfoot footage. In the video it goes on to introduce the “expedition team” that is going to the area to try and find it. It includes a woman holding a chainsaw, who they plan to use as bait and some wacko doctor (PhD) who was wearing a safari hat, a double breasted coat and holding some kind of pointing stick. It seriously looks like a bad skit but they are being serious. Here is a transcript of what this guy says, keep in mind they are headed to the northern edge of Lake Winnipeg in summer:

Ok so very dangerous, the flight it’self about 500 miles in a, I don’t know if it’s going to be a biplane… We’re going to have to say our prayers as we go up there. Then of course as we start hiking through the territory it could be snowing, we could run into a blizzard, perhaps other creatures are up there, a wild moose. -Dr. Franklin Roule

This is totally a gong show, these people are the last people I would like to see searching for bigfoot.