Dec 31 2007

Happy New Years

Published by at 12:32 pm under Personal,Site

Well, tomorrow brings about a new year and to be honest, I feel like crap. For the past few days, I’ve felt like I’ve been struck by a cold, and this morning it finally hit. I can’t stop blowing my poor red nose!

It’s been a long time since I became sick. I just hope this is a regular cold and nothing serious.

My new Dell PC arrived this week and I set it and my new router up. I seem to have gotten things working just fine. Man, Vista is quite a change. Things are moved around… it’ll take me a while to get used to it all.

Here’s a tech question you Ogre & Railwolf. When you have keys on the keyboard depressed when you begin booting up your PC, what happens? My old dell made a hell of a screaching sound this morning and I’m wondering if it had anything to do with a pad of paper pressing down the directional arrows. I hope that’s all it is and not a sign of serious problems. I would hate to have big problems with the old unit.

Speaking of keyboards, I’m using two new ones. My old Dell is using a new Microsoft keyboard I bought on Newegg, while my new Dell is using the new Dell keyboard. Not only do I have two different keyboards, but I’m using two different mice… this is quite a balancing act – going from PC to PC. It’s strange. I’ll have to adapt to the differences in the keyboards and mice, but I seem to be doing a decent job thus far.

The new Dell LCD blows me away. It’s huge (20″) and way too bright. I wish there was as website which offered suggested settings, but I’ll have to go with the ones I made up. I’m not content with them yet. Some of the colors are still washed out.

In blog news, a new version of WordPress is out. Great, another security hole. I’ll have to jump on this problem as soon as I figure out which files need to be updated. I hate having to re-upload everything.

My site has been unavailable quite a lot lately. I’m at my wit’s end with Dreamhost. I’m relatively certain I’ll be moving my site. Railwolf, do you have any room? 😉

5 responses so far

5 Responses to “Happy New Years”

  1. Ogreon 31 Dec 2007 at 10:20 pm

    Happy New Year Jim!

    I would have to agree with you that the notepad pushing down on the keys was probably responsible for the noise. Usually, though, it sounds like a series of nonstop beeps. I guess you could say it screaches. If the computer booted into Windows just fine, that’s probably what it was.

    Also, you could simply use a KVM switch so you could share the same keyboard, monitor, and mouse, and on some models the speakers as well. I have a Belkin KVM 4 Port Soho switch that I use, which does have audio as well, and USB hookups. I’ve always liked it, and it’s always worked quite well. I share currently three computers. My new PC I just built, my Mac Mini, and my old Dual AMD system. I think Belkin still makes these switches, though I’m not sure.

  2. Jameson 31 Dec 2007 at 11:55 pm

    Yes, it was a series of beeps, but it sure scared me, lol. Anyway, I’ve booted up two or three times since then and it hasn’t happened, so it probably was the keyboard/notebook issue.

    I’m considering a KVM, but haven’t decided if I’m going to go that route or not. Are they reliable now? I seem to remember a few yrs ago (back when TechTV was on) that they had a lot of problems with them and so did callers.

  3. Railwolfon 01 Jan 2008 at 11:50 am

    The kind of sound it makes depends on the type of speaker it has as well.

    One mouse in each hand. Works for me 😉
    I often have at least 2 or 3 mice on my desk at any time, and always 2 keyboards. I didn’t get a KVM because I like having two monitors and being able to use two machines at the same time.

    I’ve noticed that it can take a few minutes for the site to load lately. I’m surprised they haven’t noticed, or done anything about it. Seems like something on the server is taking too many resources, such as a huge database transfer or bad/broken script.

    I have room, but my server is HTTP & MySQL only; no DNS, FTP (I copy files over network), mail, etc., I use outside services for those. It runs Windows XP after all 😉

  4. Ogreon 01 Jan 2008 at 4:47 pm

    KVM switches such as what I have are extremely reliable. Though, I would recommend that you get the power source for it. Otherwise, it takes power from the USB port from your computer to run, which I ran into a few problems with. So, I ended up buying the power adapter from Belkin and have been extremely pleased.

  5. Ogreon 01 Jan 2008 at 4:48 pm

    Here are the ones I recommend:

    http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatSectionView.process?Section_Id=203859

    You do have to buy cables for them, since they’re not included. But, these are superior to most KVM switches on the market, unless you want to pay a lot of money.

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