But then later I noticed that our kitchen computer wasn't running. And when I tried to start it, it wouldn't boot.

So I pulled it out and found this on the video card:

Detail:

Yeah, that's not good. Interestingly enough (to me at least) in all the years of building my own machines and working with old hardware, this is the first time I've ever had a capacitor go bad (which is what caused this to burn out). I've been working with computer hardware for /years/ and never had this happen before today. Kind of amazing.

Amazon shipped out the drive quickly and the package was sitting in our mailbox last night. And I knew, the instant I picked it up, that it was an empty box.

"Well damn", I thought, "someone at Amazon messed up and shipped me an empty box."

No, no, that wasn't it at all. What became clear, after bringing the box inside the house (where I could see it, as opposed to on the street where it's dark), is that the box had already been opened. The packing sheet holder had been removed. The packing sheet had been opened and read, and then someone had cut open the bottom of the box, took the hard drive out of the packing material, put the packing material back in the box (why, I have no idea) and then re-taped the box with shipping label intact.

Thank you United States Postal Service.

I called Amazon.com right away and they agreed to ship me a new hard drive (set to arrive on Tuesday next week). That's really cool of them. But I am a bit worried that now there's a note in my account: "Claims hard drive was stolen." If something like this happens again, then they're probably going to stop being so nice.

• Because only files and not the database were lost, I was able to reinstall the software and pick up where I left off. The problem, however, is that because the files are missing, the photo-portion of the blog is just empty past a certain date.
• Because I'm a stickler for details, I set up the software to not obfuscate the filenames of the images I uploaded. So I could, technically, retrieve all the filenames of the images from the database, match these to files on my computer, and copy the files up to the server, thus restoring the site. However, even with this information, it will be a lot of work, and I would still (probably) need to create all the thumbnails by hand. I'm holding out on possible data recovery from the problem hardware.
• cetan.org is syndicated on LiveJournal as cetan_rss but they still are having problems with external feeds. Entries in the photoblog are not showing up for hours and hours. Silly LJ.

And I guess that's it for now. I'm trying to update once a day during the week mostly from the archives right now. I've been shooting film during the lunch hour and don't have anything developed yet, so it'll be a bit before anything "new" shows up. Also, the weather has made walking difficult and this weeks' range of high temps doesn't really help matters any.

Of course, every time I update this WordPress install I have to go and re-edit the PHP files for RSS feeds.

Further complicating matters was that I seemed to have /no problem/ whatsoever having RSS updates from cetan.org show up rather quickly on LiveJournal. I don't know why, but It Just Worked (tm).

However, ever since the big LiveJournal server move nothing seems to be updating for hours and hours. I updated cetan.org this morning at about 6 am CST but it just now (~3 pm CST) it showed up on LiveJournal.

All the more reason, I guess, to use something like Google Reader for feeds rather than LiveJournal syndication.

Edit/update (2008/09/12) - Well, it seems like I'm not only one annoyed by this. Enter jwz:

http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=937843

So, aside from not being able to tell the apple update software that I don't want their horrible browser on my computer every time they see fit to update iTunes or Quicktime, now, thanks to said upgrade of iTunes, their own installer has broken Quicktime on this machine.

And, of course, because it's Quicktime, once I fix the install I'll still have to go into the registry and remove their worthless "Quicktimetask -atboottime" key.

What ever happened to Apple, the company that actually cared about their users experience?

Click for a bigger view. Two of the remaining three pieces are loose on the leading edge of the card, so it's just a matter of time before they fall off as well.

I emailed this photo to Sandisk tech support. Generally speaking, I've heard good things about their RMA process so I'm hopeful they will authorize a replacement.

I have, like many geeks, lots of extra computer hardware sitting around. So I put together a computer for the kitchen. It's sitting in the end-cabinet right next to Jasmine's food and water dishes. I was able to purchase a used LCD from work for $15 (score!) and tonight I picked up a desktop wifi card for $35. So, for $50 I was able to outfit our kitchen in the latest technology 2003 or 2004 had to offer.

Seriously though, this is pretty cool. And we're giving Ubuntu Linux a try instead of Windows. All we need is a browser and OpenOffice anyway. Though it would be nice to eventually get some small speakers in here and tap into our music share. Also, I'd like to have the OS run a screensaver of our photos from the photo share, but sadly this doesn't look very promising. I'll just have to keep a copy of the photos I want locally.

Yeah, a laptop would be nice but it would be far too expensive (even for a Asus EEE or Dell Mini) and a laptop would rarely leave the kitchen anyway.

So, yay for relatively inexpensive DIY kitchen computerin'.

For a while now I've been considering using Flickr to archive my JPG files but have been concerned about the limit. But now, at only $25/year, this policy change will be a substantial storage opportunity and most importantly, the images can be kept private. Organization will be key to this whole project. What good is an archive if you can't find the files you may need?

So, some months ago, I received two DOA machines from my mother-in-law's office to do with as I please. Both are P-4 1.6GHz machines. The first one I looked at only had a dead 80GB WD drive (past warrenty) and so I set about making it my new computer. I figured I could use it, re-build the other one for a family member, and keep the 700MHz box as backup storage (it's already loaded with HD's so, why not?).

Well, as I'm a slacker in continual training, it's taken me a while to get all the software and hardware installed on this new box. I did end up settling on new HD's and will probably get a new video card at some point (the Nvidia TN2 that came with it is a bit weak, even for my non-gaming needs) but I should be set for a while. Photoshop runs faster, OpenOffice runs a lot better, and the machine doesn't bog down (as much) when I have ten Firefox tabs open.

But one thing I did notice was how slow the machine has become as more and more software has been installed, especially after Norton AntiVirus was transfered over. Frustrating, but inevitable I guess.

When computers no longer suck, they will be able to take over.

So remember: every time your machine shuts down by itself, taking hours of work and a few hardware components with it, this behavior is the result of very difficult work being done to keep you and your future generations safe.

What a difference in speed that makes. It's been night and day.

For a long time, it took my computer a really really long time to fully boot. On the order of 5 minutes including everything it had to do after login. Because my computer is on 24/7 I didn't really worry about it. But applications were slow to load and slow to run. I figured it was mostly due to the fact that I'm running a P-III, 700MHz /slccket/ in an ABit motherboard at least 6 years old. And while the machine is still being very limited by this setup, it sure boots and runs a lot better with a newer HD

OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been released. Download it via bittorrent with the link above. Right now there are 400 seeds so the dowload is very zippy.

Now I need to buy RAM, a heatsink/fan combo, and possibly a new power supply.

If anyone has any DDR RAM they're looking to sell (PC2700) and/or a decent power supply, let me know. I'm in the market