Category: Journal

Not being a Mac owner, I don’t really feel the need to wax lyrical about every minute upgrade or new piece of software I get for my computer. (Unlike some! (o; ). However, this time I’m going to make an exception.

On Wednesday night I wanted to use Wave Studio – a piece of software that comes with Creative Labs’ Soundblaster audio cards. As it wasn’t installed, I had to find the disk (okay, Fliss found the disk) and then install it. By default the installation program installed a set of drivers for the sound card into the bargain – these were very old drivers, but I thought nothing of it. On that night, up until I shut the computer down, everything was fine and dandy.

Of course, replacement software drivers don’t always come into effect until you restart.

The following night when Fliss was using the machine it suddenly slowed to a crawl, and despite my best efforts to undo whatever I’d done, it looked like there was no going back with the aged sound card I had. It hasn’t worked very well with recent games like Battlefield 1942 and as it isn’t getting any younger I decided that replacing it would cure the ills of my PC.

Along to PC World I went – not a place of choice for an uber-geek like myself, but it’s all that’s available in my neck of the woods. I picked up an ultra cheap Philips sound card – only ?24.99 (?30 on the box for some reason) and waited until today to try it out. This is when I realised why I didn’t know Philips made sound cards. It sucked – that and it just would not install – and despite an hour and a half downloading the latest drivers, the sound card and the PC would not talk to one another.

I raced back to PC world just before closing time, primed for a confrontation as I prepared to berate a spotty teenage shop assistant into giving me a refund. What I found, however, was something quite different. I was served by a man who not only knew what he was doing, but gave me the full refund for the card (taking it off the Soundblaster Live! that I opted for) without question. I was in and out in less than five minutes.

Okay… this isn’t terribly exciting at all, unless you’re me, but it’s the first time I’ve spotted a “goof” on the imdb where I actually worked out that it wasn’t a goof.

For the movie Demolition Man the imdb lists as a goof that The “morality monitors” site all their violators by name. Each time Phoenix makes a violation, it just says “You are fined…”

But Pheonix wasn’t “chipped” like everyone else because he escaped from the cryo-prison facility. That meant that the morality monitors had no way of knowing his name. So the movie is actually completely correct.

Yay!

I’ve submitted the form to get them to correct this, and for some reason I’m quite pleased with myself. Granted it’s a film not to everyone’s taste, but it does feature Sandra Bullock looking exceptionally not bad and it’s set in the future, too. All good things by me! =o)

This weekend I’ve been all by myself as Fliss is up in Scotland hanging out with old friends at Millport.

It hasn’t been as dull as I thought it would be, mostly because I’ve kept myself occupied for much of the time. I spent most of Saturday during the day playing games – interrupted by a drive into the city where I changed my mind as the traffic got heavy and headed homeward in a puff of smoke. Literally.

On saturday evening I went to Cedrick’s place for games and movies which was quite entertaining. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the opener and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would – highly recommended and head and shoulders above Two Weeks Notice in the romcom stakes. Movie number two was Eight Legged Freaks – not something I can recommend if you’re returning to a cold and empty house afterwards.

As I was.

*gulp*

Somehow I managed to get to sleep okay, despite the occasional image of an Eight Legged Freak blinking into my minds eye. The hour lost as we leapt into British Summer Time really seems to have thrown me, though, and I’ve been jaded all day today.

I did make it into town, though – making the mental note that Sunday is definately the day to go in future, as parking was a breeze and there was much less traffic to contend with.

Training shoe shopping did not go as planned, sadly – there seems to be an absolute deluge of white, minimalist trainers available. All very nice if you’re a shell suit wearing scouser, but not really what I had in mind at all. Hence, training shoe shopping transformed itself into CD and game shopping before returning home to wash the car in order to give me some sense of accomplishment for the day.

Funny how we have to do the odd chore in order to excuse doing a whole lot of nothing! =o)