Two is the number of ATX power supply boxes I lost in the last thirteen months. Three is the number it is about to become.
They used to last longer. In fact, I never lost a power supply before the Athlon. Of course, I never used an ATX power supply before the Athlon, so the theory that the Athlon related hardware is a power devourer I counter with the theory AT supply boxes are just stronger than ATX ones. But both are inadequate here.
Truth be told, I keep the Athlon running for much longer periods than I ever did the Pentium MMX that came before it. I do remember, however, keeping said PMMX on for 16 days one time, when the computer was still called "D.Rod.net" (because it looked cute on NetMedic). It survived, and still does. Average uptime for the PMMX while in my hands was 14 hours a day; it now runs at least 8 hours a day. All in the same power supply.
The Athlon's first power supply died after 46 days of running non-stop. Those were the days of downloading Chobits on WinMX (and enduring the eternal queues, which explains the 46 days). After that, I played it safe for a while; I was done catching up with Chobits anyway, so I only needed to download a new episode each week, which never lasted more than four days. Once Chobits was done, months came of playing it very safe for the lack of reason not to. I had every English digital fansub of Chobits known to man, and no more HD space to fit anime in. "Why not burn it all to CD?", you ask. That was another problem. Interlude!
I did not want to simply put all those .avi files into CDs. What is the fun in that? I wanted something cute. I wanted to convert them all to MPEGs and make VCDs! And, if I had not wasted way too many CD-Rs in the process, I would burn the .avi files as well, since VCD has lower quality (although that is debatable). But I lacked experience in this converting business. Let us say, I wasted two CD-Rs with Chobits episodes that cannot be watched properly on any TV. After that, I learned to use the CD-RW. It took me exactly one year (yes, 365 days from the first attempt) and more failures than I remember to finally figure out the settings to make a watchable VCD out of those .avi files. And when I finally did... I was entirely out of CD-Rs (remember the Playstation ISOs episode from January and February?). The odissey for proper CD-Rs is another story, which is yet unfinished: I still am all out of CD-Rs. Interlude done.
I hope you did remember the Playstation ISOs episode from January and February, because that was the cause of a second power supply dying. And this one after merely 15 days going non-stop. That was tremendously frustrating. "15 days! The other one lasted three times longer!" It was replaced. But... guess what!
For assorted reasons, Asgaard has been firefly-esque lately. Some nights it is kept on, others not, but never longer than 5 days in a row. Eventually, the power supply's fan started making stupid noises. Tap here, angry look there, it would go away. Until today. The noise was more stupid than the Volcano 7's. The smell of something burning confirmed it. I turned it off, losing my place in the queue for that very rare file I am downloading on WinMX. "Cool down a bit, we will talk later." Turned it on again, stupid noise, no wind.
"I am so sick of you." How many million transistors do I have in this Athlon chip smaller than my palm? It is grotesque that the 8th generation of electronic device is put to halt by a defective fan of 2nd generation of electric/mechanic device! I opened the supply box, tapped the fan, forced it back and forth, and ptooey, it seems alive again. Naturally, one of those things that will only work on this angle (yes, angle: 30 degrees or so, diagonal). As soon as I put it back to the 90 degrees it is supposed to work on, it fails. Once again Asgaard needs to be torn apart to function.
Now, the conclusion of this. The AT cases and their respective power supply boxes (and I had many, many AT cases) were all by different manufacturers, from the days were cases were imported or produced by some small company that took the risk. Then one company came forward and got bigger. That company is Troni. Troni is today responsible for a virtual monopoly in the business of computer cases and related pieces. It is no wonder that these three failing power supply boxes were by Troni. No bigger wonder that my previous ATX case, that could not hold an ATX motherboard, was made by Troni. Monopoly. I can counter Microsoft's by using Netscape, Linux, piracy. I cannot counter Troni. In this country, I am stuck with the low-quality products they force into the market they dominate.
It is a lose-lose situation. They will go on dominating the market because they sell their cases for a comparatively low price. Low price, in comparison to a case of real quality. But people here buy computers with "onboard video card, 32 Mb of shared memory", and wonder why their games run so slow, and are very sure they need a Pentium 4 2GHz to run them properly. I really do not expect them to care about the quality of the cases their puny motherboards rest inside. And to them, keeping a computer on for more than 4 hours is beyond absurd. "If you're not using it, shut it down." A computer is not a manual loom, I do not need to be sitting in front of it with my hands on the keyboard to be "using" it!
So tomorrow I need to take this power supply to the techs. "Hi, it died again. Do you have something strong this time?" "Sorry, we know how that is, but our supplier only has this model..."
(NOTE: If you came here looking for the lyrics to "Don't Walk Away From Love" by Gregory Gray, they are in this post.)
There was a song on the radio today. I hear it often. I catch some phrases and look for them. I never find it.
"She's feeling cynical, tired. The city lights can really blow your mind. Don't walk away from love", taka taka taka. Maybe I am understanding it all wrong. After all, this is one of those songs that got glued in my head before I knew enough English, so I remember most of it phonetically. And until I read the lyrics, it is rather hard to hear the correct version instead of the phonetical version.
I always try "She's feeling cynical" first on Google. No deal. So I went for "can really blow your mind". I was browsing through the links, getting frustrated, when I came across one Google entry that said "the Holy Spirit can really blow your mind". Woo. I had to visit it. Here it is in case you have time to spare. Here is the copy on Google's cache, should the original disappear.
An argument erupted between some members, as is natural to happen when you have UFO people and skeptics talking, and a Catholic comes rushing in. I loved this passage:
So answer me this....when I disappear along with a lot of other walk the walk Christians, and the aliens come down saying that they "beamed us up to another planet" cause the earth is about to go through a spiritual evolution and we were too close-minded to participate, and then tell you that you're going to have to volunteer for some genetic manipulation to survive the coming cataclysmic earth changes, THEN YOU WILL KNOW. You will KNOW that I wasn't as crazy as you thought I was all this time. You will KNOW that I'm not an octypus, but rather with Jesus. And guess what home-boy? You're gonna fall right down on your knees and be a martyr for Christ. And I'm just gonna be laughin', laughin', laughin' (looking down from above with the utmost joy). And then when you get there with me I'm gonna say "See? I told ya so." LMAO!
I will not go into religion and/or UFO today. I am writing this to mention that this passage, along with subsequent posts, gave me an idea. Unfortunately, I cannot put it to practice, as it would involve drawing skills. I wanted to draw a comic, because the story that I envisioned does not fit in words alone.
It would portray one boy offering cookies to a dog, while another boy shows the leash and proposes to take it for a walk. The dog is blind and rather dumb, so it is not sure if the offers are real. The dog is also not sure if it should trust either boy - assuming they are there, and both are not a product of his imagination.
But this image of the dog is a metaphor, it would be a little side story, like the ghost ship thingie in Watchmen. The real story would be about a powerful entity fighting another powerful entity for the throne of a planet (think Master of Orion, the throne in the planet of Orion). The beings living on this planet are not sure of what is going on, and they are easily tricked and fooled because they cannot see ten inches ahead of their noses. So the two high beings deceive the tiny organisms on the surface. One creates some fancy stories that portray him as good and the other as bad, then gets those stories to be considered holy; the other uses that trick against the first, and makes many different versions of that same story, so those who fall for it fight among themselves. They fight on with tricks like that, twisting the mind of the little beings below, maneuvering the masses, showing things to some and not to others. Eventually the two beings realize their war is probably more fun than ruling those petty creatures, and decide to work together in causing chaos and confusion among the little beings. And while the tiny creatures kill each other over what they think is right, and waste their lives studying false truths and seeking a greater end after their deaths, the two higher beings laugh very hard and plan their next big joke.
I planned on calling one being Bill, the other Ted. Or Belldandy and Mumrah. Or Jesus and Lucifer. Not sure yet.
But I am not good at drawing, so my excommunication will have to wait.
Few days ago I was switching channels randomly on the TV when I came across a biography for Madonna. Her first years of success were the early 80's. No news there. I am not old enough to remember the initial shock. When I realized what was going on, she was already a singer famous more by the attitude than the songs (thus why the first song I remembered being hers was "Don't cry for me, Argentina"; way late, eh?).
I regret being so young. I wish I had seen the impact caused by a pop star who comes up and screams "I am here to portray a sensual girl. My image will sell more than my songs. I openly show I want men to fantasize about me.". Only image of the young Madonna I had up to not long ago was her character Susan in a movie of which all I remember was she ate spaghetti with her toes.
The 90's were no good in that sense. Madonna as a mother singing "Frozen" was just very unnecessary. No artist dared follow her tracks - and none could anyway, it had been done ten years before. We had a proliferation of smaller idols outshading each other. "J.Lo", Christina, Britney, Spice Girls. None of them were shocking. Britney Spears got boring in her little purity. Spice Girls did not live up to the expectations. Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguillera were too vulgar, too obvious. None of them had the combination of angelical look and fiery eyes (and body, lyrics, et alii).
Done with that thought, I moved on to the next channel, and the next, so on. Eventually, as if by divine intervention, I fell on one and saw a grayish image of some open umbrellas, rain. Music started playing. Addictive music: for the next two days I had to contain myself not to scream "This! Is! Not en-o-ough!!". They call it "t.A.T.u", but I will just refer to it as "Tatu" because all those dots everywhere annoy me.
It is too early to say they are as big a hit as Madonna. Surely they caused a lot of shock and gained a billion fans in two weeks, but I wonder if they have staying power. Madonna was in the spotlight for about ten years, and when we thought she was done she became a mother and went back to it, then she went nuts again. Of course, she is rather overdue now, as her last work shows. But she is still up there, regardless.
Back to my views. I was disappointed that I missed the 80's, but the 00's had this in store. I think I still prefer the 80's.
Madonna put herself up there for the world to fantasize, but she was "reachable", I mean, she was one girl, teasing boys. Tatu is two girls, a closed relationship as far as the non-Russian speaking public knows - and even if it is not, that is the image they portray. That renders them rather unreachable: for males, because they are just not into them; for females, because they already have a counterpart. I am not making my views clear at all. Madonna says "I am sexy, you want me."; the Tatu girls say "We are beautiful, you want us... Too bad.".
So what is the problem, after all? None, really. Personal opinion: I think teasing works better (and is more honest) when it is possible to have what is being offered. The 00's do not give it. "Look. Look more. Look again. Touch? No."
There is no conclusion here, no defining thought. The brunette girl (Yulia, I think) is cuter than Madonna ever was, if you mind knowing what I think. But if I had to choose, I would pick the 80's. On the other hand, I now feel glad I only paid attention to the 90's. I wonder what is going through the minds of boys and girls born a decade after me.