Computer difficulties

My PC at home has been unstable for some time now. The other day it crashed hard, and wouldn't reboot. The problem, according to the code displayed on the motherboard was "C1 - autodetection of DRAM and Cache". That's not good. So I left it half an hour, turned off external cache, moved my RAM stick to a different slot, and all was good again. For now, anyway.

I'm now thinking that I'll probably buy a new one as soon as I get my tax return. As of last week, I was planning to get something like this:

• $109: Gigabyte GA7VT600F AMD MB DDR400 Sound 8XAGP KT600 Firewire LAN SATA
• $129: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ CPU Boxed w/ HS & Fan. Barton 333
• $159: WD 7200RPM 120Gb SATA HDD 8Mb Cache; Serial ATA150; JD
• $129: 512Mb DDR400 Memory
• $69: H622 Blue tower 450W Front USB
• $59: ATI Radeon 9200SE VGA 64Mb AGP

Ebay purchase update

It looks like the problem with my defective universal remote control will be resolved satisfactorily. The seller is sending me a replacement as well as a reply-paid envelope to return the defective unit. Can't ask for much more than that.

Saturday morning: Bridal Expo

We went along to Bridal Expo at Burswood on Saturday. Most people who I mention this to start by offering their condolences, but it really wasn't too bad. It was even useful! We looked at a few limos, and now I know the right sort of questions to ask. We looked at several photographers, which just convinced me that this guy is who we should go with. We looked at his work a couple of weeks back. But the expo also had lots of girly stuff that I wasn't interested in.

Saturday arvo: New modem for mum

I bought and installed a new 56k modem for my mum on Saturday arvo. There are now two computers with modems in her house, but her machine is strangely unnetworkable. It took longer than it should have because I've forgotten how to use Windows, the modem didn't come with drivers, and I decided I'd download Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird for her. No virus scanner though, I have no idea what's available.

Sometimes I wonder about some people's ability to own a computer.

Sunday: Rapids

We went up to Bells Rapids yesterday, had a picnic there, watched people falling into the water, and walked around a bit. The rapids are in the upper reaches of the Swan River. At the moment there's lots of people practising their kayaking and canoeing in preparation for the Avon Descent in the first weekend of August. While we were there, there was a group of obvious beginners learning how to negotiate their way through the rapids. About half of them fell in the water, which was entertaining for spectators. I was amused by the young kids who would yell "another one's going to fall in!" every time someone paddled towards the roughest part of the rapids.

After a while we stopped watching and went for a walk and got a bit lost. I'm not exactly sure what happened, we were on a pretty big path that never seemed to go back towards the start. Eventually we gave up and went cross country for a little bit. I was reminded of this sign that I saw in the Blue Mountains. It says in English This sign is to prevent foreign tourists from getting lost, but if anyone speaks Japanese, Chinese, or Korean I would be most interested to know what else it says.