Will Slusher.net

Like the title said, it’s been a bad week for my laptops…

About a week ago, my iBook started acting up. Basically, I would go to use it and find that it was completely frozen… the screen was on and displaying, but the mouse pointer was gone and nothing would respond. It started off doing this once a day, but quickly moved on to within 5 minutes of booting up…

I tried both the disk utility and the hardware diagnostics on the install DVDs, but neither turned up anything… at first… Eventually things got to the point where the laptop wouldn’t even boot to the installed OS… at that point I booted from the DVD again… This time disk utility couldn’t even recognize the volume label of my drive… and when I tried to erase the disk, I got an error…

Being the adventurous sort that I am, I ordered a new hard drive and installed it… I thought at first that had resolved the problem. I was able to boot, install OS X 10.4, and even a couple apps… then, just as I was sending an “woo-hoo!” IM to Kris, BAM! it froze again…

Sooooo, what I ended up doing was putting BACK the stock hard drive… and removing the bluetooth module I added a month or so ago, and then took the iBook to the Apple Store in Richmond for warranty service… The agreed with my assessment that it’s probably a failing logic board… Now, I just hope they don’t notice/complain too much about the fact that I’ve taken the thing apart about 10 times… :)

Sigh… So, while I was going crazy with that, I figured I could at least use my old Dell laptop to get me through… So, while using that, trying to look up info to diagnose the iBook… BAM! the thing powers off… I reboot and it comes up and hangs… I power it off again and, sadly, it never powers on again…

From what I can tell, that hard drive died as well and somehow shorted/killed the laptop’s power supply… I pulled the drive and tried it in my desktop, but whenever I would hook it up, the powersupply in the desktop would immediatly kick off…

And so, while the ibook is in the shop and the Dell has been reduced to a rather expensive door stop, I’m back to using my ancient, Compaq, Pentium 133MHz laptop…. which, quite surprisingly since it’s been loaned out a couple times, lived in the SAB ceiling for I don’t know how many tech/show weeks running the FYP web cam, had various beverages spilled on it, and who knows what else, still runs like a tank…

Ah well… :)

Holy crap… it’s been a long time since I posted anything in here… sorry about that… :) So much has been going on the last couple months that I don’t even know where to start…

Let’s see….

Kris and I went on a really great vacation with her family to the mountains of North Carolina… It was a lot of fun… we did some rafting, some fishing… learned the joys and frustrations of a double kayck… Did some really awesome hiking at Grandfather Mountain… all in all it was a really wonderful trip… There are some pics right here if you are interested. (Note: there are a lot of them, and, since they’re a mix of Kris’, Kris’ dad’s, Kris’ Mom’s and my cameras, there somehow ended up being a heck of a lot of pics of Kris’ brother Joey… :) )

After returning from that, Kris and I got to help my friend Dante out, by setting up the site for his engagement… That ended up being a lot of fun too and since Libby, of course, said yes, a pretty happy and exciting evening as well… Great big congrats to both of them…

Ummmm…. after that, things kinda got back to normal for a while… One big change at work is that I’m back to working full time with Psychiatric Medicine, rather than being split between Psych and the SOM Deans Office… I have to say, even though I really enjoyed working with the Deans Office, it’s very nice to be able to focus my efforts in just one place again…

Let’s see… I also took a little trip to the beach just after labor day with Scott, Matthew, Dante, and Doug… Work had been a little crazy leading up to that, so a nice long weekend was just what the doctor ordered… We spent some quality time on the beach (mostly just chillin’, though we did venture out in to the water one day… which was a lot of fun until a series of large waves decided to try and kill me… :) ). We also went out fishing one afternoon on a head boat and managed to catch enough for our dinner… We also probably played far to much Xbox and ate out far too much… but hey, what are vacations for… :)

This month has turned into the month of concerts… First off, Kris and I had tix to see Carbon Leaf at the C’ville Pavilion. That was, of course, awesome, although I think I like it when they play Starr Hill a little better… Even though there’s more space at the Pavillion, I think the smaller, more intimate space just helps build the excitement… or something…

Next came the spectacular Rolling Stones concert at Scott Stadium… What can I say about that except holy FUCK that was awesome… I mean, hell, even with an hour delay in the middle because some moron thought it would be funny to call in a bomb threat, that was still, by far, the most amazing concert I’ve been too… I don’t care how old they are, those guys can still rock… and the set and lights (and PYROS!) for this tour are incredible…

Finally, Kris and I have tix to see Jason Mraz tonight at the Pavillion… luckilly, we happened to check the date, ’cause we were both thinking it was tomorrow… :)

Ah well, I think that just about catches us up on big events… Next week begins Tech Week for FYP, so I don’t know if I’ll get to post much then… I do have some more to write about some geek things (new plans for my car pc, bad news about my various laptops), but I’m saving those of a separate post…

Let’s just hope I can get back into the swing of writing again… :)