Something I learned this weekend

If you put the spa bath mat in the bath and add bath milk instead of bath salts, you get 4 foot high bubbles.

I guess I can tick -"lie in a bath tub covered by 3 foot of bubbles" off my list of things to do before I die. Done and exceeded.

things

I have learned about lotro by reading up on them.
Its 5% cheaper to by stuff at the kin house neighbourhood supplier than the individual house supplier (which I knew was 10% cheaper than generally).
You can buy racial buffs from rep dealers when you get in good with them...I'd wondered how I was going to get the hobbit virtue trait.

now of course I won't read anymore for a while

Sound is overrated anyway

Both my video camera and my computer are in the shop (different shops) for quotes for repairs to the recording component of the audio. In both cases I can play something and hear it, but when I want to use the microphone - nada, zip.

I need to video next weekish to record some work related stuff and I'd like the computer back by tomorrow night to play LOTRO (or I'll be bowing out). My laptop has lotro on it, but plays buggy at the lowest resolution and hasn't been updated for a year. I really need to find a CD version of LOTRO+Moria so that I have a version that won't take 3 solid days of downloading and blowing my limit to do a reset.

Anyone know if they are purchasable in Australia?

On other sound related topics, I've moved 1/2 my birds to the front of the house in anticipation of selling them - and hopefully to stop the neighbour complaining that they are too loud. The remaining birds sound just as loud to me, but the ones out the front sound quieter than they did out the back and I know at least one of them was the noisiest bird out there.

I looked up the old out of date council regs. They defined caged budgies as "quiet birds", cockatiels as "medium" and cockatoos and "loud". The budgies are apparently more annoying than the cockatiels.

using this for the purpose for which it was set up

avoiding starting work.
I have an eyestrain headache that had worked its way back into the top of my shoulder. I'm having some strong coffee to fix the problem before I get into assessing an application. I've actually been pretty good with the eyestrain - I got new glasses and wore them constantly for a week and it went away. Then I was able to wear them intermittently while doing computer stuff. Unfortunately I got cocky and didn't wear them watching TV or playing LOTRO last night and the headache is back.

To do today:
read and comment on an application
finiosh writing the biosafety application for a project I'm about to do
organise transport of biologicals from brisbane to me
monitor the new technician doing the food testing
get prices on a new dispenser
have a meeting at 3pm then unplug the lab gear prior to the power outage this weekend
clean the house before my brother & his family turn up for his Birthday dinner

Andrea comes up trumps

I spent a fair bit of time on the weekend near and on the Bitter Stair in LOTRO. It was, as Andrea said, a good place to earn moola. Of course all of this is gone now due to crafting expences for my alts - greedy little things, but at least they are moving up the ranks and earning crafting rep. On another nice note - I got about 6 recipes that my alts didn't have off the bitter stair people. Roll on Burgundy coloured clothes :D

In addition I realised I have still got animal deeds to do in the area, so I've been alternating the stair and killing snowbeasts etc. Only about 300 of each bear, worm and snowbeast to go to get my deeds completely done :) Then I have to go back to goblin town and finish off the 'find this place' quests there - Bilbo left some buttons behind apparently.

One thing about keeping budgies..you see more birds of prey

Here is my second successful hawk shot. It was on the top of the cage this morning. Dad missed taking a photo of yesterdays hawk - possibly the same one. It slammed into the side of the cockatiel cage and left a dint in it

Bindy is broke!

I have somehow managed to spend all of Bindy's money. This tends to happen when I focus on crafting. Bindy is broker than he was as a lvl2 character. He has 20 copper pieces left. Of course, the reverse happens when I focus on completing deeds where its "kill 500 wargs/goblins" style. Perhaps it would be a good idea to deed crunch for a while.

Melaleuca linariifolia

The council have replanted trees on our footpath after cutting the old ones down when they fixed the gutters. We hadn't had a tree on the footpath before. The original one died of malicious neglect many years ago I think. The old trees weren't suited to the position, they grew too tall and into the powerlines. As a result they were weirdly and probably not effectively pruned. The new one looks like it will be gorgeous and grow to 10m.....what? why plant trees under powerlines that are recorded as growing 8-10M tall? Maybe its the 'shrubby' version that only grows to 2.5meters. The neighbour was told they'd grow to 4m. Stay tuned and ask again in 5 years or so.

my new toy

After doing some research I bought myself a video/DVD recorder combo with an SD digital tuner in it on the weekend. I'd priced it everywhere at $500 & went somewhere with a sale on. I got them to knock $20 off the sale price & saved myself $40. Woot! Now I can use the money to buy some good quality DVDs for converting all my irreplaceable videos & some DVD ram disks for general recording. As a plus, the non-existent reception for WIN is now perfect. My mother thinks I'm rubbing it in.

In other news, instead of playing with my new toy last night, I got all my characters in LOTRO up a crafting level after Chris kindly bodyguarded them through their respective purple crafting quests. Bruse ended up emptying 1/2 of his bank to read all the stored master armoursmith recipes. BTW if any of my kin are armoursmiths with master level, let me know, I have 1/2 a dozen double recipes to pass on now.

huh, what? free time?

Well, not actually free, just free of short term deadlines that I have to work to. At least today.

This means I can cast my eye around my office and do that 8 hours of marking that is sitting there. Also I can organise my accomodation for the conference in July in Cairns. Then there's that gel tank I was going to try to bodgy up the platinum wire electrodes. Hmmm maybe I could take an hour off and go price VCR/DVD recorder combos. Since I've been working long hours and weekends.
While I'm out I could post Caillan's present. For those of you who are supposed to send him something - his Birthday is later this month!! This is your friendly automatic reminder service. I would have forgotten only I put my calendar back on my door after it was painted and there was the reminder on it.
BTW I now have mid colour blue doors in the house rather than brown. Much cheerier.

This free association written blog was brought to you by the number googleplex and the letters R for relaxed and D for delusional.

oh...I forgot to mention

I went to the 50th Anniversay of Pimlico open day. They had colour coded name tags for decades. Lots of the 1st year people turned up (1959) and masses of the 60's. After that the numbers steadily dropped by decade. A sign of the employment demographic I think. We all moved away and only a few of us are still around. Of the 1983 cohort, I saw Sean Mullins, Sandor and Tiffany....and thats it.
After I went home it occured to me I'd taken no photos of any of them, or any photos at all for that matter in spite of taking my camera - I guess you miss out on my happy snaps.
Theres a bunch of new buildings & where we sat for lunch is now reserved for grade 11 and 12 students. The library still looks identical. The Home Ec teacher did recognise my name - because she taught my brother Doug. I was rather invisible in Home Ec, Doug became a chef.

>(

For two weeks I've been getting a practical up and running for next Monday. First one of the reagents was off and it made the results look good when they weren't. I found it, fixed it, tried again and got good results. So I made up more of the samples to run and checked them - not working. Went back and used original samples again -now they're not working....argh.
I'm going to try once more under really careful conditions with every control I can think of. If it still doesn't work, I may be scrounging round for Monday.

There goes my weekend.

Shades of Tolkien!

While watching Midsommer Murders on Friday night, I suddenly realised that the protagonist was played by a young Orlando Bloom..."Hey!" I said to everyone in the room "thats the elf from Lord of the Rings!". "Surely not" they said. But the credits proved me right. (he was skewered by a pitchfork btw.)
The really weird bit was where the killer turned out to be a resident of a property called Lothlorien. The coppers even commented on knowing your lord of the rings content.

So - zero degrees of separation there I think.

typing with trepidation

mainly because I don't want to jinx things.

I did step one of the fix - opening the box, frowning at it and prodding the video card. I also sprayed air on it to remove any dust.

My computer hasn't frozen since. The front audio ports no longer work, but I'm not desperate enough to open the unit again and risk the much more vital video card right now...give it a month or so.

and the fear continues

Well, that didn't fix it. I was starting up in safe mode to uninstall and reinstall my video driver when my cousin called. I mentioned I'd noticed on the worst occasions that I had extra beeps when the computer turned on. She told me to do a search on the beeps. They mean something - mainly hardware wise. Fancy that.

Ok, one search later when the computer chose to turn on and one long beep followed by three short beeps means I either have a problem with my video ram or I don't have a video card.

So, Is my Nvidia 8800GT card frying after 15months? Its working intermittantly. Does this mean its a connection problem? You'd think a hardware problem would happen the same every time. Though every problem I've ever had with computers has been intermittant. Except when my battery leaked all over my motherboard that time. That was pretty terminal.

I also found the forums for my motherboard - ASUS has a forum just for P5K-SE motherboards, Well, well, I learn so much when my computer plays up. Their first suggestion is always to clear the CMOS. They suggest this EVERY time you install ANY hardware. Including those people who had exactly the same video card as me. So, I looked this up. I need to open the case for this and move some pins (or take the battery out for 1/2 an hour). The computer apparently then resets all the hardware so your BIOS and CMOS match - I think. One site had a bunch of "manually reset all your hardware settings after this" instructions - but the others seemed to just say reset, turn back on.

Oh, they also said that ASUS motherboards don't always have the best relationship with NVidia cards, and an ATI card might be better if you want to change.

So, here's my plan.
1. Open up the box, look at it dubiously for a while, prod the video card, looking for physical - jarred out of place issues
2. Turn on the computer and try to get it to freeze (basically by internetting and LOTROing at the same time - high demand as possible)
If I can get it to do it, continue by;
3. Read my motherboard book re resetting CMOS & try this
.....assuming this doesn't cause more issues
4. Go to 2
If 2 still shows issues,

Research good non Nvidia cards & do a forum search on LOTRO with my preferred cards (so I don't buy something that causes LOTRO to crash)

5. Buy and install new card
6. Goto 2.
If 2 still happens,
7. talk to my friendly computer guy and spend more money

Anyone see anything that makes them want to scream "NOOO! Don't do that!" while running forward in slow motion to prevent the disaster?

As an aside, my computer is running at 39 degrees C. If it were human, it would be running a considerable fever. I love my probe software.

Approach the computer with fear and trembling

Lately my computer has been freezing up...requiring a hard boot. I defragged, cleaned my drive, ran a virus check on the whole system. Nada. It started in LOTRO and then moved to when I was trying to do more than one thing even when not playing. Then I got the dreaded BSOD, with a video driver error.
I updated my video driver and its seemed to go away - or not. Crap.
I did some reading and the errors seemed to be identical to some that happened when the video card was new out (way back in 2007). Updating the driver worked then. It also seemed identical to an issue someone else on LOTRO was having earlier this month - so it could have been LOTRO related, but the issue for both of us also happened outside of LOTRO. The suggestion was a corrupted file in LOTRO, requiring an uninstall and complete reinstall of LOTRO (Think 24 hours and a blown out download limit given I don't have the DVDs). The last suggestion was a BIOS issue - out of date for driver or corrupt file. Solution - update the BIOS of the motherboard.
I didn't want to reinstall LOTRO for a guess, so I started reading up on BIOS updating. They tell you how to do it with many dire "unless you know what you are doing don't do this or you'll turn your computer into a brick" warnings. I still preferred this to reinstalling LOTRO.
So this morning I pulled out my files to identify exactly what my motherboard was - go to your manufacturer and get the updated bios for exactly your board, do not try to get it anywhere else or computer death will ensue etc etc.
My motherboard book pointed out I have software on my CD to A - update the bios and B - monitor voltage and core temperature (which I've always wanted to do). Utilities now downloaded I got the update software to save a copy of the current BIOS to a CD and then got it to find the company site, select the available BIOS's and then I picked the most recent one and told the software to flash install - so no effort on my part. Apparently theres also instructions for laborious, careful DOS installing if it doesn't work.
Then the software told me to reboot...ok....why isn't anything turning up on the screen. Crap.
Hard reboot. Now something pops up Checksum error press 1 to fix - takes me to bios altering zone. Crap some more.
Decided to make no changes and just reboot again. Turned on fine. The cold sweat of fear starts to dry. So far no freezes, but I haven't done anything intensive yet. I have a vague suspicion that when I made no changes, the BIOS may have reverted to the previous default state and my computer will continue to crash and burn when Bindy fights a boss.
BTW Sorry about the other week guys - the guardian abandoning everyone just at the start of the "OK, I'll hold off the big boss with 26 000 HP" fight.

some pics

On the way up to the tablelands we stopped at Paronella Park and took pictures of crumbling ruins and turtles...the Ulysses butterflies were too fast for me though.


Skipping everything else for now, here is the blurry, grainy shot of the elusive platypus...as well as probably the best shot of a Ulysses butterfly from the trip. I think the professional shots have probably been doen with dead butterflies. It'd be the only way to get them to stop moving.

had a week off

I've had a week off and have been putting off writing anything till I brought in the pictures of my first live platypus sighting. But then I saw this comic and it reminded me of every time I've taken Berry into a fellowship. And I do believe we were discussing this very idea at one point. Did one of you read it then?

Aprils Blog

Life is still hectic. Summary as follows

I have 130 pracs to mark before Easter.
2 more lectures before Easter plus one practical
exam quesiotn need to be written and submitted - not all lectures written yet, less given.
Biosafety applications need looking at

Should know soon about job. Waiting on interview of last (and absolutely fantastic) applicant. Doom, doom de doom.

Week off at lake Eacham after Easter followed by writing a weeks lectures for a subject I've never done before, plus 11 2nd year (done last time in 2006) and 4 3rd year lectures to update

Research in there somewhere, I hope. I have a good idea but no money or students to do it.

Misc lab things to repair/supervise, Food lab to get up to scratch.

Long term - lecturing a whole subject next semester that I haven't done before.

Bindy now has a Facebook page. There are even pictures.

Hmm, thats enough bloggin in point form...work now.

talking part 1 is done

I've given my seminar - I'm told it went well. The HOS said he understood it which is a good sign. I felt I blathered at certain points, but I kept it mainly to time...phew.
Now I have to wait for an interview at 5pm.