Archive for September, 2007
HP DV9225 Laptop broke, video display issue
A week ago when Chapman’s were down, my laptop screen wouldn’t come back out of sleep mode. All of the lights were on, and all indications were that it was working fine by the lights, but the screen wouldn’t come up.
I have an HP DV9225, and it was pretty high end when I bought it in February. But it is still brand new in my mind and shouldn’t be having any issues.
I spent over an hour on the phone, maybe two, with some Indian tech support that I could hardly understand. After removing and putting the battery back in the computer came back up fine. He had me reset the BIOS, and I also went in later and removed the John Deere software I had installed over the weekend. I figured things would be fine.
But this weekend it did it again. I got the series of three beeps again like I did the first time when I freaked out. I know a series of beeps is a hardware error.
This time tech support had me do the same stuff, and re-seat the memory. Nothing worked. So, now I get to be without it for two weeks at least to send it back to them on their dime to repair it. It is a video display issue, and I hope it doesn’t magically fix itself in the mail on the way to them.
But to say that I am disappointed is an understatement. There is the obvious inconvenience, but there is also the fact that I chose this laptop based largely on brand loyalty. I have had good luck with HP stuff in the past and I thought I would stick with it. I had gotten the blue screen of death (BSOD) a couple of times since I had it, some sort of memory dump. So, I am hoping that the video display part was just faulty and it will work perfect for a long time when I get it back.
But I have to think about buying HP again in the future. I don’t like ever being without my machine, and don’t like the fact that I can’t return it somewhere more local. The tech support guy couldn’t tell me where the repair location I was mailing the DV9225 laptop was located, he just didn’t know. I have to wait on the box, and then wait on them. It should be under the manufacturer’s warranty, but if it is not, I know that I won’t be buying HP again. I can only assume replacing the whole screen potentially on my dime, would be costly.
Nokes Photos Added
I added some new photos to our online photo gallery of Nokes today. Most of them are over the last month, including a handful of photos from when Chapman’s were down.
There are some cute ones of Nokes drinking water from a water bottle outside, some tandem photos of Nokes with Hunter watching out the door, sleeping, or hanging out in the car, and some of just Nokes around the house.
Invoicing, New Apartments and Napping
As we get older, and our nights are earlier, that makes the early morning lifting sessions easier to do. Dave and I met again today before church. I like meeting before church because it is a time frame I might have been awake anyway, why not be productive and use that time to lift. Sarah usually needs most of that time to get ready, but said she would go with us if we could go a little earlier. Next time…
After church we closed out the service again. A crowd of about 10 of us stood around and talked, felt like awhile since we had done that.
When we got home, it was time to work on the computer. Late last night my laptop did the crappy thing with the screen going out again. I hope I can fix it with the same tricks, but I must not be doing them right because I tried what I did with the HP tech before and they aren’t working. So I just worked on the desktop.
I decided it was time to pass the reigns on the final piece of church updating, and gave some of the content editors two weeks to determine who would do the weekly news before I stopped. I didn’t know a better solution, but I really need to step away from that.
I also had some updates I needed to do for Madeline’s Dance.
Just before we had some lunch, I ran out to the movie store and did a exchange for something new – A Good Year. We ate, watched part of the movie, and then got back at it.
I don’t know what Sarah was doing, but I think it was school work. I feel bad that I don’t know…I should. I think she was evaluating a planet earth special someone gave her on DVD for her class. I had to do some invoicing, so my activity was less than fun anyway.
We then took a little break to go and visit some friends. Rachel and Joel had moved into a new apartment around the time we got back from our vacation, so I wanted to go and see them, support them in their new place, and get a good sense of where they are now located. We talked about a lot of stuff, including her schooling and what their future held. Their new apartment is really nice, they did a nice upgrade without having to sacrifice location.
When we got back Sarah kept me company working on school work while I dissected the Mr. Do! to prep to move the monitor and iso transformer into the R-Type. I worked on that for a little while before I hit a road block, I really need solder wick.
We went back upstairs, I put on cartoons and fell asleep. Sarah talked with her parents for a little bit I think. Then, knowing that I was groggy and concentrating was probably out of the picture I just popped the movie back in and watched a good portion of that before heading off to bed.
Looking forward to Superbad
Originally today was going to be really busy with Habitat in the morning for four hours. But now, we had the whole morning to do the catchup game. Catchup on all the neglected stuff from the past work week.
We got up early and took Nokes on a walk.
When we got back, Sarah played with the dog and I worked on the laptop, doing some vectorizing work of some arcade sideart (The Glob).
I decided to try more of our movie “21 Grams”. We watched about a half hour of it the night prior, pretty intense, couldn’t really get into it. It was easier going today, and we finished it off. Decent movie, interesting way to tell a story.
Then, it was nap time:)
After I woke up I got to work. I had a layout I have needed to do for quite some time and now I had a large chunk to work. I worked for over three hours, right up to when Lori and Kenny were coming over for dinner.
We had something simple to eat, Sarah just got out taco stuff. We had to be kind of fast about it so we could make our $5 movie club card showing of Superbad. Lori pegged me, I loved that movie. It was vulgar, sure, but it was my type of humor. I loved it, it was the best of some originally crazy high school personalities, hijinks and silliness. I would not recommend it to many people because of the content though, you have to be pretty ready.
When we got back, we had some drinks and played some euchre. It felt like ages since we played last, it was good. Even though Sarah and I lost on the last trick. We talked about music and other odds and ends before we called it a night.
The Glob custom kickplate
Rick asked me to give him a ring last night, and this is what we talked about. He said he has a set of sideart that he will take photos of, and was hoping that I could take the characters from “The Glob” and put together a custom kickplate. I told him that shouldn’t be a problem, send the photos my way.
I had never heard of the game, so I took a look at some photos. I would like to try playing it, the artwork is kind of strange looking though. Not sure if I would classify it as appealing.
Friday’s are good for winding down
Knowing that tomorrow we would be probably going to Habitat for humanity, Sarah and I wanted to take it easy. Not to mention our little late night last night baby sitting and watching the game with the Bolden’s.
Come to find out, looking at the information a little closer, I had my dates mixed up, so Habitat isn’t tomorrow but the end of the month. But we still just hung out.
We went to the gym right after work and got home to be with our puppy at a reasonable time.
I made a number of business follow up calls, two of them concerning freelance work. I got a couple of bills paid, and that was the extent of my excitement for the night. We watching some tv / movies, and went to bed.
Thinking more about artist for Jr. Pac-man machine
I have made a reminder on my calendar to research into the Jr. Pac-man arcade game artist eventually, but right now I have so many arcade related projects to do that I keep waiting to do the research.
But yesterday I found the artist for the Baby Pac-man machine by Bally. Now, the Bally/Midway pinball division was probably totally separate from the video division, but they may have still had some cross over and members of the arcade game art direction units may have known each other. I may try to research the artist’s name some and see if they can help point me in the direction of eventually finding the Jr. Pac-man artist.
