MRT vs Passing Through EDSA

I rode a taxi to work one morning. It took me 90 minutes to reach the office because of traffic.  Via the MRT, even with the 45 minute wait, i got to the office in less than 90 minutes.  I think if I go to a different station, I can cut down the wait time to 20 minutes.

45 Minute Wait for a Train

This morning I waited 45 minutes after I got to the MRT station before I could catch a train.  The MRT system is getting worse and worse.  I think I have to try out a new station rather than wait in line for almost 45 minutes everyday.

Call Me Jack

I didn't know that the full name of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan is John Patrick Ryan. I often use Jack Admiral as the name of my character in video games.

Great casting choices for the Jack Ryan movie. Great cast. Plot is too simple for what should've been a cerebral movie for such a great cast and the Jack Ryan character. The film has less plot and more action but is enjoyable because of the actors.

A Week of Disassembling Laptops

The valuable lessons I learned last week are that laptops with well-known brands, have a greater chance of their service manuals being available somewhere online, and that it's important to gather and archive all the service manuals of your laptops so you can still try to fix or upgrade them yourself even when the manuals are no longer available.

I spent all my free time last week disassembling two laptops, oiling their CPU fans, and then reassembling them.  This took me one whole week since I could only do this in my spare time.

Weird that these two relatively new laptops of different brands, bought in 2010 and 2011, had their CPU fans degraded almost at the same time, while older laptops bought in 2007 and 2008 are still going strong.

These makes 3 laptops that I've disassembled so far.  The first laptop I disassembled, back in 2008, was a laptop that was bought in 2002.  It had a loose power connector that I couldn't fix permanently because of my weak soldering skills.

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A Tale of Two OS Transfers

I haven't felt like posting anything online ever since daddy passed away. Everything else just seems so trivial. I just have to post this particular missive to document solutions for troublesome technical issues that I've been struggling with for an undesirably longer period than expected.

To transfer Windows XP to a different motherboard with a non-Intel storage controller without encountering a BSOD when the original motherboard is dead, use a utility called FixIDE from another PC running Windows XP to modify the Windows XP installation to be transferred.

To transfer Windows 7 to a different motherboard without encountering a BSOD when the new motherboard has a non-Intel storage controller, install the needed controller driver before moving the OS. If the original motherboard is dead, find a PC with an Intel storage controller, boot the Windows 7 installation to be transferred and install the needed controller driver.

If you try to shutdown your newly installed Windows 7 and it reboots instead, make sure all your drivers are updated and don't just rely on the default built-in Microsoft drivers.