That’s right! I’m tired of seeing everything within the same page. This blog will now have multiple pages! It’s an effort to organize the electronic content within…. Get started on using the navigators!

Hey everyone, its been a month or 2 since I updated this. Currently, I’m posting from my friends blackberry; what’s great is you don’t need any extra software on the phone. Not even gears! Any who, I’ve been posting on eport and the wiki… Check it out, more 2 come soon.

Purchase order set 1 (Feb. 17th to Feb. 23rd, 2008)

#A)
Thermaltake AquaBay M5 CL-W0103 Water Pump & Alarm LCD

Ebay Item Number: 330210853537
Sale Price: $54.99
Shipping Cost: $8.95
Total Paid:

I’ve been out of a laptop for a day. What?the?fudge happened to Ubuntu? I ran into a strange problem with my dual boot setup. My laptop is an HP dv6308nr, 4gig 64 bit monster that I love. Here’s the problem. I have Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) running with a generic, US english keyboard map and it doesn’t play well with my hardware. Trust me, I learned the hard way that it’s really important to have the proper drivers for your specific hardware.?I used my hotkey’s to increase and lower the LCD brightness. Well, I pressed the down button so much, the LCD went completely dark and powered off my backlight. The os was still running fine. At an angle, you could barely make out the desktop.

At this moment, the worst thing anyone can think of happened to me. The keyboard shortcut’s/hot keys (whatever you want to call it) stopped working. I couldn’t increase the brightness and now I’m stuck in the backlight completely off. My Laptop is unusable. So I tried to find my mouse cursor on the brightness icon in my panel but I can’t even see the cursor. Then I did what anyone would do, I hit the power button to hard power down the machine. The laptop remembered the LCD brightness settings (I beileive it’s controlled by the BIOS, but within the BIOS settings there’s no control to change it) and as it rebooted, I always got a black screen because the LCD blacklight was completely off. Ok you’re thinking, why don’t you boot into Vista and solve your problem? I can’t even see my GRUB menu to select the Vista partition. I could not make out what the white text looks like.

My only option at this point is to reset the BIOS. This will allow the backlight/LCD brightness to resume at a default level. I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to put in a live cd and tweak Ubuntu’s files. But no, things always have to be a little difficult. I unplugged the Laptop, removed the battery, unscrewed the memory cover and disconnected the BIOS battery. After a few minutes I reassembled the laptop and powered it on. I thought to myself, for a Linux OS this was easy. My hopes were destroyed because right after the Grub loading messages, I received another, “Grub error 17.” The machine wouldn’t boot and is now stuck in this area.

I can’t believe when you illegitimately power off a Linux machine, the boot record is affected. I could be wrong and if I am, why is Gurb failing to load my OS menu? A little research online is now going to make me use a live cd, boot the machine, mount the bad partition and edit the Grub settings. Then I should be able to boot normally. I ran into another probelm, after booting from pendrivelinux, I couldn’t mount the Ubuntu partition. I could mount my NTFS 32 bit Vista partition and my swap partition, but not Ubuntu. The partition tools I used with pendrivelinux detected the Ubuntu partition as /dev/sda2, but it could not tell me what file system it was. Even the auto switch with mount was a no go.

I then launched parted and discovered there was no file system associated with sda2. Puzzling, isn’t it? How can an illegitimate power off, wreck a boot record and a partition. So I powered off without unmounting my main file system, what’s the big deal? Looks like a huge deal becuase now it’s gone. I could power off any Microsoft Operating System and the MBR/main file system would not be affected. How come the swap file was not affected? I know it was mounted and activated for use by Ubuntu. I know it was not being used. My swap is only 300 megs because I have 4 gig’s available to Ubuntu. What can I do to fix this issue? I have 7 gigs of unallocated space on my hard drive and I decided to install a fresh copy of Ubuntu on it.

The fresh Ubuntu 64 install only took about 20 minutes and Grub was re-installed in the process. My boot menu now contained Vista and Ubuntu 64. Vista was not affected by this messhap and that makes me very happy. That’s one less monkey to spank. Anyway, after configuring my Nvidia and faught with my Wifi card, I started to play with my old file system. I can’t mount it but I can see it. It shows up in GParted and in Nautilis. Within GParted, I assigned it as an EXT3 system and I did not format it. Strangely, There was no file system type assigned to it. Now I could mount it without a problem. I couldn’t access anything? within it though. I only had a visible lost and found folder. No hidden files and I didn’t even bother to check the available space because I just gave up on it.

This strange problem left me with a lot of un-answered questions that I can’t find a solution to. I can’t even locate anyone on the internet who has had a similar issue.

• Why was my boot loader affected by an illegitimate power off?
• Why was my Ubunutu partition destroyed and marked as no file system within any partition tools?
• Why couldn’t I simply reinstall the Grub boot loader from my live cd and usb pendrivelinux?
• How come my Vista and Linux swap partition was unaffected?
• Importantly, why the heck did anyone think it was a good idea to completely turn off the Backlight of an LCD? If I want it off, i’ll power off the laptop, place it in?standby, sleep or hibernate mode.

Finally, I plan on destroying the old fex’d-up partition and extending my current install of Ubuntu to use the space. Then, I’ll figure out how to completely DISABLE the option to power off the LCD back light from the brightness controls. I love being able to control how bright or dim I can have the screen; I hate being able to power off the Back light.

Deals, Deals, Deals….

Did you get one? Before I went out to join a raged crowd, on Thanksgiving night I spent some time with one of my good friends (the internet) to research retailers. From my experience, it was a good idea. I knew what I wanted and where to get it. I also planned out what store to head too first. I didn’t join the raged crowds at midnight. Oh no, I got some well needed rest and left my home at 730AM, on Friday morning.

My first stop was the Microcenter. I had my eyes on a 22 inch X2Gen Sceptre flat panel monitor. The Microcenter advertised the monitors at $150.00 after an instant rebate and a mail in rebate (the list price as of September was $299.00). At the registers, I paid $188.00 after an “instant rebate” and MA sales taxes. I have a $30.00 mail in rebate that I need to send in this week. I like the monitor and have been pleased with the performance of it. I haven’t had a chance to use it for gaming yet.

After the Microcenter, I went off to Best Buy. Due to excessive lines inside the store. I deided against purchasing anything. I only went into best buy to browse around. I had no intentions of buying anything. So they did have a great sale on dvd’s and some software, but I didn’t even see anything else that caught my attention. In fact, the 32inch, 1080, HD TV I bought from them in mid September for $500.00 plus a 4 year warranty (total, around $600.00) was now on display for $699.00. I thought, holy hell bat man! I got that product for a cheaper price a month and a half ago. I would not pay $699.00 + $100.00 (TV, warranty and taxes) = $799.00 for a 32 inch HDTV. I would get something bigger and better for the price.

I did head over to other retailers and purchased other items (all deals). I consider it a deal becuase I receive 50 percent off of everything I bought. But, it’s not technical related, so I won’t post about it.

For now…..