* the love nest of him and her *

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Just to give you a brief history - my Pops and I haven't really been talking for quite a while now. In fact, I don't even remember when we talked last. All I know is that it's been so long ago - and it saddens me.

Sometime in the middle of the week last week, his 'home made' desktop computer crashed. Saturday last week, a computer technician came to the house to fix his computer. The tech and I just got to talk for about a couple of minutes because he needed to ask me if we have a static DSL account. I told that it isn't - that it's dynamic. Then, that's it; I went back to "my sanctuary" - my room. After about an hour, I left the house to go to a friend's birthday party and the tech was still at home, attempting to fix the PC problem.

He was unable to re-install Windows on it because the optical drive on the computer won't auto-boot no matter what settings they change it to. (Well, I just found that out this morning when Poppa - surprisingly - started a conversation with me while we were having breakfast.) It kept looking for a bootable disk. The Windows XP installer that Miguel borrowed from me for Poppa is, indeed, bootable but it won't auto-run. Poppa didn't have his bootable floppy disk anymore and he just won't use my desktop computer to create a new one ... besides he didn't have an extra blank floppy disk, anyway.

When I got home the next morning, my Pops and my sister were talking and I overheard him telling her that his computer is now, running Linux instead of Windows because the new hard disk drive that he bought was pre-installed with Linux.

A week had passed and everything was okay with my Pops' computer until today. It totally crashed to the extent of not going beyond the POST (Power-On Seft Test) stage. At the breakfast table, he was telling my sister that he wanted to get this laptop to solve his computer issues - he even had a one-page ad in his hand showing it to my sis. Then my sister told him that she's not very good with computer hardware and that I would be the best person to ask. I took a look at the specs shown on the ad and commented that getting that laptop would just put his 35,999 pesos to waste. Then I said laptops in the U.S. were on sale last Thanksgiving, according to Misyel's (one of my good friends) sister, who lives in Long Beach, CA. But, I directed this statement to my sister and not to Poppa because I wasn't sure if he was interested in anything that I had to say.

When I saw that my Pops was looking at me and was listening to what I was telling my sister, I turned to him and discussed more about hardware and how fast a computer can get obsolete with the fast technological updates and all that. (Not once did I even hear about the laptop's manufacturer in my entire exposure to computers.)

I got a bit concerned about my Pops wanting to buy a laptop because I know how he is when he wants to get himself any sort of gadget. HaH! He is where I got the same attitude toward gizmos and stuff! A few minutes later, through breakfast, he suddenly asked me if it is possible to have Ricky pick up a laptop for him from the U.S. and he'll pay him when he gets here in May. I said, I'll ask Ricky. In my mind, though, I was telling myself - "Geeze! This would be a great opporutinity for me to get things back to "normal" between my father and I."

When I got to chat with Ricky by noontime, today, I told him about what transpired on the breakfast table. At some point in our conversation, he suggested that I offer my Pops the laptop that he got for me (through a loan - from him as well) last June. [Technically, the laptop is just about 5 months old since it was not really used until he sent it to me towards the end of September, last year.) I told Ricky that I won't even go that way since that won't, in any way, fly with my Pops because I'm sure for a gizmo, like a laptop, he would not settle for anything but a brand new one. And that's where my conversation with Ricky about it ended. He said, we'll just wait it out and discuss it again some other time.

By 2:15 PM [Manila time], I decided to have lunch since everyone else had already eaten. Little did I know that my Pops took a nap and hadn't had lunch yet, too - just like me. So, he and I, basically had lunch together. He started talking to me about his computer issue. He told me a part of the error message he gets when he attempts to boot his computer up. I put the symptoms, he told me, together and tried my best to think of all possible causes why something like that would happen. I asked if he or the tech have tried to perform certain troubleshooting steps that I could think of. Some of the ones I've mentioned, he said, they already did but the others, they haven't tried. Among the ones they haven't tried were to remove all peripherals expect for the video card (just so it would still display something on the monitor) then adding one peripheral (like the sound card and his other PCI cards) at a time and rebooting the computer each time to check when the error occurs; they also had not tried to switch IDE cables between optical drives and hard disk drives, remove one memory chip at a time to see if either one might be defective causing the system not to complete the process of booting up.

At that point, I had already told him that my suspicion is that if both memory chips are in good condition then it's the motherboard that already needs to be replaced - afterall, his is already old. Then, he started asking me about parts' prices. I gave him just estimates and told him I'd check a site I know of to give him more exact figures after I was done eating.

After having lunch, I went to his computer and tried to turn it on to get whatever error message it pulled up. I got: "Novell Netware ready firmware v1.00 (940809) SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters ..." and then it just stops on an A:\ prompt, since that was what it's set to check first in the BIOS, for now. After reading the error message, I was already almost certain that it is the mobo that's failing. Afterward, I went to my computer and searched for more information about it on google and walla! ... it displayed several matches and on the forums I read, the ones who experienced this error said it had something to do with the NIC (Ethernet card). And when I remembered that my Pops' NIC is built-in on his mobo, it's as if there a lightbulb turned-on in my head. I said to myself, "HaH! the mobo IS the culprit!"

I went back out of my room to look for my Pops' and told him, "Pa, a searched and read on a few more details on the error you're getting and they show that it's most likely the NIC. Now, since you have an on-board NIC, it should be the motherboard!" That's when he asked me if was doing anything or have anything planned for the rest of the day. In my mind, I said, "Oh yeah! I need to tidy up my room and put entries in my journal!" But on second thought, "This would be a great opportunity for my Pops and I to get together after what seems like forever." So there ... he and I had a "date"; I also invited my big bro to come along. If any, that would be for less tension between my Pops and I.

So we went to PC Express in Katipunan (near my high school and college university in Quezon City) and I was the one who spoke to the technician to explain the issue to him. After physically testing the computer for about 5 minutes, we discovered that one of the two memory chips is "dead"!

Dang!!! I was 'this' close to zeroing in on the issue. I kinda got disappointed in myself - just a teenie-weenie bit, though! Had I been the one to do the 'dirty tech stuff', I would have discovered the bad RAM, myself! HaHaHa ... big-headed freak! Nah! What's important is we all pitched in to determine what went wrong with my Pops desktop computer. And bottomline is ... it's now up and running with better performance after changing a few harware components of it. HooraH!!!

To add to that ... on the way home, I took a shot in bringing up Ricky's suggestion about his laptop. I said, "Pa, by the way, Ricky said that if you're not going to be nitpicky then we can just give you the laptop I'm using at home for a price that's within your budget. All I need to do is just to backup all my files I have on it and turn it over to you, clean." He thinks that would be cool with him but he asked what I will be using after he takes it from me. So, I said, Ricky and I will just worry about that next time besides I still have my desktop computer and I don't take home as much work as I did these past several months, anyway - which was the primary reason for getting a laptop, by the way. After a few moments of silence, he spoke up and said, "Okay, then go ahead and think about it!" I just said, "Okay!" but, deep inside, I was thinking, "Aren't you who's supposed to be the one to think about the offer and not I? - knowing his attitude toward gadgets and stuff. But, just the same, I 'okayed' it and made a mental note to discuss it with Ricky the next time we get the chance to talk again.

her mood: Feeling so jubilant today!

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chRICKstine está en la nube nueve
at |7:25 AM|

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