StudioGlyphic

Peter Walker - Young Gravity

Peter Gabriel - 3

Back in February I wrote about my friend Jake's girlfriend Christine. A lot of bloggers and readers helped out by signing up on the registry, donating money, spreading the word, and sending well wishes to Jake and Christine. We were very surprised at and grateful for the response. It's really remarkable how much people are willing to help complete strangers.

It's been a while since that post, and I owe it to everyone to let people know how thing's are coming along. Unfortunately, things haven't really gotten better. Here's the latest news from Christine, posted to her site forum yesterday:

For more information on Christine, including the latest news and upcoming events, check out SaveChristine.com. If you are of Filipino descent and are considering a marrow donation, please go to www.marrow.com or call 1(800) MARROW2 to find the closest location to take the test and register for the national bone marrow registry. Even if you are not a match for Christine, you might be able to help someone else. There's really no commitment at any step of the process, so if at some point you change your mind and decide to withdraw, that's perfectly fine.

Thanks for reading.

My friend Jake's girlfriend is very sick and needs help. Please read:

Details:
Our Lady Of Peace Parish
15444 Nordhoff St
North Hills, CA 91343

Thanks for reading.

Curbed.LA is written by some urban planners I know. Check it out if you're interested in urban planning, real estate, or architecture.

Eventually you have to give up waiting on Full Tilt to give you a job. There's probably some kind of restriction on how many LA-based bloggers they can employ (though if Joe Speaker or Absinthe announces next month he's making the switch, I'm going to kill somebody).

Anyway, I'll be starting my new job next week. Drop me a line if there's something you've always wanted to see on MySpace. Erm, it's not a Planning job.

Thrower-induced recovery notwithstanding, it was time to get a new poker machine. I can't trust my laptop to keep on working the way it's been working the past few days, and rather than find myself without a computer at what will most likely be the most inconvenient time possible, I figure the best thing to do is get a replacement. I checked out Dell's site to see what kinds of deals they had available, but they seemed rather so-so. A little over $500 would get me a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB SDRAM, an 80GB HD, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, and integrated video with a 2 year warranty.

I don't really need a high-powered machine. But Glasstrack assured me that for the money I was willing to spend, I could get a much better machine if I were willing to shop around and buy the components I needed. Here's what we came up with...

Case: Antec Sonata

Purchased: Fry's Electronics
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $79.06

Motherboard: MSI 865PE Neo3-F

Purchased: newegg.com
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $83.69

Processor: intel Celeron D 325J

Purchased: newegg.com
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $88.66

Memory: 1GB Corsair ValueSelect 184-Pin DDR SDRAM (PC 3200)

Purchased: newegg.com
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $90.42

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 200GB (7200 RPM)

Purchased: Fry's Electronics
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $57.86

Graphics: ATI Radeon 7500

Purchased: 3B Tech.net
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $29.00

Optical Drive: NEC ND-3520A DVD-R

Purchased: newegg.com
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $47.29

Network Card: D-Link DWL-520

Purchased: CompUSA.com
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $8.65

Input Devices: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Elite Keyboard w/Tilt Mouse Combo

Purchased: 3B Tech.net
Price (after tax, s/h, rebates): $53.00

Total Cost: $537.63

I'm looking forward to getting this thing put together. The Sonata case is supposed to be super-quiet due to several noise dampening features. For whatever reason, I have this thing about computer noise--it drives me crazy. Let's see if this thing lives up to the hype.

Damn this national holiday! I want my computer now!

Back in Beijng my laptop decided to stop working. I'd hit the power button, a few of the LEDs would flash, and nothing. No POST.

I then removed the batteries, the hard drive, and the memory, and tried booting using one DIMM and the power cable. It worked!

I moved the DIMM to a different slot. It worked. Cool. Probably a memory problem.

I tried the second DIMM in the second slot. It worked. Eh?

I tried the second DIMM in the first slot. Okay... this works, too.

I eventually added the hard drive, the second DIMM, and both batteries, and that seemed to work, too. I sealed it up, and boom, no POST.

I took that thing apart and put it back together again for hours and never got it to POST consistently. More often than not, I'd get nothing. I figured there was something broken somewhere on something expensive, and rather than fix a 2 year old laptop for a few hundred dollars or more, I'd get a new one.

I tried getting it to boot a few more times while in China and Korea, but finally gave up. I knew the hard drive was still good, so I could get my old data off the machine at the very least.

---

Jack: Was it ticking?
Airport Security Officer: Actually throwers don't worry about ticking 'cause modern bombs don't tick.
Jack: Sorry, throwers?
Airport Security Officer: Baggage handlers. But, when a suitcase vibrates, then the throwers gotta call the police.
Jack: My suitcase was vibrating?
Airport Security Officer: Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but every once in a while...
[whispering]
Airport Security Officer: it's a dildo. Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a dildo, never your dildo.
Jack: I don't own...
[Officer waves Jack off]

---

Well, son of a gun. My computer works. It booted right up when I pulled it out of my suitcase.

No, I didn't have KK cracked twice in a tournament. Somewhere between Osaka and Westport I came down with a cold or infection that made its presence known a couple nights ago and pretty much put glacier-walking off the itinerary. We decided to cut the travels short and head back home.

I was definitely ill: at one point on the drive home through Arthur's Pass I couldn't make it across the car park without feeling too cold and miserable to continue; once back into Christchurch we ran into several of my sister's flatmates and friends, many of whom were dressed in t-shirts while I had on four layers of warm clothing.

Today's been spent in and out of bed, drinking fluids and keeping warm. I'd like to note that this is the third time this year I've come down with something. It may be time to quit smoking.

After Vegas, of course.

Maybe that third beer wasn't such a good idea, but I've managed to spend the first 3 hours of my 6 hour layover in Osaka doing what I do best: spending time on the Internet, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer. I should put some money in my PokerRoom account so I can play some Java-based Hold'em.

Like the Incheon (Seoul) airport, the Osaka airport has these smoking areas and Internet kiosks. Anyone who's had to wait for the next flight in an airport can understand that these things, and $5 draft beer, can help pass the time adequately. If my friggin' laptop hadn't died, I could also be making (or losing) some big bets playing at Party Poker's Bad Beat Jackpot tables. Ah well. One can't have everything.

But having my laptop with me also would have also enabled me to avoid using this goddamn Japanese keyboard. There's extra keys, and a colon key where the apostrophe should be. That makes typing all these conjunctions an exercise my Asahi-addled brain isn't completely equipped to handle. Good thing I have a modified type-A personality. I wouldn't want to foist misspellings and bizarre punctuation on my reading public.

Ah yes, one other nicety about the airport here in Osaka and the one in Incheon (Seoul) (which I keep wanting to spell as "Seould"): bathrooms for handicapped persons. I'm not handicapped (at least not in the way they would define it), but I can appreciate a bathroom where I have a toilet and sink all to my lonesome. I just wish I had more food in my system so I could take full advantage of them.

2.75 hours to go until my flight. You sleeping Americans go on and have a good time dreaming of waking up to an English-speaking world. I'll be joining you in 15 hours when I touch down in Auckland, New Zealand.

Goodbye, Seoul. Hello, Christchurch.

One class to go before I officially get my Master's Degree. This one's in Beijing:

While this is ostensibly an academic exercise (the class is entitled "The Future of Xidan Beidajie: Transit Oriented Urban Village in the Beijing Mega-City"), I don't think any of my classmates are kidding themselves about what we'll end up doing.

For those of you who visit StudioGlyphic for poker content, there will likely be none until I return in July. However, I'll have all sorts of gadgetry with me, and will likely post occasional images and blurbs about traveling in Asia.

All images copyright photographers 2003. Source: Lonely Planet World Guide.

I am officially over-educated.