Tag: FML

Recovery All Around

Ubuntu, Courtesy feeblemind.org

I’m still a little sore and feeling somewhat post-op after yesterday’s wisdom tooth extraction, but two side effects have emerged. One is the occasional nosebleed, but I haven’t had one since yesterday (or last night, I think) and the other is these fucking hiccups.

Seriously, hiccups annoy me. It makes it difficult for me to maintain the line of a conversation and sometimes even a train of thought because of these irregular and somewhat random spasms down in my diaphragm. I’ve tried holding my breath and drinking water, as well as this cure and so far have only had mixed results. On to a spoonful of sugar, I guess.

Anyway, my computers seem to be faring better. A little Systems Restore magic on the main desktop got him working again, and I’m currently working around the various little bugs that emerged from upgrading the Ubuntu version on my laptop.

I love Ubuntu, by the way. It’s a great introduction to Linux. The OS is flexible, the community’s friendly & responsive, stuff looks pretty damn good on it and if I can get Wine working again, I might even be able to run games on it. Like, modern ones. I doubt it has the graphical oomph for, say, Aion, but it might be worth a try.

With these problems fixed and updates underway, I figured I could finally get around to recording this week’s ICFN, even if it means using the sub-standard microphone on the webcam. But guess what happened as soon as I settled in to do that.

The fucking hiccups came back.

So, tomorrow, maybe. For now I’m going to stop stressing and do something relaxing, like write, or shoot Collectors in the face with a shotgun. Maybe download Perfect Dark on the XBLA. I hear it’s “a stupid good time.”

There Are Not Enough Expletives.

ON FIRE.

So.

Instead of recording the IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! slated for today at the office, I brought my USB headset home and tried plugging it into the desktop system here at home.

Windows didn’t like it. I run XP on my desktop since there’s no way on God’s greenish-brown Earth I can afford a legit copy of Vista or 7, and it stubbornly refused to acknowledge the proper drivers to use the headset. I could have used the webcam microphone, but that thing tends to make my voice sound like wet expulsions of ass. So I tried just about everything I could think of to get it working and nothing took.

Over to my laptop, then, I figured. It’s something of a clunker, the display occasionally fizzles and its XP installation is at least partially on a bad sector of hard disk, but Ubuntu runs like a champ 9 times out of 10 and I figured it wouldn’t let me down. However, after playing with a few audio packages it seems that while it’ll record sound from the headset, the resulting sound is a stuttering mess.

At this point I was pretty pissed but I resolved to get the audio recorded anyway despite it being almost 10:30 at night. I might still be something of a slacker, but I’m a professional, dammit, and I promised a generous donor I’d get their ICFN up by tomorrow. So I sat down at the desktop to fire up the webcam microphone and tried opening a browser to see my draft of the post.

The Internet didn’t work.

Apparently the last time I removed the USB headset, the associated drivers took the ethernet connector’s drivers with it. Muttering curses to just about every deity I could think of, I rummaged through my disks to find the one for my motherboard. Wham, into the PC it went. Bam, it found the drivers and began to install.

Boom.

Blue screen of death.

I rebooted.

BSoD again.

Cue the Blue Ink Alchemist screaming obscenities.

So, for now, the desktop PC is bricked. The laptop has no reliable way to record audio. And by the time you fine and patient people read this, I’ll have gotten my face cut open and some hard little bony bits torn out.

Happy Friday.

Or, if you prefer…

FUCK. MY. LIFE.

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