Waking up early?
More like going to bed late.
So by the 20th I will be in Texas, near Dallas...or in it...I don't know where we're moving, I don't want to go, but it looks like I'm screwed. Luckily there are more computer jobs down there than here, unluckily it's TEXAS. Whatever. At least I'll be getting a new desk that can actually hold a desktop computer on it so I can get a lot more PC work done. I can also help them get their new furniture and electronics which should be fun since they are making a very substantial profit on this move. They could technically pay off my student loans with it and have a lot of money left over, but I doubt this will happen because of debts I am unaware of or something to do with how mortgages work that I don't understand. Either way I still don't want to go there, but sometimes we have to do painful things for future benefits....or something.
Oh yeah, my friend that always has problems, he got his grades. He keeps his grant regardless, and it's a bit more than what he needs for school, so he'll still have money coming to him, but he's going to lose his scholarship, not because of math, he actually pulled through in that, but because of his grade in English. Despite being the best writer in the class, he forgot to do the last paper. I had figured out his grades for the class as being a B if he played the rest of his cards right with the last project and stuff, but it turned out that the paper he missed was worth double the points, so he ended up getting a D I think. It's always amusing to me to see someone start college saying, "I'm not going to miss any classes" and then eventually seeing them blowing off classes for one reason or another. In his case work and social life, in my case sleep and the professor being useless a few times, in other peoples' cases they wanted more time to work on things in other classes (I did this too, but it wasn't my primary motive). Seriously, it seems like everyone I know freakin' does this.
Anyway, if you pay attention to me on Facebook you already know about this but I'm telling it again here in better detail. About 3 weeks ago my PS3 died, much like the RROD of the 360 it suffered the YLOD (yellow light of death) while I was browsing the PSN store. I had run out of cans of air duster a few months prior to this, but then again, it might've just gotten stressed due to all my game playing and Folding@Home running at night. So my options were send it to Sony for repairs for $150 and probably get back a different PS3 of the same model that was refurbished, or try to fix it myself. If I had sent it to Sony I would have lost a substantial amount of data, and some game saves that are copy protected. I looked into fixing it myself, which would require the purchase of a heat gun that is basically an overpowered hair dryer (with settings up to 1000 degrees) designed for melting paint and unsticking floor tiles. The method seemed sound, heat up the motherboard and then use the heat gun to reflow the chips, but the reported results were less than promising with systems reverting in a few months, weeks, or even days. I eventually found someone on eBay that has a machine built for reflow and offered a 6 month warranty on his work. So I sent it to him and paid his fee which was less than half of what Sony wanted. He fixed it in a day and sent it back, all in all it was gone for a week due to shipping times. It was working fine, asides from all the system settings being reset, but the predictive text dictionary was still intact, as were some other things I would have expected to get reset with the removal of the motherboard's battery.
So that was a few days before Christmas, and for Christmas I got Inglourious Basterds on Bluray and Assassin's Creed 2, which I got twice, from the same person. My mom apparently spaced out when my dad asked her which thing to grab while they were in the store, I dunno, I am going to exchange it today for something. Either Ratchet and Clank or Katamari Forever and Ghostbusters or the Saboteur, I really don't know. I also got some money, but not enough to pay all my credit card stuff, so yeah. While playing Assassin's Creed 2 I noticed it would have some graphical glitches after playing for a few hours, basically one polygon would break free into infinity causing a spike to come off of something or someone. Generally this is a sign that the PS3 is dying, so I now I am a little annoyed. Although Assassin's Creed 1 did the same thing a few times as well. My current theory is that with the older PS3s different motherboard design, something about these Ubisoft games can get screwed up. I saw some screenshots of other people with the problem that were probably actually looking at a broken graphics chip (the game world looked like a cactus), whereas mine was probably just a little hot and needed to cool down. It is something to watch for in other games though, and it only happened I think 3 or 4 times, and not at all the last half of the game. If it starts happening in other games then I might be screwed. The PS3 will have to be replaced soon anyway due to its condition, but for that I will need a job.
So by the 20th I will be in Texas, near Dallas...or in it...I don't know where we're moving, I don't want to go, but it looks like I'm screwed. Luckily there are more computer jobs down there than here, unluckily it's TEXAS. Whatever. At least I'll be getting a new desk that can actually hold a desktop computer on it so I can get a lot more PC work done. I can also help them get their new furniture and electronics which should be fun since they are making a very substantial profit on this move. They could technically pay off my student loans with it and have a lot of money left over, but I doubt this will happen because of debts I am unaware of or something to do with how mortgages work that I don't understand. Either way I still don't want to go there, but sometimes we have to do painful things for future benefits....or something.
Oh yeah, my friend that always has problems, he got his grades. He keeps his grant regardless, and it's a bit more than what he needs for school, so he'll still have money coming to him, but he's going to lose his scholarship, not because of math, he actually pulled through in that, but because of his grade in English. Despite being the best writer in the class, he forgot to do the last paper. I had figured out his grades for the class as being a B if he played the rest of his cards right with the last project and stuff, but it turned out that the paper he missed was worth double the points, so he ended up getting a D I think. It's always amusing to me to see someone start college saying, "I'm not going to miss any classes" and then eventually seeing them blowing off classes for one reason or another. In his case work and social life, in my case sleep and the professor being useless a few times, in other peoples' cases they wanted more time to work on things in other classes (I did this too, but it wasn't my primary motive). Seriously, it seems like everyone I know freakin' does this.
Anyway, if you pay attention to me on Facebook you already know about this but I'm telling it again here in better detail. About 3 weeks ago my PS3 died, much like the RROD of the 360 it suffered the YLOD (yellow light of death) while I was browsing the PSN store. I had run out of cans of air duster a few months prior to this, but then again, it might've just gotten stressed due to all my game playing and Folding@Home running at night. So my options were send it to Sony for repairs for $150 and probably get back a different PS3 of the same model that was refurbished, or try to fix it myself. If I had sent it to Sony I would have lost a substantial amount of data, and some game saves that are copy protected. I looked into fixing it myself, which would require the purchase of a heat gun that is basically an overpowered hair dryer (with settings up to 1000 degrees) designed for melting paint and unsticking floor tiles. The method seemed sound, heat up the motherboard and then use the heat gun to reflow the chips, but the reported results were less than promising with systems reverting in a few months, weeks, or even days. I eventually found someone on eBay that has a machine built for reflow and offered a 6 month warranty on his work. So I sent it to him and paid his fee which was less than half of what Sony wanted. He fixed it in a day and sent it back, all in all it was gone for a week due to shipping times. It was working fine, asides from all the system settings being reset, but the predictive text dictionary was still intact, as were some other things I would have expected to get reset with the removal of the motherboard's battery.
So that was a few days before Christmas, and for Christmas I got Inglourious Basterds on Bluray and Assassin's Creed 2, which I got twice, from the same person. My mom apparently spaced out when my dad asked her which thing to grab while they were in the store, I dunno, I am going to exchange it today for something. Either Ratchet and Clank or Katamari Forever and Ghostbusters or the Saboteur, I really don't know. I also got some money, but not enough to pay all my credit card stuff, so yeah. While playing Assassin's Creed 2 I noticed it would have some graphical glitches after playing for a few hours, basically one polygon would break free into infinity causing a spike to come off of something or someone. Generally this is a sign that the PS3 is dying, so I now I am a little annoyed. Although Assassin's Creed 1 did the same thing a few times as well. My current theory is that with the older PS3s different motherboard design, something about these Ubisoft games can get screwed up. I saw some screenshots of other people with the problem that were probably actually looking at a broken graphics chip (the game world looked like a cactus), whereas mine was probably just a little hot and needed to cool down. It is something to watch for in other games though, and it only happened I think 3 or 4 times, and not at all the last half of the game. If it starts happening in other games then I might be screwed. The PS3 will have to be replaced soon anyway due to its condition, but for that I will need a job.