Eugene’s Neighborhood

Martin Wu from LiteOn totally found the drivers for the wireless card, so the card is a go. Just need the display utility and the ethernet driver, and we're all set.

UPDATE: After spending all week hunting down drivers, making countless slipstreamed windows installers, breaking google in half, crawling forums like a madman, I stumble across a three page forum thread dedicated to getting rid of Vista and installing xp for this EXACT MODEL OF COMPUTER. LINKED IN THE FORUM POST IS A PAGE WITH EVERY SINGLE XP DRIVER FOR EVERY PIECE OF HARDWARE IMAGINABLE FOR THIS EXACT LAPTOP.

*bangs head into wall*

My friend bought a laptop (Gateway MX8738). He quickly found out that he wasn't a fan of Vista, so I said I would install XP Pro on it for him. I recently did something similar to this on a windows 98 computer for a relative, where I put in new parts (hard drive, ram, WLAN card), and installed windows xp pro perfectly fine.

So it looked like a relatively easy task. I used DBAN/Nuke to wipe the hard drive, then I popped in the xp pro disc. Then I got an error. I googled around and found out I needed a SATA driver. Unfortunately, these have to be installed via floppy. The laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, so I slipstreamed the driver using nLite. I made a disc, and started to install. I got past the original error until I got another error telling me my driver was corrupted. (iaStor.sys)

Then I found that I might have needed to change some drive configurations in the Bios (version 72.15). I've looked through it for a good half an hour and cannot find anything to do with the hard drive other than boot order.

So the question is, am I screwed?

When I move to Vancouver in September I'm planning on living in residence at UBC. Or at least that was the plan, until this weekend I was talking to a girl I went to school with (she's been at UBC for a year already). Apparently accomodation for student's is really scarce in Vancouver, so her Dad has bought her a house in Burnaby, then when she graduates in 3 years time he will sell it. She lives with her boyfriend (I know him too), and another girl. They have a spare room, and Rebecca said I could move in. I'm trying to weigh up the pros and cons of living in residence vs. living off campus. For your first year at university you're guaranteed a room in residence, after that you have to enter a lottery system …. so there's a chance I'll have to find another place to live next year.

Residence:
PROS
- living right on campus, 5 mins from the beach and 10 mins to downtown Vancouver
- meet lots of people, lots of parties
- cheaper
CONS
- might get stuck rooming with a dick
- I'll probably have to look for different accomadation next year

House:
PROS
- living with friends
- I'll get my own room
- I already know the people I'll live with
- living in proper house, with a real kitchen and laundry
- theres only 1 rule …. there are no rules
CONS
- I really can't think of any

last year my stepdad and his brother & best friend decided to go into business together .... they bought a little sports bar & turned it into a wings restaurant.  everybody loves wings right, what could go wrong?   well it was a busy little restuarant for the first couple of months, and then after that business got a bit quiet, but it was doing ok.  the problem was none of the three partners actually worked at the restaurant, Roger hired his cousin to be manager.  A couple of the employees were totally dodgy, they used to take half the beer & spirits that as they were being delivered right off the truck.  Plus they stole a heap of food and probably some cash too.  So Gerry & his brother (with a bit of a push from my mom) decided 'forget this' and they closed the Wing restaurant.

John McCain made his 8th trip to Iraq on the weekend, Hillary Clinton's been to Iraq and Afghanistan 3 times, and Barack gave a speech in 2003.

Rick Roll!

Juno - it was decent, it had a good message – most teen movies these days are about “ME” and “what am I going to do”, but pretty much everyone in Juno chooses to do the right thing for someone else.  Ellen Page is Canadian so I’d be happy to see her get the Oscar for best actress.

1) You can't scroll on the trackpad to stop your screensaver. You must click the mouse.

2) The rainbow volleyball pops up while watching iTunes videos.

3) Opening a digg story is the equivalent of asking the rainbow volleyball over for dinner.

4) Saving a file in textedit is offering him dessert.

5) Your battery lasts less than an hour on the 'more battery life setting' and the lowest brightness setting.

Is anyone else hating on the new vox homepage. Uuuuuuuuugly!