Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Oh Frustrations

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. Sometimes technology just points and laughs at me, I'm convinced.

About a week ago, YouTube stopped working for me, as well as anything else that's streamed be it audio or video. I didn't think much about it at first. Could've been many things. Could've been a side-effect of my internet being slow for a while. Could've been due to a buggy issue with Firefox 3 that I had just downloaded, or this nifty add-on that allows me to download YouTube vids to my laptop. But as one day became two, and two became three and four, I became more convinced that something was indeed amiss. Every time I'd try to stream anything, it'd run (without sound) for about 2 seconds then stop. Nothing I did seemed to work. And then my add-on stopped working. Well, I was talking to Hish about this and he suggested that I re-install Firefox 3. That I did yesterday, and guess what? It works again!!

Last night my mouse stopped working. It's been giving me the red blinking light of imminent death for a few days. Well, I open it up to take out the dead batteries only to find that one of the two AA batteries had leaked into my mouse! Where the battery acid contacted the surrounding area, a white crystalline powder formed. It also corroded the two metal plates on either end that touch the battery. I spent a good half an hour to an hour scraping out all the battery acid crystals (or whatever it was). My dad gave me a tool that his dad used in the dentist office. So I was using some weird dentist tool to scrape the solid thing from the tiny corners and edges. My grandpa might be turning around in his grave right now - I know my ears were shrieking at the metal on metal scrape. Anyway, in the end, I got the vast majority of it out. My mouse still works and I think the left-click button might be better. It's been twitchy for quite some time, as in it would think I double-clicked when really I only clicked once and held down the button. I guess I know why now.

Now, this next technological frustration I haven't yet resolved. A while ago I downloaded a pic from an email. Whenever pics or videos download from the internet, they download as 2 files: the actual file, and this other mysterious file. The "mystery file" only exists during the actual download process and merges into the actual file upon completion of the download, thus disappearing. Well, the pic downloaded and I could open the file. But I noticed that its mystery file didn't disappear. I deleted the pic and tried to delete its mystery file with it. All it would give me was something like, "Error in deleting: Cannot read from source or disk." Okay, I've seen that before, no big deal right? Well, I tried pretty much everything I knew or had on my laptop to delete the little fucker. I used 3 programs, I rebooted my laptop several times, I closed down program files one by one that I wasn't sure of (perhaps not the best idea). Nothing. I Google'd it to see if I could find an answer. I tried this MS Dos deletion thing, but failed at it because I don't know how to find things with MS Dos. So after being hell-bent on deleting this thing for over an hour this morning, I gave up. It won. Sigh.

Oh, I just found the email with the original pic in it. I re-downloaded the pic, hoping it'd replace and fix whatever went wrong. Well, that didn't seem to work. It still remained in 2 parts. Grrr. I can delete one file or the other, but not both. It looks like I may need to enlist the help of someone who's more computer savvy than I am for this. And this is why I would never be a computer science major, or most engineering majors.

Now lastly, my cousin from Chicago is coming to visit us tomorrow. He's going into his senior year of high school. I feel bad for him for coming. You see, the real reason he's coming to visit is so that my brothers and I can "help" him improve his SAT and ACT scores before he takes them. Honestly, he does suck. He's around national average right now. Funny thing is that my brothers and I didn't used to even like him. When he was younger, he was really ADHD and had quite a temper - he was rather violent sometimes. Now he's mellowed out a lot and is actually rather pleasant to be around, though a bit too quiet. So yeah, he's coming here basically for SAT/ACT boot camp. I hope he doesn't become an academic vegetable when we're done with him . . .

What also sucks is that I twisted my right ankle a bit yesterday. So while I could have ran earlier this morning, I don't think it would've been the best of ideas. I predict soreness and inflammation later if I were to do that. But perhaps I'm jumping to excuses too readily. Running alone is so boring!! Also, when my cousin comes, he'll be sleeping in my room. Which means I'll be displaced to my brother's room because he has a larger bed. Which also means masturbating will be difficult, if not nigh-impossible. 2 weeks of no relief . . . I don't know if I'm going to survive. To be sure, I'm going to work my cousin for this, and I'm going to bring him closer to the Asian standard.

Oh, apparently I failed to realize July 14th was my blogoversary. It turned 1 year old!! XD

7 comments:

Tris said...

Take it easy eh :)~

And happy blog anniversary, what did you get him?

charlie said...

Two weeks without jerking? ouch... isn't dangerous? :P

Yeah, technology is definitely laughing at us sometimes! I get mad with this kind of things!

B said...

I know how to erase that "little fuck" :P

First, you need to know than when you download files from internet, they are downloaded part by part (the code of the file is slowly written in file itself)... Than, after finishing downloading, the file formes and that "part" disapear, but there are bugs like yours... You can delete them by just right click and delete :) Restart won't help, too... Well it will, but this is what you need to do.

1. Restart your computer

2. While it's loading you need to click on F8 (when rebooting screen comes one) you can click as many times as you want, you need to get list of how to start a windows

3. You'll see a list of how to start Windows (I see by that error message you wrote that you're using Windows)... In that list it will be "Start Windows Normally" blah blah blah... You need to click "Start Windows in Safe mode" (there're option Safe mode with networking, but DON'T select that one)...

4. After that you're in your computer (or in safe mode), you can change whatever you want (even Windows who is untouchable in normal mode) so be cautious what you delete... It's like you're in the source of computer (I like to call it like that).

5. Find "the file" and delete it...

6. Reboot your system.

7. If Windows again starts in Safe mode (by itself) then reboot it again, click F8 when rebooting screen shows and select "Start Windows Normally"

That's all... I hope that it'll work... And about today on chat, we should talk, I could help you earlier, but now you need tow wait to read comment :P Maybe God sent me just to help you by this LOL

About your mouse... ALWAYS USE ALKALINE batteries, then won't "leak" and you can charge them later. They are better than regular ones, that's why they are bit expensive, but not much.

P.S. If you are using Firefox 3, you should know that it's still Beta (do you know what that means, I can explain it to you).

P.P.S. Technology is ridiculous, don't be affraid of it, you can solve anything :)

P.P.P.S. What is SAT and ACT scores ? I didn't understand that part about your cousin... I'm not from US so I don't know that.

B said...

And happy blog anniversary :P

B said...

I made a few mistakes...
* You can delete them by just right click and delete

it should be You can't delete them by just right click and delete...

You can't delete them cause they are used by computer :) that's why you're having that error. So you can't delete them because they are in use by the computer, and from safe mode you can delete anything, even if computer "uses" it :)

Anonymous said...

i have a mouse that'll work just fine for you, every time. i can't guarantee no leakage, however. :-/

*kisses ankle* I hope it gets better. I'm gonna try to start swimming tomorrow. sigh:::

Aek said...

shane: I got him a new look, of sorts. Changed the colors around a bit. Working on a title banner.

charlie: Might be, but I have to risk it. Technology can go suck itself sometimes. Sigh.

hypnos: Thanks for the suggestion! I tried that and . . . it didn't work. :(

james: I don't know about every time . . . but at least my ankle's 100% okay today. Yay! And yay for swimming!!