There seems to be lots of Michael Jackson music on the radio today – can’t think why.

EDIT

Primary school – Caroline in my class had a MJ bag, the design was the cover of the Bad album. I think I teased her about him being a bit rubbish. I’m not entirely sure I knew who he was…

New Year one year – me and Ding playing with playmobile; our storyline revolved around Sam, the one black playmobile person we had, and although only about 8 and 6 we’d spotted the contradiction in a singer singing “It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white” whilst he changed his skin colour. Teresa (friend of family) had wandered upstairs rather worse for wear to the landing where we were playing and tried to explain to us that it really was very sad he was mentally ill and we shouldn’t make fun. Then she wandered into the bathroom to be sick. I don’t think Ding or myself really took on board what she was saying.

Primary school disco – got dared by Claire et al. to dance with John, and claimed I did, but danced to Heal the World, which as you know is danced with the entire hall of 10 year olds standing in rows separately waving their arms in the air. Standing next to someone counts as dancing with them…

Boyzone vs MJ – Ding marrying Stephen Gately, Tols marrying Michael Jackson.

Secondary school – had a fight with certain persons on the bus, they broke my bag. I got off the bus and wandered miserably into the newsagents while waiting for my next bus where the song playing was “You are not alone”, which cheered me up.

So I guess he had some effect on my life; certainly involved in some of my memories. I was never a particular fan, but I liked some of his music and feel sorry he was a victim of the people around him since childhood and of his own success. I get the feeling he was an innocent.

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

John W. Gardner

Hai! I is calling you from my new bling bling putta (which I has been using for long time now but too lazy to blog). I will eventually take a photo of it but for now cannot be bothered. Suffice to say in appearance it looks like this: link to galaxy case image but the clear side wall blue LED fan has been replaced with the Akasa rainbow LED fan I mentioned probably in Trigger part 1 or somink. As I has possibly mentioned, I did not buy it for it’s bling bling-ness (the LED lit bubble tubes are devine, I’m sure) but I rather like it’s overt display of cheap colour. I did good things too – like the fans are proper organised with a 12cm Akasa silent exhaust, the LED rainbow blasting the mobo and an additional silent Akasa 8cm behind the front panel acting as inlet for the harddrive (as I figured the LED fan in the middle of the side would benefit from a nudge over the hdd. I love it – I pieced it together, stuck the vista OS into the new cd drive (which sounds a little like I have a set of dwarf miners* living under my desk, but hey, it is a £20 LG) and bada-bling-bada-boom, I’m done. New swish PC. 500GB HDD, 2GB memory (with another 2GB in a box if I feel like sticking it in), 1GB NVidia graphics, 2.5GHz dual core Intel Pentium processor, 19inch widescreen, 22x (LG) DVD-RW – lurvely.

Currently I am reliving my addicition to budget games, which is perhaps fueling my purchasing of their modern versions – i.e. loving Settlers 3 (though currently in a slow battle with the Egyptians which is taking bloody ages) and thus what to buy Settlers 4 and/or Settlers: Rise of the Empire, mostly because they have gorgeous graphics. Saw a game of the genre they** call “managerial” which had amazing graphics of a city scape fading in to the backrgound while I was trawelling forums trying to get Dungeon Keeper II to work, but can’t remember what it was called… Ah! My History saves me – Age of Empires III – check this out - amazering. *wants*

Slightly sozzled, was trying to read this about the whole “Five golden rings” actually being about ring-necked pheasants and finding the whole pheasant-peasant dicotomy a problem…

I keep writing like a lolcat.

Bai!

*miners than mine for dwarf – an elusive substance, or so I am told. Comes in red and snow white forms, with the latter found in clusters of 7 while the former is found on it’s own, rarely near centres of human civilisation.

**Abandonia

I sometimes wonder if I should be allowed to build my own PC. I assembled it today to work out that the old graphics card is AGP, whereas the new slots are PCI-e. So back online to Dabs to buy more goodies, and since my optical drive was designed for a flappy fronted case and is unprotected in my new case (which looks lush incidently, for all it’s daft bling bling LEDs) I thought I’d pop a new one of them in my basket too. Plus a couple of fans for this new build and Dad’s ancient fan heater tower. And an I/O sheild from ebay (Netherlands, no less) because warranty repaired motherboard didn’t come with one.

The card reader, tablet mouse and keyboard are still original. The fact that the old computer itself now has almost enough of it’s original components it can run complete (keyboard and mouse for around a tenner in Tescos if I wanted, and it never used the card reader anyway…) perhaps means I should consider this re-build… a build…

It’s still more fun than buying. Though I do feel I should write a “Girl Tips for Building Computers” page.

I want a new hard drive.

Hmm – I’ll need a new OS for the hard drive – XP is so 2007 and was preinstalled anyway *curse preinstalled*

I’ll get some new memory to support this new OS. Too much for the OS in retrospect (Vista 32bit can’t use more than 3GB, I have 4GB…)

Whoops – motherboard is too old for the new memory (and indeed, the new drive). I’ll get a new motherboard.

Ah – the old celeron won’t fit the new motherboard – better get a new processor.

Oooo shiny – I need a 19 inch widescreen monitor – my 15inch just isn’t big enough. Better yet, I can have a mini swordfish moment and use both…

Bugger – new motherboard doesn’t fit into case (they come in different sizes?!). Can’t return board as it’s OEM – will have to get a new case.

New case for £23, or new case AND 450W PSU (power supply) £30… better get a new PSU. It’ll have SATA cables at least.

…..

Assuming the saga ends there (case + PSU arriving in a few days) the only orginal components will be the DVD writer (primarily used for installing games – that’s about it), the card reader (hasn’t worked for years – suspect USB not powered since last upgrade) and floppy drive (…does anyone use these? I don’t even know if it works). I found a floppy disc a few days ago – Dogz 1 – I’m only keeping it for sentimental value. Having said that, the Dogz 1 floppy was sitting on top of a 5″ floppy from our old BBC computer, so it’s obviously a trait I repeat.

Oh and my lovely 512MB NVidia card, assuming it’s old PCI-e works in the new motherboard (Google says it will work – seems a bit of a wonky bodge job to me but we’ll see).

PS it’s still cheaper and more fun than buying a readymade!

“I’ve maintained it for 20 years. This old broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time.“ - Trigger, Only Fools And Horses.

In my cleverness and advanced ability to confuse myself, I managed to buy the wrong RAM (DDR2 instead of DDR) and forgot to get the required IDE-to-SATA cable for the hard drive. And of course no new HDD means no new OS. The rainbow LED fan looks and works brilliantly though!

And so I was faced with a decision. Return my new memory and a small DDR memory for more money – being that DDR doesn’t come in big sizes (hence the invention of DDR2) and that DDR costs more as DDR2 has a larger market, or, buy a new motherboard that can support DDR2.

I decided to get a new motherboard. Having to drop to 2GB RAM and paying more than twice as much for it did not appeal, and motherboards are pretty cheap. However, my processor is also old. So old, there are very few motherboards available that have the right socket. So – new processor it is.

While I was there, I ordered a new monitor as well. Might as well go the whole hog.

So now on top of the prawn that arrived yesterday, I now also have a 19 inch widescreen monitor, a Intel Pentium Dual Core processor 2.5GHz and an ASUS Intel P35 motherboard on their way. Gosh – just as well I didn’t buy a whole new computer, eh!

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I have had the best evening – last night I dismantled the computer completely, trying to work out what processor socket the motherboard had. I put it back together again but didn’t test it. This evening I tried to boot it up and of course it failed to boot. All the fans came on merrily, but the hard drive was silent and the screen unresponsive. With the lovely rainbow LED fan it really was a case of “the lights are all on, but nobody’s home”.

I’ll spare you the tale of me trawling various teching for blondes sites trying to decipher where the failure was whilst having various partially functioning computer guts spread over the floor. Failure 1) was not plugging in the 12V power supply (a variation of “is it actually plugged in?”) and failure 2) was the heat sink of the CPU had got stuck to the processor with the thermal paste, and being that I’ve never played with CPUs before I wasn’t aware it wasn’t supposed to be dragged out by it’s heat sink and was in fact supposed to be a separate unit. Not being separate meant that when I put it back in, it wasn’t locked in and thus the processor was not in fact attached to the motherboard. Kinda explains the non-booting.

Some sticky-stuff remover and a fish knife later, and the processor was separate, rebedded in it’s socket, partially covered with manky old dry thermal paste that I attempted to reconstitute with the solvent and the computer reassembled. Again. I’ll need to add some new paste I think when I can get some – I’ll see if my new toys give me free goo. Mmmm – free goo…

And, apart from a bizarre complication that all the USB ports on the motherboard are now apparently not powered, whereas the extra ones on the front of the chassis are (this is the reverse situation to pre-disassemblement), the computer is up and running! I know there is info re: non-powered USB ports out there somewhere so gonna go a-goog’ling now.

So yeah – fab evening spent problems solving and Achieving! And yes, it is still achieving if you broke it in the first place. For example, now I know what thermal paste is and how to dissolve it. Miriad applications for that snippet of knowledge!

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Oh before I go, I must share this review from dabs. This is for a TFT monitor:

“Im in Jersey and it arrived within a couple of days.10/10
Unfortunately, silly me assumed it was a TV, so for all the woman out there that are as quick as me to buy something without looking into it, ive written this…then again if id really thought about, its not likely to get an LCD TV with DVD player for about £75..Derrr! More haste less speed next time!”

o.O Srsly? And I thought I had a stupid moment by ordering DDR2 ram instead of DDR. Now I know the full range of the stupidity of “all the woman” I consider myself practically a visionary. Did you hear the one about the blonde who went into a shop and asked to buy a TV?

I’ve spent the last few hours looking at prawn. I’m not ashamed to admit it – its perfectly normal! Even if it is more common in men.

I know, it’s shallow, but for me size does matter. I find it really hard to resist the big ones. In the end I’ve focused on large but not oversized, on the basis the giant ones will probably have to be replaced before they’ve reached their full potential. And to some extent I’ve got for brains over beauty – a good memory is essential.

At the last bit though I couldn’t resist the pointless and truly hedonistic spinning tassel display, though I did go for something for every day purposes as well.

So I put in a order for a 500GB 7200rpm Western Digital hard drive, Vista Home Premium, 4GB of RAM and two case fans – one silent and functional, one with rainbow coloured LEDs.

*argle*

This evening I (finally) got my Learn Italian CD out of the packet and in order to have it in the car to listen to tomorrow, imported it into iTunes and was just about to burn it to CD to take it in when I suddenly realised that that wasn’t strictly necessary since it came on CD to start with. The real irony is that I’ve been putting it off for so long because of the hassel* of importing and then burning.

Oh yes. Me clever. Me smart.

* “Hassel” n.
1. Norwegian chemist noted for his research on organic molecules (1897-1981)
2. A municipality in the district of Stendal, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

So far there are herbs (rosemary, sage, parsley, chives, lemon balm, mint, garlic*), onion*, spring onion*, strawberry, broad beans, mangetout*, normal tomatoes*, cherry tomatoes*, plum tomatoes, chilli*, leak*, carrots*, lettuce*, kale*, spinach beat*, radish*, beetroot*, and cabbage*, plus poppies*, dafs* (late bloomers – they had a difficult start to the year – they got knocked over by a plumber – the tulips and crocuses in the same pot haven’t bothered), marigolds* and sweet peas to keep the bugs down (marigolds specifically) and attract the bees. All the ones marked with * were grown from seed by me (or sets/cloves/bulbs in the case of onion, garlic and dafs)! Not bad for a garden that consists of around 4 troughs and 6 or so pots (as we are moving sooner or later I had to keep it neat – ripping up the lawn wasn’t an option apparently).

I’m kicking myself though because I just realised that I’ve lived 2 minute walk away from an allotment my entire life, and it has spaces. I emailed them recently and they have spaces for unfussy people (translated means they need a fair bit of work to be usable and are probably small) and it’s cheaper than I thought, but if I’m moving out this summer (or at least partially – my plan is to take over the student house I lived in, plus some lodgers if I can put up for them) taking on a plot is silly. Pah.

How Smart Are You?