Dell Exchange Laptop Has Arrived

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

My replacement laptop from Dell arrived via FedEx today, and I’ve been spending a good chunk of the day today configuring everything on my new laptop. My previous laptop was a Dell Inspiron 1764, and the replacement I received is a Dell Inspiron 17R (N7010).

Spec-wise, this one is noticeably better – it has a slightly better processor and two more gigabytes of memory. I also installed a 64-bit operating system onto this one, which leads me to my tip of the day.

If your computer or laptop has more than 3 GB of memory (RAM), use a 64-bit operating system.

I thought the most memory 32-bit operating systems could handle was 4 GB, not 3 GB, so I had a 32-bit operating system installed on my previous laptop. I realized today that my laptop detected all 4 GB but could only use 3 GB, which meant that for the past 9 months, 1 GB of memory was just sitting in my laptop idly doing nothing.

I also installed Ubuntu 11.04 on a separate partition and actually got it to work. I remember trying to install Ubuntu a handful of years ago, but gave up because I couldn’t get the Internet to work. I had the same problem with the Internet not cooperating very much, but I somehow managed to get it to work. I’m actually blogging from Ubuntu right now.

In other news, it was really hot today, and the fact that my room is on the second floor and I have two laptops running at the same time with processor-intensive tasks like compressing .iso files to .daa files to save space on my external hard drive on one computer while installing tons of software on the other made it worse. If you want some fried eggs, feel free to stop by my room and crack a raw egg over my desk; I’m sure it’s hot enough in here to cook it.

I’m going to head off to bed early tonight; I have some work to do tomorrow, and I’m waiting for another package. I will be at the family business tomorrow for a good chunk of the day, so I’m sure I’ll find plenty of time tomorrow to post some more content on my blog.

And, no “Keeping Track” section today – I’ll do that when I’m done setting up my new laptop.

 

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Boredom and Weathered Pavement

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

A majority of my day today was spent either sitting around being bored or moving heavy furniture and construction materials.

During the time that I wasn’t doing either, I did make a few updates to my website. I have a handful more planned for the next few days, and once they’re all done, I’ll probably put up another Site News update, seeing as I haven’t done that since 2010.

In other news, Dell called me today telling me that my exchange laptop will be arriving in the mail tomorrow via FedEx sometime before 3 PM. That probably means I’ll be spending most of tomorrow sitting in front of two laptops trying to transfer over all my files and configuration.

 

Picture of the Day

Weathered Pavement

I got bored while I was at our business today, so I went around to the back of the building and peered through a broken fence.

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch, 4th Generation)

 

Keeping Track

Local Drive: 40.1 of 402 GB (-8.4 GB)
External Hard Drive: 71.5 of 931 GB (+0.3 GB)

 

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Life in 2021 and Hard Drives

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #124: Make a prediction about life in 2021. Look back at life in 2001 and what you remember thinking 2011 would be like. Compare it to what actually happened. Use that to help you think about predicting something about 2021.

Back in 2001, I was a third grader in elementary school and I don’t think I even thought about what life would be like at all. Of course, I thought about what I would be like, and I was curious if I would get accepted into a good university and get good grades, but I didn’t really think about how my environment would influence me.

I think that in 2021, the exponential rise in developing technology will have reached such a high point that most people will be employed as people either maintaining machinery or attempting to create better machinery. There will most likely be such a lack of available job openings that the unemployment rate will soar. In an attempt to become more competent, people will probably stay in school longer and put more effort into expanding their knowledge, but they will not have enough opportunities to put their learned knowledge to use.

 

Auto-Correct Fail of the Day

I don’t even remember taking this screenshot, but I found it saved in my iPod Touch so I decided to put it up here.

 

Keeping Track

I mentioned a while back that I was going to stop doing my “So Far in 2011” section and create a new “Keeping Track” section. I asked my readers to submit suggestions for what I should keep track of in my blog, and my favorite and the most realistic suggestion I got was to keep track of the amount of space I’m using on my hard drives.

If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to send them to me via email or by using the contact form on my website.

Local Drive: 48.5 of 402 GB
External Hard Drive: 71.2 of 931 GB

 

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Terminal CWD Folder Command What

by   •   Daily Post, What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

Quote of the Day

Garrett Royce: so, here’s a tip for you

Parkzer: Is it more than 15%? I like big tips

Garrett Royce: no

Garrett Royce: if you delete a folder and forget you have a terminal where the CWD is that folder and you try to run a command in that terminal you will get an error from virtually every program

Parkzer: … I have no idea what that means

Parkzer: but I don’t think I will ever have to command a CWD terminal to delete a running folder that forgets errors

 

What I’m Reading

To expand my knowledge about psychology in general, I decided to read a book by Daniel H. Pink titled Drive. Drive is about what motivates us, and how we can improve that level of motivation. It presents ideas that contrast with what most people believe, explains why the common belief is wrong, and supports the claim with data from research. For example, most people believe that salary and productivity are directly correlated such that an increase in payment will increase the amount and quality of work done. Pink shows that this is actually very false in more than one way. When a task involves creativity and innovation, increasing monetary compensation to an unnecessarily and excessively high amount can actually damage the quality of the final result.

Pink goes on to state that people should change their motivators from extrinsic forces (like money) to intrinsic forces (like a desire to learn). Although extrinsic motivators may boost productivity and results temporarily, in the long run, intrinsic motivators will do much more good. Pink then spends the remainder of the book describing how all different sorts of individuals – students, parents, and corporation owners – can apply this concept of intrinsic motivation to their current environment.

Although this book didn’t hold my undivided attention, it was still worth reading. A large portion of this book seems to be talking about things that can be concluded with common sense, but Drive helps people actually come to these conclusions and realize how important they are to recognize and interlace into their lives. Pink cites some interesting research that presents some surprising and shocking results that will help rid some myths that could be harmful in the long run. Like most other well-written books related to psychology, the topics covered in this book can be used by anyone to apply to their everyday life and improve their overall quality of life.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #123: Pick a blog or blog post you enjoy and write a post about it. By writing about another blogger, and including a link to their blog, you’ll show up in their pings, and if what you write is interesting, odds are good they’ll check out your blog too. Don’t abuse this, no one likes to feel spammed, but if you want more traffic, genuinely writing about blogs or posts on other blogs you enjoy can only help draw attention your way.

I actually already did this on May 23, 2011 in response to a blog post by my friend Benjamin Chow from May 15, 2011. If you actually want to read my response to his blog post, check out my blog post from May 23.

 

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The Conclusion to My Dell Problems?

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I’m not sure if I mentioned this already or not, but I contacted Dell to get an exchange on my current laptop. If you’ve been following my blog for the past several months, you know that I’ve been struggling with Dell’s customer support to try and get my laptop fixed. Even after the third repair, my laptop had a handful of unresolved problems. Apparently having this many repairs and still having this many problems means my laptop is beyond repair, so I requested a laptop exchange.

Yesterday, a customer support representative from Dell’s exchange department called me and organized the swap. Apparently they’re going to send me a new laptop of the same model but with slightly better specifications through the mail. Once it arrives in four to five days, I would put my current malfunctioning laptop into the box and send it back.

If you haven’t been reading my blog for that long and want to know the whole story about my Dell laptop, you can go onto my RSS read and do a Find command for “Dell” to find all the blog posts related to my laptop.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #120: Who annoys you more, Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga?

Neither Justin Bieber nor Lady Gaga annoy me at all, but I can say for sure that Justin Bieber’s fans annoy me much more than Lady Gaga’s fans, and Justin Bieber’s haters annoy me much more than Lady Gaga’s haters.

Justin Bieber’s fans act as if they’re special just because they like Justin Bieber. They pretend like they have special status, and go crazy in the presence of a young human. What’s particularly annoying is that many girls pretend like they’re going to date or marry Justin Bieber.

Justin Bieber’s haters act as if they’re special just because they hate Justin Bieber. I’m not sure why they feel accomplished putting down a teenager who just happens to be richer and more popular than a majority of other people in the world. What’s particularly annoying is that most haters hate Justin Bieber for unjustified, unsupported, or random reasons that usually have nothing to do with Justin Bieber.

 

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Having Enough Endurance Fail

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I decided to do martial arts again over this coming summer while I’m on break for university. I had my first training session today, and it was probably the hardest workout I’ve had in years. I can apparently still do proper kicks, but I can’t endure an entire intensive less-than-one-hour training session.

-__-

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #119: What is the story behind your given name? Do a web search on your given name and write about what you find.

According to Wikipedia, Adam is a common masculine given name. The most well-known Adam is the figure in Abrahamic religions, supposedly the first man created by the God in Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam.

 

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