Holiday Vacation wrap-up
Well, it's Monday the 1st of January 2007 and technically I have to work tomorrow. I haven't been to work since Dec 22nd. Let's see...
Christmas day was great, I woke up at my parents house, had breakfast with my family, relaxed and watched some TV. indieradiochic came over around 11am and also hung out for a little bit. After that we headed over to her parents house for dinner with all of her relatives. Quite a lot of people in fact and the dinner was very good. We had pork roast and beef. Dev's dad got us a nice brass folding propeller for the boat for Christmas.
On Tuesday I got a call from my dad because when he plugged his new iPod Shuffle in to the USB port of his computer at the office it sparked and the whole computer died. It wouldn't boot or anything after that. So I headed over there and checked it out.
It looks like the south bridge (one of two chips that run all of the slots and ports on a computer motherboard) fried. It actually had a melt spot on the surface. This is the second time it has happened on this computer and last time the motherboard was replaced with the same model. It's been some time since then and processors and motherboards have changed a bit.
So to fix the computer, we bought a new motherboard, new dual-core Pentium processor, two 512MB memory sticks. After putting all of it together with the old parts Windows wouldn't boot. It appeared to be loading some drivers for the old motherboard that didn't work with the new one. The only way to fix this was to perform a "Repair Installation" of XP over the top. But the hard drive controller in the new motherboard wasn't natively supported by Windows XP, in order to load a driver during install you need a floppy drive which the computer didn't have. So back to the store to buy a drive and I finally got the installation running. After that, reinstalled Service Pack 2 and all the other Windows Updates. It's working fine now but it was about half a day of futzing.
After fixing the computer Dev and I headed up to the Marina to spend the night on the new boat. We had to bring everything, bedding, food, etc because we haven't taken anything up there yet. Overall it was pretty cool. We even took the dog who was scared to death of the dock ramp and then I had to carry her onto the boat and down inside. We had some wine, relaxed and eventually tried to sleep. Nessa was also afraid of the bathroom floor so she wouldn't walk on it. Instead she jumped clear across the bathroom to get into the forward berth. In the morning we made eggs and toast, then headed home. It was a good first use of the boat for us.
Wednesday I stopped by GoodYear and got new tires for the Exploder. Thursday I washed the car, stopped by Best Buy, packed and headed over to Winthrop to see my grandparents and dad for a couple days. We had ham for dinner, headed over to my grandparents for Pork Loin on Friday and I headed home Saturday afternoon. indieradiochic had already left for Mexico but she managed to organize and clean the entire house. All I had to do was vacuum and the place is all clean now so thats cool.
Sunday was James' birthday party and New Years Eve so I went to Outback with everyone and we ate and drank the year away.
Christmas day was great, I woke up at my parents house, had breakfast with my family, relaxed and watched some TV. indieradiochic came over around 11am and also hung out for a little bit. After that we headed over to her parents house for dinner with all of her relatives. Quite a lot of people in fact and the dinner was very good. We had pork roast and beef. Dev's dad got us a nice brass folding propeller for the boat for Christmas.
On Tuesday I got a call from my dad because when he plugged his new iPod Shuffle in to the USB port of his computer at the office it sparked and the whole computer died. It wouldn't boot or anything after that. So I headed over there and checked it out.
It looks like the south bridge (one of two chips that run all of the slots and ports on a computer motherboard) fried. It actually had a melt spot on the surface. This is the second time it has happened on this computer and last time the motherboard was replaced with the same model. It's been some time since then and processors and motherboards have changed a bit.
So to fix the computer, we bought a new motherboard, new dual-core Pentium processor, two 512MB memory sticks. After putting all of it together with the old parts Windows wouldn't boot. It appeared to be loading some drivers for the old motherboard that didn't work with the new one. The only way to fix this was to perform a "Repair Installation" of XP over the top. But the hard drive controller in the new motherboard wasn't natively supported by Windows XP, in order to load a driver during install you need a floppy drive which the computer didn't have. So back to the store to buy a drive and I finally got the installation running. After that, reinstalled Service Pack 2 and all the other Windows Updates. It's working fine now but it was about half a day of futzing.
After fixing the computer Dev and I headed up to the Marina to spend the night on the new boat. We had to bring everything, bedding, food, etc because we haven't taken anything up there yet. Overall it was pretty cool. We even took the dog who was scared to death of the dock ramp and then I had to carry her onto the boat and down inside. We had some wine, relaxed and eventually tried to sleep. Nessa was also afraid of the bathroom floor so she wouldn't walk on it. Instead she jumped clear across the bathroom to get into the forward berth. In the morning we made eggs and toast, then headed home. It was a good first use of the boat for us.
Wednesday I stopped by GoodYear and got new tires for the Exploder. Thursday I washed the car, stopped by Best Buy, packed and headed over to Winthrop to see my grandparents and dad for a couple days. We had ham for dinner, headed over to my grandparents for Pork Loin on Friday and I headed home Saturday afternoon. indieradiochic had already left for Mexico but she managed to organize and clean the entire house. All I had to do was vacuum and the place is all clean now so thats cool.
Sunday was James' birthday party and New Years Eve so I went to Outback with everyone and we ate and drank the year away.