Image via Wikipedia

I have been pretty well offline for the past few days as I attempted some computer upgrades.

That doesn’t sound like I’m much of a geek, but let me explain. First, I’m not counting my time at work; I am online on at least two computers at once while working, but I’m working. Right now I’m writing the first half of this post on my work notebook during lunch. Even if our network goes down at work and I am not online, I support computers for a living and that is geeky in itself. But I have to consider the work time different than the home online time; otherwise I probably would not go near a computer when I got home.

The upgrade was supposedly a simple memory upgrade. Karin and I built identical computers 6 months ago when it became impossible to continue on our old dinosaurs. I ensured our motherboards were capable of running 8GB of memory each, but for budget reasons we put 2 gigs each in at the time to see if it was enough. The computers run well, and we’ve had none of the problems everyone complains about with regards to Vista or a 64 bit operating system, but when I had multiple photos open in editing software while also keeping track of my favourite blogs, I could notice the slow down. This is to be expected when photo editing; it is a memory hogging task.

So last Monday we headed into Langley both to make a stop at the dentist to pick up pills for Karin, and to also stopped an NCIX to purchase extra RAM. If you have a dual-channel capable board, information in the memory can be accessed quicker if you have two sticks in the same coloured slots on your motherboard. Basically, this allows the system to access both at once, which lets your memory keep up with the speed of today’s CPUs.  We had put 2 sticks of 1GB each into each computer, and so my plan was to put all 4 sticks into one computer to give it 4GB, and then buy a package of 2 sticks of 2GB each for the other computer. The best available for budget minded people such as ourselves was some OCZ Platinum XTC for $75. This meant we each got to double our RAM for $38 a computer, a deal in my eyes.

But then the struggles began. I put the 4 x 1GB sticks into Karin’s computer, and then I Monday night I could not get my computer to boot with both sticks of the new RAM. I had to finally leave it so that I could get enough sleep for work the next day. Karin’s appeared to work fine, but then she messaged me Tuesday morning from my home computer to say hers was frozen. I had to have her pull the two extra sticks out so she could get it to reboot.

Karin’s solution was simple, I just had to bump up the RAM voltage in the BIOS because the RAM runs at a higher voltage the the board provides by default.  But for mine there was no such luck.  I flashed my BIOS to the latest version, and then began changing the voltage and many other settings.  Each setting has a range within which it could safely be set without voiding any warranties, but to try every combination took quite some time as I would have to insert just one stick, boot to the BIOS, change settings, shut down, insert the second stick, reboot and test.

After a couple of nights of this and some advice and research on the OCZ support forums, the possiblities were all tried and it seemed I might actually have defective RAM.  I ran Memtest86+ and confirmed that one stick is bad; and then kicked myself for not testing it sooner.

So this entire week has been one of working on my computer hardware, which is geeky; but wasting time when I should have tested for defects sooner, which is not so geeky.

We’re now off to Langley to exchange the RAM, and hopefully I will be up and running tonight.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Do you ever get so many tasks going at once that you become overwhelmed and get very little done?

That has been what I have encountered as of late. I have all of our Mexico pictures to catalogue, edit and publish; a task I wanted to have finished long ago. However, we had also decided that we would help out friends in Playa del Carmen that run the Peanut Pet Shelter by building them a new website. Andie and Jen devote their lives to rescuing the many stray dogs in the streets of Playa, and their shelter and they themselves depend on people donating to their registered charity to keep their dream alive. We had hoped to help them by creating a site that might increase donations and awareness to their cause. Also on my agenda is this site; both my blog and the plans we have for PlayaParadise.

The end result of it all was that nothing was getting done. After work, I do like a bit of down time before I start in on the necessary tasks. Once it was time to do these tasks, I would end up working on each a little, never accomplishing anything because each would only get partially done. I have numerous half written blog posts. I have some of the photos almost done. Add to that what seems like an endless stream of all sorts of unplanned items, such as relatives computers that needed to be fixed, trips to the dentist and wedding present/card/clothing shopping. When I would try and continue one of the partially completed tasks, I would waste a lot of time just trying to figure out where I had been before. Beating myself up about being behind on all my tasks was making it even harder to get motivated on any of them.

I had to find a solution, and I feel that i have done so. To start, a big item is now off the plate. Andie and Jen let us know that a professional publicity company has started designing website for them. They were quite embarrassed and apologetic; apparently they did not even know this had been started, but in reality it was sort of a relief considering that we’ve been constantly behind as of late.

In order to get other things done, I am going to apply some time management techniques to the tasks. Nothing to fancy, but simply I will do a blog post each time I complete a half day of pictures. By following this schedule, I’ll remove the pressure I placed on myself that was resulting in me getting nothing done.

So look for both regular posting to return, and pictures of our favourite place.  Once the pictures are finished, we’ll start with our revamp of the main page, as the plans rely on the pictures.

In the meantime, you can read about Karin’s adventures that added to our dentist trips.  Be sure to read all the posts that followed.

Our social committee at work was quick this morning to demonstrate that yesterday’s seemingly poor choice at work in fund raising ideas was actually the norm. We all received an email this morning congratulating us on the amount of money we had raised for the Heart and Stroke Foundation through yesterday’s bake sale, reminding us that it was just the beginning. The fund raising continues today with sales of Candy Grams for Valentine’s.

I’m saving my pennies, I know that there must be a poutine sale coming soon!

I know they mean well, but….

As February is Heart Month, various fund raisers for the Heart and Stroke Association of BC are planned at work. One of them takes place today in the form of a bake sale today in the cafeteria.

In a building full of geeks that sit on their ass talking on the phone all day, located in a town where no one has ever turned down seconds and my fat ass doesn’t stand out as much as when I’m home in Abbotsford or in Vancouver, you are promoting Heart Month with the sale of sugar and carbohydrate laden goodies?

If I wasn’t sick, I’d be down there being a trouble maker.

“Can you point me to the Heart Healthy cookies?”