All these different types of RAM and stuff confuse me. I know it’s not cool to ask for advice, but would people be willing to cast a cursory glance over these products and reassure me that there are no obvious incompatibilities?
Thanks.
Motherboard, CPU, Memory
42. The Long View, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
This book is written backwards, so that each chapter is set five or six years earlier than the previous one, and the reader traces back the development both of the central character Antonia, and of her shifting relationship with her husband. This wonderful technique makes you question other more conventionally written books to ask whether the character is the same person at the beginning, as at the end. It’s rather like watching a film on rewind, starting from resignation and weariness, and tracking back scene by scene to the naivety of first love. Such a clever book, which I need to read again now that I know what happens in the beginning.
4/5
43. The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan
This is cute in places. No, cute is the wrong word: startlingly insightful on the death of relationships. It adds some modern rural China to the usual tales of the historic east, and the standard comparison with growing up in the west. I feel that I may have read enough Amy Tan for now.
On his deathbed [in modern-day america], Olivia’s father reveals the existence of another daughter, abandoned many years ago when he left China, and extracts a promise to take care of her. Kwan sees dead people. She also remembers her previous life [in historic China] in great detail, which is why she works so hard to keep Simon and Olivia together after their marriage goes stale. A trip to China open’s Olivia’s cynical eyes and she discovers that the world is not a place, but what’s inside her heart. Then they mostly live happily ever after.
This is perhaps the least profound of all the Amy Tan novels I have read, which is a shame, because she has great content here, and I think it could have been twice the book.
3/5
(Follows on from here)
The layer of green goo is now about an inch thick, forming a luxurious yet moist carpet. I had to park my car over in that corner yesterday morning. I opened the door and put my fut out, and noticed that the goo had sensed my presence and was collecting itself up into a claw shape. I withdrew my foot and quickly pulled the car door shut, to the slapping sound of the goo-claw impacting on the door. The goo barked in its foiledness.
I climbed over the gear stick to the passenger’s seat and got out on that side, where it was clear. The goo lurked and growled quietly.
Apparently the military have been notified of this threat, but it seems that they are just as terrified of it as we are. One of my co-workers went out at lunchtime and threw some bars of soap at it, but that just seemed to make it more angry.
A companion-piece to the one about cosmetics.
There are a number of reasons why I always have to pause and take a deep breath before going into a hairdresser’s. It is not an experience I have ever felt comfortable with.
First of all, there’s the fact that one looks just awful in a hairdresser’s mirror. There is something about the unforgiving all-angles lighting that makes your hair look lank, your complexion blotchy, your clothes seem ill-fitting. It doesn’t help that I can’t bring myself to wash my hair before going to the hairdresser. You know, that would be like cleaning the house in the morning before your cleaning lady comes in, wouldn’t it? But then, the hairdresser will judge you on the shocking greasy limp tangled state of your hair when you sit in front of that mirror, and she won’t bother to do a good job, because she knows you’ll just let it go the same way as soon as you’re out of her sight. Won’t she?
As soon as you sit down, the junior offers you a cup of tea [at my salon, they also offer beer and wine in the afternoon, but that doesn’t change anything]. I wonder if anyone ever accepts the drink? Perhaps to shut them up. How can you drink tea when you can’t reach it because your arms are trapped under the floral polyester clothes-protecting mumu thingy that they make you wear? And if you did go so far as to try to drink tea, would not snips of hair get into it? The whole idea is utterly impractical.
One is then approached by some slip of a girl who is clearly not a real blonde. I have never yet had my hair done by someone whose own hairstyle I admired. She introduces herself in an I’ll be your stylist for today kind of way, as though I’m actually in Pizza Hut, and tries to find out what I want. This part is particularly difficult for me. All I want is an easy style that looks smart ALL the time, with no requirement for product, blow-drying, or six-weekly check-ups. I do not want to look like my mum [it happens, these days. I look in the mirror and I see my mum. Terrifying.] I don’t know the technical hairdressing terms for any of these requirements, so I just mumble something about layers, and she corrects me, graduated layers. She soon works out that I can’t answer how short? but I can answer this short?
Then she sends me to be washed. A junior does this. It makes my neck hurt. I like the fruity smells of all the interesting products, but the bit where they do the slow massage of conditioner into my scalp makes me feel uncomfortable.
I return to the desk. Workstation. Chair. I don’t know what it’s called. Not-a-real-blonde comes back and makes me take off my glasses. It’s not that I don’t trust her – she certainly knows more about this than I do – but if I can’t see her, then I can’t converse with her. Nor can I watch the other goings-on around me. So then I’m trapped in a world of blur and boredom. Having your hair cut is immensely boring.
Sometimes they do try to talk to me, but I’ve noticed that no-one asks me if I’ve been on my holidays, anymore. It’s a shame, because maybe we could find some shared ground there. Instead, they ask what I do for a living, and I explain it using the buzzwords, sweatshop, child labour, but she just says oh, that sounds interesting, and is clearly lying. I don’t bother to ask what she does for a living in return, because I have at least some observational skills, even without my glasses on.
I did have a hairdresser I liked, once. She recognised my haircutophobia, and was very gentle with me, and made interesting conversation. Then she went on Blind Date and became a minor local celebrity, and gave up hairdressing.
After hours of bashing my neck with a comb, snipping off a millimetre at a time, making me sit with my head at an unnatural angle and my hair hanging over my face like Cousin It, she declares it finished and holds up a mirror for me to admire her work. I fumble for my glasses and agree that whatever she’s done looks fine to me – who am I to judge?
And then all I have to worry about is how much to tip. Actually, I don’t tip, because the two-minutes’ worth of blow-drying added £5 to the cost of the cut, which would be value if my hair was still waist-length, but it barely covers my ears now. So no tip; except don’t give up the day-job, because your hair is perfect for it.
Regular readers will be aware of the vines in the back garden. This afternoon, Karen took a grape and bit into it. She was pleased with the flavour, so we decided to do something about it.
(lots of photos in this one…)
Scene: The Uborka sitting room, Saturday morning. Pete is playing GTA, as usual.
Karen: Do you want to go and see the new Keira Knightly film?
Pete [scornfully]: It’s Pride & Prejudice. I know it is.
Karen: Drat! Foiled again.
(Follows on from here)
So I left my computer off for 24 hours, so that I’d have a nice stable test. I unplugged the hard drive again, and this time I plugged the DVD drive into the primary IDE interface on the motherboard (no other IDE devices connected)
Result: bad behaviour.
I then switched off and transferred the connector to the secondary IDE interface, leaving the hard drive still unplugged.
Result: more bad behaviour.
I’m pretty certain that the problem is on the motherboard. I suppose my next test is with just the hard drive plugged in, so that I can rule out the DVD drive as the culprit, but I feel like that is just a formality really. I might also try it with the power supply from Karen’s computer – a “known good” – though this power supply is actually only a year old (it was my half-hearted attempt at fixing this problem last year).
New motherboard. Question is, do I try to get a motherboard that will be compatible with my 3-year old CPU and RAM, which are perfectly sufficient for my purposes, or do I take this opportunity to get nice fresh young components. If the CPU croaks in a year’s time then I don’t really want to be tied down to a Socket A, do I?
Summoning computer geeks: Do you recognise the following symptoms?
My computer has had an ailment for a few years now. Every summer, it goes through this little period of a few months when it strops hard. From a cold boot, it will generally freeze on “Detecting IDE devices…”. And if I reset, it will probably do the same thing again. Next time I reset, it will make it a bit further along with the boot process. And the next reset will take it a bit further along still. After ten minutes of such coaxing, I will make it to the desktop. Once it’s made it this far, it’s generally stable.
Last year I swore that I’d do something about it over winter. I decided the problem was probably in the motherboard, so I’d replace that, and the processor and RAM while I was at it.
But I never did get round to it, and this summer I dealt with the problem by basically leaving the computer switched on for weeks at a time, only turning it off when I knew that I wouldn’t need it for many days.
