My computer is sick and I am done trying to troubleshoot what is happening.
For some obscure reason, the computer would restart at will. Noticed the problem months ago when I installed Starwars: KOTOR II and initially wrote it off as a problem with the game.
At some point though, I decided to play the music video for Helena by My Chemical Romance, and poof, the computer restarted. I could stay online as long as I could but as soon as I play some game or watch some video, the computer would reboot. I can even remember watching a whole movie on DVD without it restarting.
I just don't know what the problem is. Video drivers have been updated as well as DirectX. I have used a different video card which does use the same drivers but is different. Ran scans using Ad-Aware, Spybot, Norton, and AntiVir. Wiped out the partition that held the OS and reinstalled it but still to no avail.
Now, it seems worse as it would restart even when I am connected to the internet.
So far it seems that it could be a problem with the memory as it only seems to happen when it does too much. The problem is I use RDRAM which is a pain to troubleshoot. Tried swapping them a little, but it was a tiring process since cables needed to be unplugged, carrying the tower to the bed where I could work freely, and then plugging the cables back in.
Then again, I am using Windows XP and we all know what problems a Microsoft product comes with.
At this point, I have decided to simply not bother at all, for now that is, as this limits the satisfaction I get from my PC.
I am on leave until Monday and would not want to waste days figuring out what is happening.
The weekend has been extremely long and tiring, which added to my recent blogging laziness, has extended the long hiatus.
Thursday was swimming day with friends from work at Club Manila East which is quite a beautiful place. They had a lagoon where you could paddle a kayak around. It was fun and the weather was on our side that day as the rain did not fall until after we went home.
It was wonderful spending the day with 4 girls being the only guy in the group. There are odd times though, as they all had a shower together and they really took forever before they finished. Thankfully, I had some load on my Sim card so I began messaging people.
When they were finally done, they gave me a plastic full of bathing products, since being a guy, I did not bring any.
There was so much in the bag that I had to carefully spent sometime figuring out which is which. When I go swimming, shampoo alone would be enough to wash the whole body at times. The bag though had shampoo, conditioner, facial wash, milk bath soap, and feminine wash.
After I sorted things out, I noticed that there was no water in the shower room I went to. I asked one of the staff and they mentioned that the water was being used to fill another pool and I had to have my shower in the other shower room at the opposite end of the resort.
Found the other shower room and immediately tested the water. Yes, the pressure was very strong. So I locked the door and proceeded to shower.
Once I was done and all, I noticed that the lock on the door was stuck. I tried twisting it in either direction but my weak fingers would slip each time. I was almost at a point where I wanted to kick the damn thing as it was only made front plastic.
Being the good boy that I am who could not destroy property (it would be a different story if it was mine), I stopped to think what my battle plan would be.
Crawling underneath the door was not an option as I would get myself filthy again and would need to shower again. I then looked up and noticed that the wall between cubicles was made of concrete and did not extend all the way to the ceiling. I jumped and grabbed on the ledge. The wall was pretty thick so I had to jump twice to get a good grip.
Once I was on top, another dilemma came in, how the fuck am I supposed to go down now? It was fairly high so if I jumped down I could slip, bump my head and bleed to death with only a towel around my waist. Definitely, not an ideal way to go.
Looked around again and noticed that I could somehow make use of the wooden door which leads to the whole shower area, step on the knob and slowly lower myself down until it was safe to jump. When I was lowering myself down, one hand was on top of the wall and the other on top of the door, it reminded me of a scene from M:I 2 where Tom Cruise was hanging on a cliff.
During this fleeting moment, I felt so freaking macho, all those push ups and pull ups paid off.
Then it dawned to me, I actually left all my things inside, in the far corner of the shower cubicle. Fsck it!
NOT!
Do you think am stupid?! Of course I placed them on hooks on the side of the door.
First week of being back in the night shift is over, but before I could savor that thought a new week starts again today. Offs were split so we do not have a day-off just a night-off. Add to that, we have to report to work at 3 in the afternoon today.
It ain't too shabby though as logout time would be around 12mn which is a perfect time to go out and have fun. Plus, with all the ATO (Authorized Time Outs) the past week, who knows what time we could really go home. 10 or 11 would be perfect.
Come Sunday, it is back to the usual 11PM to 8AM shift.
What can we say about the week then? It was pretty standard. Avail times are good enough. Calls, well these do not change as they remain the same regardless of the time of day.
Sarcasm seems to be the main theme of the week and a quick shift in gears from the previous feeling whatever that is. So far it seems to work quite well. Let's just remember not to exaggerate too much and ruin an already good thing.
Which brings us to one thing I have learned in the past months, never ruin an already wonderful thing by thinking I (of all people) could actually change it to something lovelier.
I never got to finish what I was writing yesterday. I was able to finish the first part of it but when it came to the second part, I didn't know how to start. Blogger's block I guess. Besides, considering the stuff that I write that entry is going to be big. Hopefully it would be done by the end of the week. It should be or else it wouldn't make any sense if posted too late.
I feel sleepy and I have to prepare to work in 30 minutes. Still adjusting to this new schedule as we have just been moved to the night shift yet again. Am still looking for that perfect combination of trying to do as much as possible in the little time that I have.
With the new schedule, I'd be off by 8 in the morning and from what I experienced earlier, it was hell. The traffic is worse than going home during rush hours in the evening as the road going home has been choked to only one lane so the traffic going to the work/school would be a little lighter. Another thing is that there are no passengers going home so the empty jeepney would stop and wait for passengers at every stop. This is an elaborate way of saying that I now spend more than 2 hours traveling home.
Once I get home, I have decided to dedicate some time online (despite being online the whole day at work) or time (quality time) to spend with the PS2 if ever I'd find a new videogame which would entice me enough. After an hour, shower then lunch, followed by sleep.
For today, I think I wasted some time after lunch and was up until almost 2 in the afternoon. Slept for 5 hours which would have been enough if it was spent sleeping at night. The hard part of being in the night shift is that more sleep is needed to reenergize the body.
I need to work on this. It's a good thing that I don't have problems staying up.
Yesterday was one of those days when everything seemed so bloody awful. There was no particularly big reason why this happened just small things which made my mind wander off to depression. Oh, the troubles of having chronic depression.
I feel better now, I think, though am still confused about a few things which basically ask the questions, "Where do I go from here?".
Flicked the TV on when I got home, BBC was on. Tragic news of multiple blasts in Central London, just a day after London was announced as the host to the 2012 Olympiad. When I watched, there where only 2 people confirmed dead and 90 injured which has now increased to 37 dead and more than 700 injured. A very sad thing indeed. Instead of city-wide jubilation due to winning the Olympiad bid, terror is spread throughout the capital. On the day the blasts happened, all public transport was suspended which mainly involves the tubes and buses. Imagine London without tubes, madness.
We live in a real scary and sick world.
In case you're worried, my brother is doing fine, he happens to be in the west end of London.
In other news.
I have always loved the calculator and conversion feature of Google. Now they have added a currency converter. About time guys.
Blogging A Little Less Everyday
It's weird that I am blogging less than I used to, June also happens to have the least number of blogs in a month which was quite the case last year. June 2004 and June 2005 are tied with the least number of blogs in a month, 7. I don't really know what it is with June. Mid-year crisis? I dunno, but it could be and now it seems that it is dragging on to July.
This has no direct association with my mood, actually after careful analysis, I could say that they are inversely proportional. In the past, the more depressed I am, the more I blog. Now I am insanely happy (for no particular reason, hence, insanely), the less I am on the mood to blog.
Nah, I doubt that's the main reason why I am blogging less. I think it has more to do with past experiences, when I have said too much in my blogs and actually ruined the surprised when it came to real life. So now, am pretty scared on what I should say which is why I have started to have blogs elsewhere. These random blogs though have already been loaded to the archives, so feel free to click away, that is if you are interested.
Yesterday marked the 3rd year death anniversary of my dad. Of course I miss him, who wouldn't miss his/her own father.
I was going to created an entry a year ago about how football reminded me of the last conversations which I had with my dad.
World Cup 2002 happened around June and England was doing pretty well, considering that it was in a difficult bracket which also included rival Argentina (you know, the Falkan Wars). We won and I was telling my father how we did it. I can still remember how he raised his fist when I told him that we defeated Argentina. Got into the quarter finals but had to face Brazil. We scored first but then this stupendously amazing goal from Ronaldinho from way midfield magically went in. Then Ronaldo scored and it was all over. Such was the disappointment.
Forward to 2004, Euro Cup, Portugal defeated England in a penalty shootout and again, David Beckham missed a penalty kick.
World Cup 2002 finished by the end of June with Brazil winning. This was probably the last conversation I had with him. It was a Friday and I was in my dorm when I called during lunch and found out. Now, let's not dig into that.
It's not just football though. He is the one person I could have a completely English conversation with, one which I do unconsciously. I remember how annoyed he would get when I pronounce words the American way, further indicating that they borrowed someone else's language and bastardized it. How we'd talk about politics, local and international. I'd love to ask him what exactly a Labor party is and how different it is from the Conservative party. I can easily google this but it's still better hearing it from my father.
It's just amazing how good things are going for us right now even though he passed away. Initially, I felt bloody guilty because if I only studied with a little effort, I would have graduated on time and he would have seen me graduate. It eventually faded as no one can turn back time and change those mistakes, no matter how foolish and stupid they maybe.
Now things are different, somehow I do feel a bit better about myself, a bit more accomplished, thanks to a couple of promotions. To think that I have to avail of this other gift that my father left us which my brother is currently using right now.
It would be great if he was here to see how much both of us have changed and how strong my mother is. Then again, we wouldn't have changed this much if that didn't happen. I miss him a lot but I know he's still looking out for us.
This just in. It was actually announced hours ago but London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Yey! They were up against New York (the first to be eliminated), Madrid, Moscow, and Paris. 300,000 new jobs to be create in London due to this. Let's go and see the Queen while we are at it!
Gosh, and you mentioned that you had problems thinking of things to blog.