Flashing for fun

Hello fans, here’s some new pictures of George’s Funky World Adventures. So no Sex, drugs or Rock ‘n’ Roll on this little outing, but fun nonetheless. In fact this is the closest thing to sexy that you’re likely to see on my blog. Don’t be sad, I can post more interesting stuff later.

Busy, busy, busy…That pretty well sums up this month so far. Oh and bloody hot too. Thank god for air conditioning in the little Kia Rio.

Techno tip No. 3689.
There is a distinct difference between CMOS and BIOS. CMOS stands for Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, whilst the BIOS is for Basic Input/Output System. The CMOS is at the hardware layer, the chip that the BIOS resides on. You could think of the CMOS as a flash memory chip and the BIOS as the operating system that controls it. In fact, almost all BIOS in new PC’s are flash memory chips that are upgradeable by flash bios upgrades. This is achieved by way of a bootable floppy, CDROM, DVDROM, flash memory drive, or floppy disk: Or via downloaded files from the manufacturer’s website. Some motherboards now have dual or even quad BIOS features to preserve BIOS config data.

BIOS is your friend, remember, don’t update your BIOS unless you really have to! A failed flashing of the BIOS can render your main board useless, especially in the event of power failure or premature shutdown during the flash. Anatomical analogies for instance, would be voluntary lobotomies or *gulp* casual weekends at a vasectomy clinic.

All rather painful and unnecessary. If however, you’re the kind of person that would happily sell their spleen for cold hard cash, then BIOS flashing is right up your Kaiser.

Remember, flashing has its risks and you don’t want to get caught with your pants down and a floppy in your hand…Nay friends, we all want a good hard drive with a firm-ware upgrade success story to brag about on the weekend.

Sayonara, flashers!

Fire!

Sometimes it makes you wonder why…
Why people light fires, why people hurt other people, why we are sending our soldiers off to war, why God appears not to care, why BSOD’s appear as if out of nowhere…
Why Bill Gates is so philanthropically inclined these days and why the hell stuff just stops working. The popular theory for the last point in question is the smoke theory.

The smoke theory is based on the belief that all semiconductors are made of smoke. Thus when the smoke gets out, the object emitting the substance is inherently stuffed.
True or false, smoke is never a good thing when it emanates from the insides of your PC. Take the photos above and below… Both share common themes, both are of outdoor settings… Both are on the same road. The image at the top shows a darker patch of sky toward the bottom of the image. The image below this text shows the conditions whilst inside this darker patch of smoke pictured above. The eerie orange glow was freaking me out dude…

There was an unusual absence of flies and other insects and birds too. Weird. Hopefully it wont be so bad tomorrow. O.K, gotta go now and tend to the sheep. Cya’s all later. Ciao!

Wow! We’ve been flat knackers at work. Who would have thought that it would be as busy as it is? Crikey, I’ve barely had time to scratch my butt. Lots of lightning activity has made Power Supplies the most sought after item in the shop. About this time each year, power supplies are regularly frizzled by lightning strikes and surges through the phone line into modems can cause a lot of damage to system boards and devices attached via USB cables. Oddly, it is usually the crappier and cheaper items that survive the lightning attacks, leaving the more expensive and important items in a state of crisp, sometimes darkened lifelessness.

Murphy got it right when he said that an expensive picture tube would protect a 2 cent fuse by blowing first. With good power supplies costing between 60-200 dollars, the demand for them usually sees people opting for the lesser quality and far less reliable brands over the more dependable and higher ratings of the superior units.

It’s not surprising that we have a greater demand for the under $60 range of power supplies. There are still the odd people who come in asking for 1kw PSU’s for under $80. Dreamers…

The movie “The Castle” comes to mind from time to time. Ah well. Better go and get back to surfing. The internet awaits me. Cya later.

Sweet Victory and Bitter Defeat.

When things all go pear shaped, and it seems like you are bashing your head against a brick wall, just when things seem like nothing else can go wrong... It does get worse. But there is always a solution. Don't fret, it can always be fixed somehow. And if you can't fix it, someone else can.

Point in case, is my friend Jeff. Now despite what the name suggests, Jeff is Russian, or Yugoslavian or something. Jeff is an IT Guru (but I can't show his face on Television). Say hello Jeff. Jeff has a problem. His Server is down and an office full of angry staff are on his back to get it up and running. Jeff's only problem is the fact that he is 900km away and cannot accurately guage the scope of the problem. Remote access is not an option, as the server is not booting at all and there are no staff members that are skilled in the areas of server related RAID controller diagnostics...
As you would assume in this (unnamed) enterprise operations environment.

Enter the McTechnician, a highly skilled and secretly trained Professional, always rising to the challenge of a server resurrection. Server resurrection is almost a dark art, leading the practitioner into the realms of the mystic Linux or Windows Server domains. Twice, was I forced to do battle with the server environment, once supremely triumphant, but denied the title of champion on one occasion. The offending server, a corporate beast of the financial institutional persuasion. Of course I nay describe the owner of this dragon, save to say that I was comprehensively beaten by the brute, failing to locate her storage control drivers in order for a recovery to successfully take place.

Likening myself to St. George, I set a second and third plan into action in a bid to slay the beast and get the system back online, but was defeated on every attempt. Ungracefully, I retreated, like a whipped dog, with it's tail between it's legs. Saddened by the undeniable fact that I had been beaten by a machine and it's pathetic operating system. So with lance in hand and head bowed in defeat, I reluctantly retreated to the office where more such problems awaited. And so ended a challenging day of both victory and bitter defeat.