Internet Explorer 6 is not supported  |  4-12-2008

If you are using Internet Explorer 6 then you might notice a couple of problems in my website. The first problem being the transparent png's next to my logo. If you are using Internet Explorer 6 you will see that they have a white background instead of the blue that the rest of the box has. I learned recently that Internet Explorer 6 doesn't handle png's correctly. Oh well. Second thing you might notice is that there are little boxes in the headlines of my blog entries. Apparently IE6 isn't happy about the nbsp; element. Don't forget to take into consideration IE6's poor support for CSS. So for the aforementioned arguments, I will not make my website Internet Explorer 6 friendly. Besides, since a lot of people are making the switch to IE7 why even use IE6. Plus there are other more competant browsers out there such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari. All of which you may use to view my site in correctly.

Windows Vista Can't Connect To Internet  |  4-07-2008

Okay, so as stated before I am using Windows Vista Ultimate. Also, unlike (seemingly) most people, I really enjoy it. But after getting my new hard drive back and reinstalling Windows Vista I had a certain issue arise. First I'll give you the back story. So as I just mentioned I got my new hard drive from Western Digital. Upon receiving it I put it in my new computer and rebuilt my raid array and had to reinstall Windows. No big deal so far. Once the installation completed I began to download and apply the updates. After my updates were applied I began to download and install some of my programs (e.g. Firefox, Pidgin, Visual Studio) and install some of my games (e.g. Gears of War, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3). But there was one thing I forgot to do, and that was change my power settings to the way I like. If there's one thing I hate is when my computer goes into sleep or hibernation without me explicitly telling it to do so. So anyways, after getting all my applications back on I decided to get out of the house for a bit. I came back later that afternoon and my computer was off and I thought that was kind of odd. So I ended up having to push the power button on my computer to turn it back and and I can see that the computer went to sleep (or possibly hibernation, I forget). So anyways, once Windows came back to life I did not have an internet connection. This kind of worried me given the fact that I had internet problems when my hard drive died. So I tried to do the basic troubleshooting first. I checked the drivers to see if they were there and then proeeded to reinstall them anyways. Then I checked my cables and routers. I even reset the main router just to make sure. Then I proceeded to try the other LAN connection on my motherboard, but there was no luck there. It was at that point that I hit the internet for a solution (on my laptop), and hard. But again the only thing only other solutions I was able to find were the ones I already tried. So since I had just installed Windows and not really done anything with it yet I decided to go down the long, tedious, and time-consuming road that is a Windows installation. After the installation was complete I tried to get back online. Much to my dismay I found out that I still did not have an internet connection. At this point I was cursing to myself because I was so angry. It was at this point I started to get really stupid. I got out the cd that came with my motherboard and and tried to reinstall the network adapter drivers. But that didn't work, so I decided to reinstall Windows, again. I know that was very dumb but I was running out of options. Even though I had reinstalled Windows again I still had the same problem. So I went back to my laptop and I found a post in a forum about yet another person who had a similar problem. Except their solution was that they didn't use their computer for several days, possibly even weeks and the problem sort of fixed itself. It was then that I realized what I had to do. I turned off my computer, unplugged it, held the power button down for 60 seconds, plugged it all back in and, VOILA!. Everything worked again and I was never so relieved to have a working computer. This trick has helped me before, especially in Compaq laptops. In my own Compaq laptop (that I no longer own) I once booted the laptop up but the keyboard and mouse were not being detected. So tech support told me about that trick. On two occasions I fixed other people's Compaq laptops because they wouldn't turn on using the same method. What I found out is holding down the power button somehow resets the NVRAM in the computer. After discussing what happened with a friend of mine he informed me that hibernation and sleep tend to have issues with NVRAM, or it could be the other way around. Although, as to why it works, well I was never able to find a clear answer to that. Though I'd have to imagine that it worked because holding down the power button for that long flushed out a capacitor that switched the NVRAM chip into a sane state. Now you might be wondering why I'm even posting about this. Well, for one reason I like to write about things I learn so I'll better remember them, also because I like people to know that I'm doing something with my computer instead of just playing games, hehe. But in the case of this post, more importantly I wrote this up in the case that someone else finds it and it solves their problem. No where on the net did I find the solution I just gave you so I want it on the net floating around somewhere in hopes that someone will stumble upon it.

My Adventures In Computer Hardware  |  3-12-2008

So I graduated in December. As a graduation gift to myself, using the money I received from family and other relatives, I bought myself a new computer. The specs are as follows:

So anyways a few years ago I also had two raptors in my old computer. The reason why I like raptors so much is because they are already very fast and I enjoy the benefits of putting them into raid 0. Unfortunately not long after getting my first set of raptors (which are now in my old computer) one of them went bad. I mean really bad. The bad hard drive was actually rattling. I'm referring to the discs inside of the hard drive to be specific. Fortunately for me though I just got the hard drives and Western Digital provides a very good warranty program. So I had it replaced and they've been working ever since. Now, as you can see from the list above, I opted for the raptors again. In a weird twist of fate one of them went bad again. This time the problem wasn't so obvious. So anyways, what happened this time is one of the drives went bad, as I just mentioned, but slowly. The first time I noticed a real problem was when my computer randomly locked up. So I hit the reset button and during boot up the nVidia raid controller wouldn't detect my raid array, but yet it detected both drives. So after hitting the reset button a couple of times I eventually hopped on my laptop to see if anyone else had the same problem and if there's a possible solution. Fortunately the solution to my problem required me to cold boot the computer. I did feel rather dumb for not doing that before checking for a solution. Fortunately it worked so once I got back into Windows I backed up some of my important data. A short amount of time goes by and eventually Firefox can't connect to anything. Now just firefox was the problem; pidgin and putty worked just fine. So I rebooted and sure enough, the nVidia raid controller didn't detect my array. So the cold boot worked again. Unfortunately not long after re-logging into Windows Firefox started acting up again. So I reboot, raid controller didn't detect my array. Although, this time BIOS and the raid controller wouldn't detect the drive. So I deactivated the array and just installed Windows onto my one hard drive. Sure enough the Windows didn't recognize the other hard drive but I didn't care so I let it go until I could request my replacement. Well this brought in a couple of new issues. The first being that Windows took forever to load. The second being that Firefox would still occassionally freeze. So at this point I unplugged the bad drive and everything went back to normal. So the moral of the story is this: If you can bring a failing hard drive back to life backup all important data and DITCH THE DRIVE RIGHT AWAY!!

Hello World!  |  2-20-2008

Welcome to my little home on the web. As you can see this website is going to house my blog, resume, and any sort of downloads and links I want to distribute. My blog is going to consist of my thoughts and opinions on various topics that interest me. These topics can range from video games, computers, anything I've learned to daily live itself. Also, chances are if you're reading this right now then the site hasn't been moved to it's own home yet. Now, you're probably wondering why I'm not actually talking more about myself here. Well that's simple; that's what the 'About Me' section is for. On that note I'm going to close my first blog entry and I hope that you all enjoy reading my blog and browsing my website.