by Matt | Nov 27, 2004 | Imported Entry
3 guesses at what doesn’t work.
And all three of them are “graphics card”
Yeah. Oh… I’m pleased as punch. Because sending back a dead card and waiting another week to get another one is just what I wanted.
As I went to install it, I noticed the fan and heatsink were a little “wiggly”. I didn’t think anything of it, most things have a little give in them. So, the card installs fine, the drivers load up, everything is cool. I fire up Battlefield… blank screen with music running before the system hangs. Reboot. It gets to the windows logon on screen. I logon and *bam*, black screen. Ok, must be a driver problem. I boot in safe mode, reinstall old drivers. Nothing. I do this five or six times. Nothing. Then I start thinking it’s lack of power. I have a 400W (it only needs 350W) but I start unplugging everything else. Nothing. Then I take the card out and look at it…. the heatsink and fan AREN’T ATTACHED to the GPU! They’re just kind of hanging there. I’m surprised there wasn’t smoke. They’re loose, floppy, unattached. The sticky part of the thermal pad had obviously become unsticky and wasn’t holding the heatsink/fan on, and when you turned it upside down, gravity was pulling the fan away from the chip.
I considered squirting some Arctic Silver in there, but you know what, this really isn’t something I should have to waste good paste on. That and they’d think I modded it or something if I didn’t work and I tried to return it.
So, on Monday, back it goes. And I’ll be waiting for a replacement.
*sigh*
by Matt | Nov 26, 2004 | Culture
Well, NewEgg does it again. Not only did they process my order quicker than lightning, they also shipped it on Thanksgiving and I have it in my hands at this very moment. Wow. I’m impressed.
So, tonight will be upgrade night. I’ll take the GeForce 4 out and stick in my shiny new 6600GT. I’ll probably put the GeForce 4 into Lauren’s computer so I can use it as a “camera” to record BF1942 games or maybe I’ll stick it in the old computer and find a cheap hard drive to put in there, put it in the entertainment center and load all my NeoGeo, Nintento and Arcade roms onto it. Who knows.
Lauren’s brother is also supposed to come over tonight. After my upgrade we’ll fire up some system-linked Halo 2 and order a pizza or something.
Should be fun.
In non-game related news, this weekend is the Texas Teen pageant. I’ll be stuck working that all day tomorrow and half the day on Sunday. I’m sure that’ll suck.
Turkey Day was also tasty down here in Texas. The biggest difference is the lack of brown gravy. Everything is white gravy around here, and I’m not touching that stuff. Typically I’d make up a plate with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and a few odd side dishes and then cover the whole things in brown gravy. Alas, there was none to be found… but Lauren’s uncle does make a mean Cajun Fried turkey, so that kind of makes up for it. Who would want to put gravy on spicy Cajun goodness anyway?
I hope everyone had a nice break and a restful long weekend. Cheers!
by Matt | Nov 23, 2004 | Imported Entry
No one EVER order anything from Buy.com. Screw’em. If they treat their customers like this they deserve to be beaten into submission by stronger more customer oriented businesses like NewEgg.
I ordered my new graphics card yesterday at about 8am. The order was accepted, processed and my card was charged by about noon. I paid extra to have it shipped “next morning” because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get it over the holiday weekend. So, I check my tracking this morning and it says “sent to warehouse”. I found that a bit odd and not finding a satisfactory answer on their website I decided to call them. First off, the guy spoke NO english whatsoever, which while I’m not holding it against him, would have certainly made the process a bit smoother. Apparently “sent to warehouse” is secret asshat code lingo for “out of stock”. I said that their website said it was in stock when I ordered it. The reply I received was something along the lines of “Da website, it diz upgraded once daily to be updated. Sold out before updated it might have been…”
*blink*
Who the fuck is this guy? Yoda? That’s horse shit. At this day in age, you’re telling me that they can’t have an up to date inventory system? Bullshit they can’t. They’re fucking lazy more likely.
So, of course my options were to wait for it to be restocked or to cancel my order. 3 guesses what I chose…
So, I’ll be wait the 10 DAYS (!!!) for my refund so that I can order it from NewEgg. That, again, is horse shit. What sort of banking system do these morons use? 10 Days? Shit, personal checks clear in less. Seriously. I could write a personal check, mail it to someone, have them deposit it and SPEND it in 10 days.
They said the order cancellation itself could take 1-2 business days… which means NEXT MONDAY before the 10 days start.
I’m livid (in case you couldn’t tell).
I’m NEVER ordering from those fucks again. It’s NewEgg all the way baby. Not only do they have a normal inventory system, but 99% of my orders from them shipped out the same day AND got to me early.
The ONLY reason I didn’t order it from NewEgg is because they were out of stock. So… the single reason I chose Buy.com is because they said it was in fact in stock.
Oh, the irony.
by Matt | Nov 21, 2004 | Culture
Ok, I said I’d tell you the longer version, and here goes. About mid-morning yesterday I fire up Thunderbird to check my mail. I typically leave it open most of the day since TB has a nifty little tray-notifier when I get new mail. Well, around noon the thing starts going nuts. Mail is pouring in and its comment notifications from my journal. Of course they’re all spam. I look down at the bottom of the email expecting to click on my MT-Blacklist link and ban the sucker. The link isn’t there. No problem, I’ll just do it manually from the website. Open my browser and I can’t get to the page. Not good. So then I try my main MT control panel. Can’t get that either. Panic starts to spread. I figure maybe someone’s hacked the MT install to make my life miserable by sticking in as many comment spams as possible to raise the rank of their zoo animal sex site. So, as a last resort I fire up my FTP program. I figure maybe I can reset things manually. FTP can’t connect. More panic. I email Chip.
Thankfully the problem with the FTP is that we’ve moved over to something more secure. So, crisis averted but my Movable Type install is still messed up. Well, since I didn’t have a local copy of a 2.x install I had to download 3.1 from the website. That also means that I had to upgrade MT-B as well. After some fooling I got it to install and fix whatever problem it was having. After that I installed the new version of Blacklist and at the moment everything is going nicely. It’s a temporary fix but it’ll do the job. So, I’ve activated MT-B as well as comments again and I’ve turned off TypeKey authorization, so people can comment freely without having to create an account, BUT I set it up to not allow comments on entries older than 14 days as well as comment moderation. This is only temporary. Once everyone comments on something (hint, do it now please) I’ll be able to “allow” your comment which will be remembered by MT. So, the next time you make a comment it should go strait in. I’ve also told MT to delete comments I don’t moderate, so, the spam will just sit in the pending box for a few days before being deleted.
It was kind of the long way around, but I’m glad I actually upgraded. My worry about the whole TypeKey thing was a bit much considering you can turn it off and there are quite a few more options to deal with comments when you do. So, it’s all good.
In other news, I had quite a surprise from work. A nice little bonus to specifically buy a new graphics card. A big thanks to my boss for being so cool. The only problem is that the card I want is out of stock at NewEgg. 🙁
I’d like a XFX GeForce 6600GT AGP. They have plenty of the PCI-express versions, but since I loath PCI video cards in the first place AND to use a PCI-E card I’ve have to get a new mobo and power supply, I don’t think that’s going to happen. AGP please.
The reviews on the card are solid. It beats the ever living crap out of a 9800 Pro and is dead even with a X700. Since I don’t have $400 for a 6800GT, this little screamer will have to do. Not a bad card for $220. The only thing is that I haven’t heard anything about the brand name: XFX. As far as I know, that card is 100% a Nvidia reference card, which isn’t saying its bad, it’s just been re-branded.
I’d really like Gainward or BFG or VisionTek to come out with a 6600 AGP card. I’d be all over that like white on rice. Who knows, maybe by the time NewEgg has it back in stock they’ll be more than one 6600GT AGP card on the market. We’ll see. I can’t wait to get it and fire up HL2. Yeah babe!
by Matt | Nov 21, 2004 | Culture
Hey, quick update guys. If you tried to access this page yesterday you more than likely were treated to a “I fux’ed things up” temporary page. Well, the site is back up, but the comments are not. I’ll give you more details later but basically in order to fix the problem I had to upgrade MT-Blacklist to 2.x, which meant I had to upgrade MT to 3.1. Since MT3 uses an optional comment registration system, I turned that ON and turned OFF the actual part that does the authenticating. So… you have to be registered to leave a comment… which you can’t be, because I turned it off.
So, all this has forced my hand at a redesign and I’ll be working on that this afternoon. This site should look completely different by the end of next week (or mid-week there-after if I’m too busy over Thanksgiving).
Just an FYI.
Journal = working
Comments = off
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