the clueless american

Just in case you haven't seen it, Google's April Fools' day entry for 2005 is up. This one's not fooling me, but it is humorous.

Google Gulp

About 2 weeks ago my XP box really started acting up on me. I noticed that the game I'm playing lately, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, was getting kind of choppy. I then tried to edit some digital video, my other main use for the XP machine, and it didn't work well either. The AVI capture was choppy and the playback was horrible. I rendered some files as MPEG-2 and burned a DVD, and the video seemed more-or-less OK. That led me to believe I had some sort of video codec trouble, but lots of installing and re-installing failed to remedy the problem.

After testing various things I finally noticed that the HD was operating at about 10% of the expected speed and that SiSoft Sandra reported that the drive was not operating in DMA mode. Seems that XP will automatically switch to PIO mode if it detects a certain number of I/O errors. It will make the switch without any warning; it's also not immediately obvious how to switch back to DMA.

While there are software solutions that give you direct control of the DMA setting, I just did the old Windows standby: I removed and reinstalled the Primary IDE channel. After 2 reboots the Primary IDE channel was back in DMA mode and everything (so far) seems to be working just as it was. After being prepared to format the HD or start buying new hardware, I was so glad that a simple software solution fixed my problems.

After all the years of talking about it, I finally got checked out to fly at an aero club today. It all seemed so surreal because the AF does everything using the death-by-briefing technique, while today we basically shook hands and jumped in the airplane to fly. This was probably the first time in my life that a flight instructor examined my experience and then treated me as though I actually had that level of experience.

We did a fairly short flight from Dobbins up to Cartersville for some touch-and-goes, after which we did one more T&G at Dobbins followed by the full stop. I'm also a military fuel truck operator now, although my 20 minutes of training is substantially shorter than the 6-month school for full-time fuelers.

I'm going up by myself on Friday, and then my next flight should be with e and The Boy. How cool!

Well, AJ won't be happy that this isn't an entry about The Boy, but I thought a little Public Service Announcement was in order.

After I landed this morning the base issued an advisory for severe thunderstorms with hail. Since work was done for the day, my boss gave me the go-ahead to get my BMW home and in the garage before the hail came. I made it, but when I got in the house I saw that the power had been out briefly because a few appliances were blinking while others still had the right time. Apparently that power surge fried the motherboard on my XP box. I've tried everything I can, and it still points to a dead MB. I'll have to get a new one on order while I'm in Arizona next week.

So, the PSA is: protect your PCs with a UPS!

Update, 1 May @ 0140: With all the fun in AZ I forgot to order the new parts until Friday the 29th, but a new MB and UPS are on the way. Hopefully this won't catch me again!

Well, it's 12:41 here in Arizona, and I've been flipping through the channels because I can't sleep. When I got to Fox News, I saw that the missing Georgia bride-to-be had been found in New Mexico. Nearly 40 minutes later, CNN "Headline News" is just now showing information about her recovery on the ticker. Meanwhile, the main commentary is the same taped commentary from at least an hour ago. I guess they couldn't get anyone to work the late shift tonight. I'm tempted to stay up to see how long until an actual reporter breaks the story on CNN-HN, but I really need to sleep. I'm going home in the morning after a week-long trip.

Adding to my insomnia is the email I got today at my work account. An old friend said he heard I speak Spanish, and he offically invited me to volunteer for a short tour in a Spanish-speaking country. I don't have any details on the length of the trip or what I'd be doing, but it's a lot to think about on a Friday night. I need to stop thinking about the possibilities because the most likely outcome is that my boss will tell me that leaving my current job is out of the question. I want to talk about this with e right now, but it's nearly 4 am her time and I don't want to wake her up just to speculate about something that most likely won't happen.

Update: 53 minutes later CNN abruptly broke away from the Headline News tape to a live report about Wilbanks's recovery.