Computer Christmas: Fried motherboards and other stories.

It all started about a week ago. My computer screen, an old Samsung 753DF had been growing progressively darker. . . even with huge gamma compensation from my windows settings, one would have to strain to read stuff. So, we decided to buy a new LCD monitor that would both save on deskspace and provide better readability, an Acer AL1914. And since I am lugging around documents between work and home, and having a flash drive is cool. . .we bought a 1GB Corsair Flash drive. The pre-christmas package arrived on the 23rd evening, and I was very excited. We managed to admire the colors of the new screen, and try out the flash drive, before going out that evening for grocery shopping and a nice dinner at the Lebanese Taverna.

The next day, the excitement prompted me to do routine maintenance on my computer, to keep it in tip top shape. MSI, my motherboard manufacturer, comes out with an utility called Liveupdate, which checks with the manufacturer for new updates for motherboard drivers and utilities. It also checks for the latest BIOS, and I found that I was using an older version. I have done BIOS flashes before without a hassle using this Liveupdate utility, so I decided to go ahead and flash while having breakfast on New Years eve. The BIOS failed to flash giving write verify errors. After trying 3 times, the computer became unstable and I had to restart. And the computer refused to reboot.

So, I spent a miserable day trying to feed the computer a healthy BIOS through floppy drives and stuff, and the motherboard refused to eat. I did manage to retrieve my papers (on which I have deadlines), by assembling my old computer together and hooking my harddrives to that. By evening, I had to get out of home, because it was beginning to dawn on me that there was little left to be done. Except buy a new motherboard.

So, we got a new motherboard. I got it in the mail today at 3:00 PM. I got the computer up and running by 6:00. Hurrah. Alls well that ends well. Still, I am shocked at how codependent I have become with my computer. . . and the profound feeling of loss I experience when it is not there.


After getting the system together, I uninstalled Liveupdate. Never again.

In other news, Ishan, Supratik, Bugs, Manocha, et. al. gifted us with a kickass home theater speaker system as a wedding present. Though ideally we should be hooking it up to our television using a receiver, for the time being I decided to hook it up to my computer. So now, I have a 7 speaker surround (including a big subwoofer) to enhance my Half-Life2 experience. The sound effects are especially cool when watching movies over the computer because things sound like they are zooming past you.

Audio. Video. Memory. It's been a great Christmas.

I have also discovered the joy's of Sudoku. It started off with a puzzle in New Scientist. It had 17 clues on a Sudoku board. . .apparently the minimum possible number of clues that a puzzle can have and still have an unique solution. That took my two-late night before-bedtime sessions to solve (3-4 hours). . .but it got me hooked at trying to figure this whole Sudoku thing it. Over time, I figured I was approaching the whole thing too probabilistically. . .and that the whole thing can be done far more intuitively without writing possibilities of numbers in every square. That got me writing a piece of software that I will put up soon on this site (it gives great suggestions, but gets stuck in some tougher sections of the puzzle. . .I'll post it after I have ironed those issues out). I also managed to get Anyesha hooked. . . so that's good.