David Pisarek’s blog

Yet again, my dad is having computer problems…

On a side note, I should really have a t-shirt with the superman logo on it.

Apparently, unbeknown to me, the computer at his office has been acting up. Every few minutes/hours/days (it’s somewhat random) the computer screen would just go solid black for a fraction of a second, and then back to normal. So it was workable, but annoying. Then, out of nowhere the screen would just get these totally random pixelated messy blocks and stay like that. It would be completely locked up.

The computer has an Asus P5PE-VM motherboard, which has on-board video.

I remembered that I had an old-ish (but brand new) motherboard and CPU in the basement, so I grabbed them, popped them in, but they were the wrong type, so the CPU fan didn’t fit.

So I decided that I would boot up in safe-mode, and run some diagnostic burn-in software to see if there were any errors that came up. It ran flawlessly for 90-minutes. I thought that maybe it was just luck, so I booted up into Windows normally, ran the software, and within 5-minutes - BAM - locked up and frozen.

That to me sounded like it was a driver problem. So, I upgraded the video drivers, windows updates, etc, etc. Nothing helped!

My next thought was to put in an AGP or PCI video card, and disable the on-board one.

So I found an old 16MB Voodoo 3D card that I had lying around. Popped it in, got into the BIOS, disabled the on-board video, and voila - no black flickering, no crazy mess of video displaying.

Outstanding!

Until…

The computer just totally locked up… out of nowhere.

Now it makes sense… it had to have been the RAM. You see, on-board video cards use a fraction of the RAM to run.

So off into the BIOS I go, play around with the timing, and whatnot, but no dice… the computer was still locking up.

I called Tom to see if he had any RAM kicking around - he wasn’t home but thought he did. A few hours passed, I’m playing around with other settings, cooling, but nothing worked.

Finally, I remembered that I had some old RAM. At least I thought I did. I spent about 30-minutes looking for it, and then I found them. I had 5 “older” sticks - 4x 512MB, and 1x 256MB. I remembered though that one of them was BAD… but why would I have labeled them? Why would I have kept bad RAM in the first place? I have some kind of nasty need to retain old computer junk for no good reason - well… in this instance (for the RAM) it was no good reason, but it was a good thing I had the video card.

So I pop in the first one, I run memtest-86 on it… after 35-minutes it found an error. This goes on for all the RAM. EACH FRIGGEN STICK IS BUSTED!

Why would I have kept bad RAM? What is wrong with me?

Anyways, going to pick-up new RAM tomorrow, and we’ll see what happens… hopefully that’s the end of it.

The 5-sticks of dead ram...

I’ve been debating switching over to Rogers for about 3 years. I’ve called in several times to see what they could offer me, and nothing has been able to beat my Bell plan.

Over the last week or so, I decided to start calling in to sign up and port my number from Bell to Rogers, so that I can take advantage of the 6GB data plan for $30 before it expired on October 6th.

After calling about 15 times to different reps, and about seven-hours on the phone I finally got a CSR that was able to come pretty close to the Bell plan that I’m on with my HTC Touch. This was yesterday evening - I was getting anxious as it was getting pretty close to October 6th!I had to leave to meet up with some friends, so the CSR said that he would call me today around 5 p.m. to go over the plan details that he was going to work out for me. He said that he was going to spend about an hour trying to come up with the best plan that he could for me. Since I didn’t already have a mobile phone with Rogers, he was having a difficult time, because apparently he needed to create a mobile phone on my account to play around with all the pricing and plan details. That’s where we parted, and I was a bit concerned that he wasn’t going to call me. He was really nice and seemed quite knowledgeable. I was pleased that I finally got a CSR that was willing to help me get something as close to the plan that I have now.

5:45 p.m. came and I hadn’t heard anything from him. So I called Rogers, and after about 20-minutes of listening to bad music I got to speak with a rep. I let her know that I was looking for the person that I spoke with yesterday. I was told that he was in meetings or something, and that they would pass a note on to him to let him know to give me a call.

At 7:14 p.m. I got a call from a really friendly rep saying that the person I spoke with yesterday wasn’t at work today, but that he left the notes that he wrote down for her to follow-up with me. 104-minutes later all of the documentation and plan details were worked out.

So, despite the early termination fee I need to pay Bell, I’ve taken the plunge and have started the process to port my mobile number to Rogers.

Now it’s just a waiting game. The iPhone’s are out of stock, and when they get their next shipment they’re going to ship one to me.

I’m hoping that my Bell cell doesn’t get disabled before I get the new phone - I’m not too sure how the whole porting actually works when a phone is OOS.

I’m also a bit skeptical of the billing - I’m somewhat concerned that all the discounts and bonuses that were applied to the new activation aren’t going to actually be on the account. Having said that, the CSR that I just dealt with said that she’s going to be following-up on my account in a few days to make sure that everything is going ok with the porting, and that if I don’t have the new phone within a week she’ll be calling me to let me know what the status is.

Kudos to the CSR’s for stepping up, and offering me an outstanding plan. The closest plan that I was able to get up until this point was about $30/mo more, once you factor in taxes.

Once everything is settled, and the billing is all proper, I’ll post the full plan details. For now, I’ll leave you with this… the plan has more features that I have with Bell, and is only going to run me $5 to $9 more a month - that is… if everything goes according to plan and the billing isn’t messed up!

Well… I have yet to receive them…  I just called Wyeth and told them… they apologized and said that they were going to send me out some more…  ya… we’ll see about that!  I’m hoping that they do….

Ever since I can remember I’ve had problems with the mechanism within Chapsticks. It’s not something that I’m doing, and it’s not something that has affected each one I’ve bought. I’d rather suggest that maybe it’s one of every 4 that I buy.

What the problem? At some point the mechanism just stops working. When I twist it, the stick doesn’t move. It’s just… well… inside and there’s no method for getting at it. Other times - and this is my own doing - I would leave the stick up, and when I put the cap back on, it squishes the stick and it’s on the inside of the lid and around the rim part. Needless to say, a complete waste of a product that I love.

About 2 months ago I bought a new Chapstick - mmm… strawberry flavor. I’m usually pretty careful with them. I always make sure that the stick is inside the tube so that I don’t waste any on the cap. About 2 weeks ago, I went to use it, and nearly the entire cap was full of the stick, and the mechanism wasn’t working.

So, at this point, you’re probably wondering… “well… you’re messed up… who cares? They’re only a about $2… go buy a new one.”

I care! I care so much, that I called Wyeth (the makers of Chapstick) to let them know that there seems to be a pretty high rate of failure (about 20%) with the ones that I buy. They apologized, got my information, asked for the lot number (printed on the bottom of the tube) and said that they’re going to send me three or four replacements. I imagine that I’ll have them within a weeks time.
I wasn’t looking to get free replacements - although I’m pleased that they are. I just wanted them to know that there’s a problem with the technicals of the mechanism, and maybe they should look at modifying it. Perhaps a thicker thread might do the trick.

I’m certainly willing to buy a new one. I even let them know that. I like the product so I’ll continue to use it, despite the manufacturing flaw.

Anyways, thought you might want to know. If you have a problem with a product, it never hurts to let the company know.

Kudos Wyeth…

Well, we had our first major snow storm since moving into the house. The forecasters were calling for about 8-10cm on Friday, 15-20cm on Saturday, and another 5-10cm on Sunday.

It snowed Friday night, I shoveled on Saturday. It snowed nearly all day Saturday, and then Rosalee and I shoveled for about an hour on Sunday. We had about 20inches of snow to shovel on Sunday - yes… 20inches! That’s not including what I did on Saturday!

Here’s the evidence.