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mybearjana
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Name: Kevin
Birthday: 4/15/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: Getting to know my savior, and when I'm reading C. S. Lewis, getting to know my "saviour." I love to run, a passion which is overtaking my love of cars (irony?). Other than that, its reading, writing, drawing, and photography.
Expertise: to my shame, duct tape
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  onebeggar
Member Since:
12/7/2004
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| Night shifts could get expensive for me. I make more money on night shifts, and on weekends especially, but during downtime there's only two things to do: first, clean, and when there's no more to clean, Ebay. Well, I don't go straight for Ebay once everything is cleaned. Usually there's a little bit of time where I Google things and obsess and dream about cameras and cars and camera accessories or play in google maps, etc, but ultimately the damage is done in Ebay.
As many of you know, I have a Minolta SLR (Okay, maybe you don't know that much about it, perhaps you only know that I have a camera, and perhaps more of you are going "oh, SLR=camera" right about now). What you may not know or be familiar with is that Minolta was absorbed by Sony, and to do anything more with that brand and that architecture, you've got to go through Sony and their Alpha line of digital cameras and accessories.
I've been an avid 35mm photographer for years now, done some weddings, engagements, and some pictures just of friends, and frankly, developing film is expensive! I'm shelling out as much as $5 to buy a roll and $12 more to get the photos from it, plus $5 or so to have the images burned to a CD, where they become most useful and transportable. Needless to say, I am desperate to acquire a Sony Alpha digital SLR. They are all quite cool, and basically the next step in furthering my photography. It would basically mean that it wouldn't cost me $20 per roll just to practice and find out what works best.
So how does Ebay come in? They have DEALS! And LENSES! And CAMERAS! And DEALS ON LENSES AND CAMERAS! And lenses are what I'll need when I break down and buy a Sony Alpha D-SLR, either a200 or a700....not sure yet which I should rationalize. I know what you're thinking, "Okay, that's loosely interconnected at best, plus you're rambling now, and stop assuming you know what I'm thinking, you haven't got it right at all...except that part."
What? Oh yeah, lenses. I'm trying to find me a good Maxxum 50mm f/1.7 or f/1.4 to do some portrait work with. Am currently the highest bidder on one, and NERVOUS AS HECK! What happens if I actually win it? I don't even know if my Paypal account is still active! I don't even remember how it works, either. I'm scared! Its not that I can't afford to win, I've been getting overtime every week for the past month and this week have a whole extra shift altogether, but is it tied to an account of mine or what? Help!
Yeah, I rambled. | | |
|  | Currently Listening
Pride & Prejudice
By Caroline Dale, Benjamin Wallfisch, William Lyons, English Chamber Orchestra, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Aidan Broadbridge
see related |
This is a vision of the Pequenino from Orson Scott Card's "Ender" universe. According to Card, they have pig-like faces, with horny pads on the insides of their thighs and ankles for climbing trees. Card, in writing, was able to render them in words without need of an image, and while my render may not be practical or true to his description or original vision, it is accurate of the characters that played out the story in my head as I read it.
Oh yes, I do draw terribly with a mouse, and I am embarrassed to tell how long this took to sketch in Paint Shop Pro 5. | | |
| The video card swap was a success! I'm now able to play my ancient racing games at 1280 x 1024 with 32 bit color. I know, I know, you've browsed on over to this page on your own 64 bit dual-core processor-packing notebook-o-doom, but I haven't the drive to plunk down money on a new machine just yet.
I tried moving the Sound Blaster card over, but the monster wouldn't have it. It booted once in safe mode and looked for the driver...no luck. So I booted it again in regular mode (mediocre mode) and was able to find its driver on the nets, but after I downloaded it, installed it, and rebooted again, the computer just made awful noises and no picture, so back went the sound blaster card into the other machine.
The machine was able to reboot well enough after I swapped the sound setup back, but I started experiencing a few more bugs related to memory. Even though there had been 768 MB on tap, the machine was having trouble loading TurboCAD V6, a program which ran fine with just 320 MB. I thought perhaps this was related to the new RAM not getting along with the old RAM, so I reversed that mod and went to my original setup with the original chips. It ran fine. So I tried supplementing the 256 MB and the 64 MB with one of the extra 256 MB chips, and it still ran fine. I guess I'm married to that 64 MB chip for some reason. Oh well.
The heat sink fans on my old CPU are seized up it seems; there are two of them. If the heat sink on Elise's compy is in good working order I'll salvage that one, though I recall it being very noisy, almost as noisy as mine were before they quit. I may just swap the whole CPU, however, as I believe my 750 MHz is one of the slower K7s which were offered at 700, 750, 800, 900 and 1000 MHz... 3 out of 5 chance of improvement! | | |
| I have recently inherited a large flat screen monitor from my brother Matt and an older computer from my Elise and there is general excitement and fidgeting over here in my laboratory (pronounced lu-bore-uh-tor-ee). The townspeople go on about their daily lives unaware that the mad doctor on the hill is studying away and scheming and putting plans itno motion. The new old computer, I have discovered, is only marginally less obsolete than the computer I already had, but operates on Windows XP rather than Windows 98 as does my old machine. It has a greater amount of memory, but no capacity for expansion, a 64 Mb graphics card compared to my 32 Mb, and a really spiffy Soundblaster, of which I know nothing. Same processor for both: AMD K7 Athlon.
So, instead of maintaining two mediocre old machines, what do you think I'm doing? If your guess has anything to do with Dr. Frankenstien or his monster, you're right on.
First, I set up the monitor to work with either machine to make sure there won't be any problems with either. I haven't the least idea what I'm doing, you understand. All that studying I mentioned above? yeah, it amounts to a single phone calls to Elise to find out what kind of graphics card her computer might have had and what kind of memory (not that I would know what to do with the answer to either question). Her answer was "Honestly, I don't know, its all second or third hand anyway." Perfect.
After deciding that my older motherboard has the greater potential, I have consolidated the three largest chunks of memory there, filling its three slots and giving me 768 Mb on a machine that originally came with 64. I haven't the least idea whether these 256 Mb units were intended for use with each other or with my motherboard, or what the diference might be, but I think the computer has finally sorted itself out after that surgery. I'm not sure if Windows 98 was ever intended to work with this amount of RAM. "How much gig does it have?" Three quarters, baby.
Already I am seeing an improvement of sorts. The DVD drive which spazzed out in 2001 and began to open and close itself all on its own? Back then I simply unplugged it's power and data cables and let it stay in its useless socket on the front of the case. On a whim I plugged it back in and it is behaving now. However, it still doesn't play DVDs, primarily because I uninstalled the pointless DVD-playing software shortly after disconnecting the drive's power.
Next, I intend to swap out my old 32 Mb GeForce 2 MX for the mystery unit bearing the number "64," and a more dangerous-looking heat-sink, which is about all I need to know about it. I haven't an instalation manual nor driver disk nor any such cowardly aides. My plan is to jump in and swap it out and stumble through in safe mode until something clicks or Windows connects to the internet and finds the driver on its own or something. I'll keep you posted. | | |
| Okay, so nobody's given me a Sony Alpha A100 D-SLR yet, but its only 7:15. I was originally scheduled to work today, but I was 'flexed,' that is, there were few enough patients and more than enough staff, so they start calling folks to tell them they aren't needed today..yadda yadda yadda. So, despite having also crashed last night, I also slept in this morning, which was heavenly.
When I woke there were five missed called on the cell phone all from the previous night and that explains the dream I had about the firefly buzzing around my bed. But what about when the firefly was talking to me? I returned the calls (they were all from Elise Beddingfield, whom I adore), and found that I had apparently answered one of the calls in my sleep but was unable to find the headset attatched to my phone. So it was chirping away in a tiny distant voice and there I was going "...hello? hello?" in my dream. Apparently it was amusing because Elise was laughing.
There, I started writing this at 7:15 and gosh knows what time it is now that you're reading it. So, I've given you all ample time to open another tab and browse over to Arlington Camera and order me a Sony Alpha A100 D-SLR. They may be out of them, but I don't mind if you upgrade me to the A700.
Merry Christmas! | | |
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