Strawberryland Forum

Today was a pretty good day for me. How about you all?

So and so day. On vacation for a week, walk 5 KM today

Guys, I can't even tell you how I loathe morning shifts. I need to get up nearly when normally I'd go to sleep (~5 AM) and it ends when normally I'd wake up (~2 PM). Since it's impossible to get to sleep early enough, I rather take sleeping pills. I'm really not a morning person. I'm rather a night owl - that's why, on the other hand, I'm quite fine with night shifts...

My day is so so as well. Im worried about my DVD/VCR recorder though. It appears to have a dirty playback head on the VHS part, but I tried running two different head cleaners (both Maxell brand) through several times, and I still get static when I play back tapes. Adjusting the tracking doesn't help.

It makes me wonder if these Maxell VHS head cleaners aren't doing their job. I did have a rather good Philips/Magnavox VHS cleaner, but I have misplaced it at the moment. Im going to have to go through all of my junk boxes later this evening just so I can try and find it and see if that will finally get the heads clean.

If not, I may have to buy another DVD/VHS recording unit since if the head cleaners don't work, something else is wrong.

I don't get it though..I haven't been very rough with the VHS portion. I haven't tried playing tapes that obviously shouldn't be played, and it seems this issue started after playing one of my old tapes I made about 10 years ago. Though with me running the head cleaning tapes through multiple times, I feel bad.

EDIT: Still troubleshooting the VCR issue. I did manage to order up another one of those Philips/Magnavox VHS cleaners off of eBay as the Maxell one appears to be rather cheaply made (my DVD/VCR hates it somewhat). It's going to take time to get here though.

Just watch though...because I ordered another head cleaner off eBay, I will find the one I lost.

Other stuff I got off eBay is a Component Video Switch for Elsie and DVD player and some component video cables to go with it.

"When you wake/You shall take/All the pretty little horses"

Yeah, like that'll help. All's corrupted and is no longer LAE/LABSPA/LADSPA compliant.

I'm just going to go for that Gateway laptop after all. Webkinz requires it.

As for Wendell, I could turn him into a Linux PC, but I have to find another desk of some sorts to fit him in. Wendell was cheap for a reason, and I have found that out in the last few months unfortunately. Wendell NEEDS Linux.

As for the name of the Gateway, I will withhold it for the time being. I have two ideas at the present time, but Id rather not share the names just yet.

TO HSN!!

As for me, I just spent a little under a week visiting my parents in GA, my first time there. And I saw The Lorax for the fourth time today, mostly because it was my last chance to see it in 3D ;_; Plus the timing just worked out so perfectly. But seriously, I'm going to miss seeing the Once-ler's face in my face during How Bad Can I Be. Even if I bought a 3D TV and got the 3D blu-ray it wouldn't be the same.

The new Gateway laptop PC is ordered and is on it's way. It should arrive on May 7th since I chose express shipping...like I did with Lilly.

As for the name, it shall be revealed now...

It's this particular character from a certain series of animated movies that I like....


Another hint...she shares the same name as my Webkinz.

Evalana Wrote:Even if I bought a 3D TV and got the 3D blu-ray it wouldn't be the same.

Well, it's not that bad. The 3D may be slightly shallower due to the size of the screen, but it's much better than only getting flat 2D. Just mix that with a good and cheap 5.1 kit and the experience is complete.

This of course, coming from someone who owns one of them fancy LG Cinema3D TVs and is planning to get a surround sound 5.1 channel cordless headphones kit to complete the magic.

Linux runs FAR better on Wendell than Windows did.

I'm currently testing Ubuntu 12.04 on it right now, and looks like I have a winner. 3D games run great, and Google Chrome is far more snappy than it was on Windows. I was able to get the AMD display drivers installed properly, so graphics work fine. The Unity interface animations seem a bit slow at times though, which is strange seeing as how other 3D games like Extreme TuxRacer run fluently. As for Unity itself, I think I can get used to it. It's not a proper desktop like I'm used to seeing, but as every OS is slowly leaning towards tablet-esque designs, I need to learn how to get used to these.

The next step is to use the recovery DVDs I made to completely low-level format the hard drive. Wendell has been through at least four OS installs, and none have full-formatted the hard drive at all.

The plan is that Greta shall be my main laptop and Windows PC. Wendell will be regulated to secondary status, and also be a backup laptop in case Greta ever has problems. Wendell will also be my main Linux system too, as I have been wanting a modern Linux PC for some time. Old Jasper was such system at one point, but he is getting far too old to run any Linux besides the smallest distros like Puppy Linux.

Only problem I have come across with Wendell running Linux is a broken screen brightness control. Moving the brightness slider does nothing.

Other than that, all other hardware works fine.