Finally, the ants have surrendered.
For more than a week, the phone lines had been down. I was online Monday early morning last week when the Internet connection was suddenly dropped. The connection was set to automatically dial out when disconnected but it came back with a message of having no dial tone. Picked up the phone and there was indeed nothing. Slept, woke up and there was still nothing. Mom asked around and it seemed everyone in the area also had no dial tone.
The rumor I heard involved ants chewing a part of the cabling for the phone line. Absurd but definitely amusing. I am sure someone just stole a portion of the cabling as it did happen in the wee hours of the morning.
There were even reports indicating repairs would take a month before completed.
Anyway, I am thankful they have been repaired even though PLDT VIBE's dial up connection is still comparable to shit. This does not mean I expected them to improve at all, I just wanted to get back online as soon as possible.
There are so many things I missed out due to this unexpected event.
Movie days were a blind shot in the dark when you don't know what time movies would be screening. I was lucky last Wednesday as I was able to squeeze in The Number 23 and Bridge to Terabitha. The same could not be said when I watched on Friday. I wanted to watch The Fountain and I had no idea what time and where it could still be playing as it was no longer available in Eastwood. Decided to check Megamall and Shangri-la instead. Sadly, The Fountain was not available in either. Watched Ghost Rider instead which was OK, but was not able to satisfy my taste buds as much as The Fountain would have. Hence, I was not able to optimize the day as I could have if an Internet connection was available at the on set.
The RSS reader I use is now overflowing with unread items which I had no choice but to just "Mark All As Read" except for a few feeds like webcomics and the ever essential Lifehacker. Now I am all dizzy for trying to browse through everything I have missed. Thankfully, I have no friends so I did not miss out much when it came to emails and stuff.
Another thing is this whole leaving for the UK thing. I once said March. Started initially with first week of March until I heard the Boracay plans so pushed it back to March 30. I could still do that but the tickets now cost 60 USD more than they would have if I booked them last week. So now it is the first week of April, it's a week later, cheaper but I am in no rush. It's just that I have been out of work for 2 months and now it seems it would be longer. Hopefully, I could start working by May.
If only the Internet was up the whole of last week, things would be a whole lot different. Like people always say, there is a reason for everything. Sadly, I never notice a good reason why it does.
I do not miss the dreaded BSODs associated with the wonderful OS of Windows.
Back when I was working, it was pretty much normal to experience calls about the dreaded BSOD every freaking day. It would have been nice if they were easy problems to resolve, which does happen rarely, but more often than not, these problems are resolved by a complete clean installation of Windows. Any Windows user should know how long that takes. Of course, this is after testing the integrity of the hardware for defects by running diagnostics.
So imagine my surprised when I flicked on my PC last night, as it loaded into a BSOD, Stop: 0x0000000A. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.
Rebooted the PC and it stopped on the Windows splash screen with the green bars moving across. Rebooted once more, pressing F8 while doing so for the advanced options menu. Windows loaded up but the resolution was fucked.
Checked Device Manager and there were multiple bangs (yellow exclamation marks) on the USB ports and the sound card. For some strange reason the video drivers showed up correctly but I was unable to change the resolution.
Uninstalled some drivers with bangs and rebooted the system which would allow Windows to pick up the correct drivers. It did load into Normal Mode but the resolution was still off so I had to reload the video drivers.
After rebooting, everything was back to the things they were before the problem happened. The video drivers I installed were the Omega drivers for an ATI card which actually corrected another problem I had before whenever I changed my screen's resolution to something more than 1024x768. 1152x864 is my resolution of choice on this 17" monitor.
Apparently, my brother tried to use a USB memory stick to transfer some photos and as I had no free ports, he had to unplug one of the cables stuck in it which may have confused the PC.
Thankfully, the problem was easily corrected by a few reboots and drivers installation. I do have data backed up but it's not recent and no one really wants to go through the whole process of reinstalling everything.
I ruined my 2 month old phone by soaking it in a pool of my own vomit last night. Now, I feel as if a huge part of me is missing or died suddenly.
Came home drunk after going to a birthday party for my brother's friend. Was able to open gates, change clothes and get myself to bed. A few minutes (?) later I was puking in the direction where I usually keep my phone on the bed.
Now the thing smells of vomit and does not turn on. Will try to get it repaired tomorrow. I am hopeful it would get fixed as I do not have the resources right now to buy myself a new one.
I really need a girlfriend whom I could sleep with instead of sleeping with my gadgets. Or I could just learn to place it on the bedside table next time.
Sheesh. It's February already. A month has passed since I resigned from work. Two more months to go until I leave this country (for good ?).