An awesome needful thing would be a group of Leprechauns achieving the Grand Slam on St Paddy's Day at Twickenham :-)

If that happens pretty sure that many a pint of Guinness will be quaffed that night :-)

I'm back!
Wasn't here last night, due to sleeping in the hospital, in the sleep clinic.

For half a day I was Android Man or Space man. The grey stuff is clay, with which they stuck the electrodes to me. Was a biatch to get off, but luckily I managed it without ripping out too much hair. I suspect the only place I ripped hair was from my beard, but that's at the back, you won't see that. All those wires go into WiFi equipment which made the whole thing wearable (and bearable).

Slept for about 6 hours, was awake a couple of times during the night, mostly because the bag, which holds the WiFi equipment, got stuck on me or the bed. Also had to pee. And then find my way again in a very dark room. At one time I was awoken because the batteries on the WiFi transmitter had died and needed to be replaced. My luck.

Fingers crossed for the outcome, some time in April.

Einstein is down ATM, it needs to come back on line.

Didn't they provide you with a "bucket in the corner" so you didn't have to venture too far from bed for your nocturnal perambulation?

LOL, trying to register for a game's beta test, but cannot finish the registration because their server toppled over. I guess they've got their answer. :)

Edit: @Rob, finding the bucket in the dark wouldn't be much of a joy either. I managed and didn't hit my toes on anything.

Quite simple:-
Get out of bed and grope ones way to a wall (and hope they haven't left the closet door open....)
Turn left (right would work just as well)
Feel way along wall using toes and hands until either bucket or corner is reached
If corner found, turn the corner and repeat
Repeat until bucket is found
If bucket is found complete "task in hand"
If no bucket after 5 corners have been turned then someone doesn't like you.....
Move to mid point of wall (you did count the steps along the wall didn't you?)
Turn so back is to wall and move slowly towards centre of room, you should find the bed.
When bed found, climb in and resume slumbers.

(Similar tactics may be employed when working a long, dark night shift. But the return journey may have "added entertainment value" to ones former friends who have carefully rearranged all the waste bins to be randomly in your return path...)

Tis looking grand for the slam on Saturday :-)

"The annual Irish v British contest for winners is over already - Ireland lead 15-6, with seven races left on Gold Cup day."

There's winners & losers in every sport. One takes the rough with the smooth.

Hmm, 1966 was a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnng time ago :-)

Just have read-through and register what it's trying to tell you: The Oldest Words In The English Language, then when you have some moments left, continue with Words That Can Ruin Your Sentence.

But you truly want to know about A lot vs. Alot: 9 Grammatical Pitfalls, of course. :)

Urm hopefully the message has got through :-)

Just spent some pop on a couple of new 'old' processors. €50,- per CPU.
2x i5-3470, 1x i5-650

These to replace our aging i3-530, and our flag ships i5-2500K and i7-2600K. All second hand, of course. Too bad the i7-860 is €150,-, and the i7-3770 €250,-
Now I'm still looking for a new videocard for the TV-server (at present the i3-530 with AMD HD 7870). Got my eye on an AMD RX550 but its price is a bit weird, so have to approach its seller about that.

Now, I know the 3470 won't outperform the 2500K and 2600K, according to some VS sites it may even under perform. But it has two tricks up its sleeve that our present processors don't have:
1. PCIe 3.0
2. VT-d

The first translates in faster throughput for video signals.
The second translates into being able to use your own GPU in virtual machines, instead of having to use the virtual GPU. And yes, our motherboards can use the newer CPUs and can do the newer tricks, when the newer CPUs have been added. I best stock up on some thermal grease.

Edit: oh, the why I did it?
Our TV-server is really out of its league. While its i3-530 can run lots of things without problems, it cannot calculate H.265 UHD videos without getting extremely choppy. So, the i5-650 should do that better; also 4 cores instead of just 2. Plus it'll give Holly some faster gaming when she plays The Elder Scrolls Online on the big screen. And yes, I know, the videocard matters as well. The HD 7870 is already very capable of doing 4K videos, if the CPU can help, but I'd rather that there be something newer in there as well, with a bit more memory on board. Hence the RX550 I'm looking for. It won't crunch for BOINC.

Edit2: Of course I just found an i5-750 elsewhere. Have reserved that one and will go pick it up tomorrow. I'll cancel the other one. Let's see if I can get my money back... :)

I thought it was only after 100 years reincarnation kicks in.

I thought the same.

Scratch scratch...

Switched out the CPU on the TV server today. All seemed to go well...

Opened the case.
Took the connector off the fan attached to the side.
Removed the water cooling from my CPU.
Removed the i3-530 CPU.
Put the i5-750 CPU in.
Cleaned the old cooling paste off the water cooling block.
Cleaned extra with alcohol.
Put a strip of brand spanking new Arctic Silver on the CPU.
Reassembled the water cooler.
Reassembled the case, connected the fan.

Stuck all the leads back in... powered up.
Okay, when you go switch out a CPU, make sure that Windows is powered down next time, not that it's hibernating...
Windows start up was complaining that major hardware had changed and gave me the choice of continuing or rebooting fresh.
I chose to reboot fresh.
Landed in Windows on 800x600 with all kinds of complaints that drivers weren't found. Fine.
By the way, 800x600 on a UHD TV isn't fun, especially not when you're just used to the 2560x1440 pixels.
Two reboots later...
Ah now I can switch to 4096x2160... cool... But then I can't read anything on the screen. Not even with the icons set to 200%.
(But we tested the space scene from Passengers in 4K and it was amazing!)

Tested the temperatures with Intel Burn Test.
Hmmm... 78C on the hottest core. Not good. Idle temperature 48C. Yes, definitely something wrong there.
But dinner first.

After dinner, I flashed the BIOS to make sure everything on that system knew about the new CPU.
Reset the BIOS to default.
Re-set all things I set before.
Opened the system again and took apart the water cooler, cleaned everything off, reassembled it.
Also reconnected a loose connector so all LEDs are on again.
Restarted the system.
Redone Intel Burn Test.
Ta ta: 64C maximum on the hottest core. That system won't reach those temps under gaming.

But the gaming on the system was still slow, stuttering.
So I checked everything again, and then found it in the BIOS.

Only one stick of memory is being found...
Only the bottom one. And this system is weird enough already because to have dual channel memory, I am required to put memory in slots 1 and 4.
When I put it in slots 1 and 3, it won't boot.
When I put it in slots 2 and 4, it won't boot.
When I put it in slots 1 and 2, it won't boot.
When I put it in slots 3 and 4, it won't boot.
It will only boot with memory in slots 1 and 4. My main system has that same idiosyncrasy.
Must be an Asrock thing.

But okay, so it only finds the 4GB stick in slot 4, not in slot 1.
The only thing in the neighborhood that I did was take apart and reassemble the water cooler, so I think it's making contact with that stick.
But will wait to check that tomorrow (well, this) morning, by daylight. Don't want to move the cooler too much either, because of those fine temperatures. :)
TBC.

You're having way too much fun.

power off system, verify zero volts
put on grounding strap
unseat, re-seat 4 sticks
put insulating item between cooler and stick
Make offering and prayer to the gods of Murphy
power on system

I awoke Saturday morning to a dead router. After replacing it one of my boxes had an invalid IP address. After spend 3 days trying to fix it I gave up and took it into a shop. I hate it when I have to spend money on computer repairs.

I know that feel.

It's a theme for the day. Last night before going to bed, I flashed my BIOS in anticipation of the Ivy Bridge CPU coming today. Reset to defaults. Set everything back up. Powered into Windows, powered down.

This morning it wouldn't boot. Had to reset the CMOS, which isn't easy because of the jumper being ultra tiny and just next to a big transistor on the motherboard. Cost me nothing to switch the jumper from pins 1+2 to 2+3. Cost me an arm and a leg to get it back to 1+2. At least the system boots again.
I hope I don't have to do that every time I boot this system. ;-)

Anyway, will see about the other system later on, am first going to the post office to write over the car in my name. Suzi, you're mine!

Bigger trouble. Every time I power down my system, when I power it back on it won't boot.
Always going into a short boot cycle where it tries to boot, and after 5 seconds powers down again.
I have to clear CMOS before it powers back up. Luckily I found a button on the back of my motherboard for that (I knew it was easier than doing that via jumper), but it's not fun having to dive under my desk every time I boot up. And after that I have to set up the BIOS again.
Flashed the BIOS again, in case something went wrong. Didn't help.
So I mailed Asrock, perhaps that they know.

I can't flash back to the previous version of the BIOS either, because it's not on the site, and there was no option to backup the BIOS prior to flashing. I also don't seem to have a dual-BIOS setup.

Perhaps the new BIOS requires the Ivy Bridge CPU to work correctly. I won't know that until later today when it comes in. So back to the other ailing system for now.

The Great God Murphy is sitting proudly on his throne :-(

Wouldn't cost much to replace the CMOS battery, just in case.