by Matt | May 21, 2003 | Imported Entry
Said three times for emphasis even. Life is busy at this point. Lots of graduation preparations. Everyone’s family is coming in to town, plans need to be made for driving back, trying to finish up classes, etc. I’ve more or less decided that I’m finished with classes. Not that I’m actually finished, I’ve just decided it. For both Fashion and Personal Vision II I just have to narrow down my favorites from this semester and get them printed in their final versions. For History of Media I have a project left to do this weekend that Chip has been kind enough to collaborate on. We’ll be working on that Saturday so look for it Sunday (maybe). Other than that I’ve been trying to come up with plans for gainful employment. Keith actually offered to get in contact with people he knows in Boston for me and ask about web design jobs. At this point, so long as the job is creatively oriented, I’ll take just about anything so long as it’s worthwhile.
Day to day wise, not much going on. Just classes and the usual. Today I went into class for a mini-crit to narrow down my portfolio selection and then came home. Lauren came home around 6:00 and we went to the mall so she could find a dress for graduation. I have a funny story about retards in Learner NY to share at a later date.
Thats about it. Just trying to keep sain… no word on whether or not it’s working yet… or has ever worked. Blah.
by Matt | May 19, 2003 | Imported Entry
Hey kids, check out the toolbar I had a hand in making…
I didn’t do much, just a little editing to help out someone on DT2, but I got a nod in the readme. Check out the post here, download Y’z Toolbar here and the custom toolbar here. Enjoy.
by Matt | May 18, 2003 | Games, Movies, Reviews
After seeing the Matrix the other day, I was left with a rather unfulfilled feeling deep down in my movie-reviewing heart. Disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow and getting indigestion afterward doesn’t help. This indigestion comes in the form of Enter the Matrix the video game which I’ll get to later. First I’d like to talk about the movie. Since I plan to do this at length, a convenient “read more” link is provided to ease the pain of an incredibly long post.
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by Matt | May 17, 2003 | Imported Entry
First off, we saw the Matrix this afternoon. Not bad, not fantastic either. Believe it or not, I think playing the video game is helping to fill in some of the “what the fuck?” kinds of questions. There were a few bothersome things in this flick which I will address tomorrow in a full on review. For the moment let’s just say that since I stuck around to see the Matrix:Revolution trailer at the end of the credits, I’m more excited about that movie then the movie I just saw. More later.
Anyway, after the movie we came home and I started putting Brittney’s computer together… again. If you’ll remember, a while ago I was putting it together for her but we ran into some extreme difficulty with the motherboard. Can I just say that I’m now completely impressed with Abit. Asus can kiss my ass, my next board will be an Abit. After our failed attempt with the A7N8X-Deluxe, we decided to give the Abit NF7-S a shot. Not only did it boot on the first try, but it was the easiest motherboard I’ve ever worked with. Everything was labeled on the board, I didn’t even have to look at the manual, but if I had needed to it was well over 100 pages. It documented everything. Every single jumper had a complete diagram and full page explanation of what it did or would/wouldn’t do if set in any combination of ways. It even has wonderful little features that don’t become apparent until you really take a look. For example, everyone has those little “eject clips” on their RAM slots, but how about one for your AGP slot? Cool hun. It also doubles as an anti-movement card saver in case you’re moving your rig all over the place (*cough* lan parties *cough*). The BIOS was also the most friendly, non-pain-in-my-ass system I’ve ever seen. It’s an over-clockers dream as well. Complete explanations for every setting and a “smart” CPU menu that helps out and recommends FSB and multiplier settings based on what your changing.
So, now that I’ve sung the praises of that motherboard, back to the install. At the moment, everything is back in and assembled. At this point, it boots to the XP loading screen, blue-screens and give an 0x07b STOP error. When you look it up in the MS knowledge base, this is what you get:
“SYMPTOMS:
After you move the system (boot) disk to a backup computer, you may receive the following Stop error when you try to start the Windows-based backup computer:
STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF741B84C,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE”
Yup, that’s what I got…
“CAUSE
This error can occur if the registry entries and drivers for the mass storage controller hardware in the backup computer are not installed in Windows.
For integrated device electronics (IDE) controllers, there are several different chip sets available, such as Intel, VIA, and Promise. Each chip set has a different Plug-n-Play identifier (PnP-ID).
The PnP-ID information of mass storage controllers for the backup computer must be in the registry before startup so that Windows can initialize the correct drivers”
Ok, that’s what I figured the problem was… so now what genius, how do I fix it?
“RESOLUTION
To resolve this error, follow these steps for system recovery:
-Use identical hardware for the backup computer.
-Replace the problem hardware components in the backup computer with components of the same manufacturer, make, and model as the components in the computer that you are backing up.
-If the system disk is a SCSI disk, use the same make and model of SCSI controller in the new computer.
-If the system disk is an IDE disk, use the same kind of motherboard in the new computer, a motherboard that has the same kind of IDE chip set and the same PnP-ID as the motherboard in the computer that you are backing up.”
Ummm… what kind of advice is that? Sure, I just happen to have a spare computer with the exact same parts in it sitting right over here. If it’s IDE, use the same motherboard? What if I’m upgrading you numb-nuts? I didn’t figure that this advice was really intended for an upgrader. More likely it’s for someone trying to recover after a meltdown. At least it’s pointing me in a good direction. I figure I good solid reformat should do the trick. That’ll be on tomorrow’s agenda. After I find a boot-floppy that is. Oh well. At least it’s booting, which is more that it was doing last time.
And with that, I retire for the evening.
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