Fracking Computers

Photo: Kristi Evans

A little over a year ago my (not so) trusty HP dv4000 laptop crapped out.  Barely two years old, it was almost perfect and I had bought it for a song.  I mulled over just getting by with my desktop (which lives upstairs in my home office) and my “work” laptop which I prefer to not use for fun, not that anyone really seems to care.

I ended up getting a decent deal on a Lenovo R61i with Vista.  Nice laptop, although I am not a fan of widescreens but I do watch some movies on this machine and figured it would be good for that.  It took a couple of months to turn off and/or configure some of the more major Vista annoyances and for the past eight months I have been fighting just one…the S3 resume from standby takes from 30 to 60 seconds IF it comes back at all; mostly the problem appeared to be wireless related.  One out of ten or so times, the HDD light stays on and that’s it, switch off time.

I tried everything, updated BIOS a couple times, Lenovo’s (IBM legacy really) clunky System Update, Vista SP1, etc., etc.  Nothing helped.  Since the warranty is a couple weeks from expiring, I called Lenovo and attempted to whine my way into an XP downgrade DVD pleading that I had put up with it for 11.5 months.  After escalating to a supervisor, I pretty much had them talked into waving the $35 charge until they discovered that there was no DVD for this box nor was it even licensed by Microsoft for downgrade.  Sh*t.  I’ve been threatening just to overwrite their crappy preload with Ubuntu for months, but that would prevent my Netflix instant watching, at least half the reason for even owning this computer.

So…I made one last troll through Lenovo’s customer forums.  Several people had reported random Wifi disconnects and other symptoms that they had fixed by getting rid of the craptacular Access Connections (which is actually the only one of the Lenovo/IBM utils that I kinda like).  None of their symptoms correlated with mine, so I had not tried that.   Since I was out of options, I gave it a whirl two days ago.  BADDA BING, the dang thing has been perfect so far with no resume/reconnect taking longer than 5-6 seconds.

I’m obviously kicking myself for not trying it sooner, but pleased that it seems to be a fix…and keeping my fingers crossed that I didn’t just jinx it by writing this.

Overheard at the Deli Counter

Clerk: “Oh, your daughter is so cute”

Father: “Thanks.”

Clerk: “What’s her name?”

Father (proudly): “Aberdeen”

Clerk: “Oh, I used to live in Washington”

Father (blank stare, followed by nearly audible sniff): “Well it’s actually Scotland”

Me…walking away LMAO.

Springwise

Check out Springwise, “your daily fix of entrepreneurial ideas”….

Tour De Fat – Austin

Yesterday was the final Tour De Fat event for this year, in Austin.   I went last year but this was my first time riding the parade.   I hung out mostly behind one of the mobile sound bikes.  With the tunes and the bells and the yelling…it was pretty loud for a bike ride.  Highly recommended.

Lots more pics over here.

Die Smart Location Bar Die

Has the pesky Smart Location Bar from Firefox 3 and its seemingly random results got you down, bunky?

Head over to http://www.pcmech.com/article/firefox-3-disable-the-smart-location-bar-sort-of/ to put things more or less back to the good old days of FF 2.0.

Design A Bike Rack

Austin is also having a contest to design new bikeracks for downtown (idea evidently stolen from NYC, see my previous post).

Of note, the organizer said:

“We’re going to install plaques at the base of the sculptures that say ‘bike rack’ and take old junk bikes, paint them, and hook them up to the racks when they’re unveiled,”

So I suppose that means they are expecting less than obvious designs or else they figure us Austinites are just too dumb to figure out where to park our rides.

Black Star Co-op August Beer Social

Pictures from last Saturday’s social are at:

http://www.blackstar.coop/gallery/v/events/2008_beer_socials/album/

including this one…

David Byrne and NYC Bike Racks

Interesting read about David Byrne’s involvement and sponsorship of some artistic test racks for the NYC Bike Rack Design competition (hosted at WordPress, no less).

Four Reasons that $4 Gas is Probably Good for You

So, it’s a buck a reason:

1. That dinosaur juice won’t last forever.  Sure, there’s plenty of controversy about how long, and whether we’ve crested the supply curve.  But, sooner or later, it’s going to be all gone.  Have you seen any dinosaurs lately?
2. Your environment.  Burning oil’s not so hot for the old greenhouse gases, in case you just beamed in.  It’s time to invest in alternatives.
3. Your health.  The bike racks at my neighborhood grocery (not central city, but suburban, Tahoe-driving kinda ‘hood) were full this morning, I counted 15+ bikes.  And I saw lots of walkers too. Hats off!
4. Energy independence.  Maybe we can avoid invading any more sovereign countries on BS rationale.

Penny Farthing

Wow, I’d like to try this guy out:

Evidently it’s only available in the UK.