Stuff and Things
For Christmas, Laura got me components for a new computer and Ben put it together. To supplement this, our friend Henry (who was in on it) bought me a gaming keyboard and mouse. I've mentioned this before.
Henry also bought Laura a new gaming headset - a Corsair Vengeance 2100. She's been using an older wireless Logitech model, which works fine but isn't the most comfortable headset in the world. This one, by contrast, is much more comfortable - it's not too tight, and the earpieces are can-style instead of pad-style, so it doesn't put any pressure on her ears. When she received it (in the week between Christmas and New Years) we hooked it up, but had problems - we couldn't install the drivers, and if it was plugged in DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online, the computer game that Laura and I - and others - play fairly often) wouldn't launch. And if we launched DDO and then plugged in the headset, DDO wouldn't recognize the headset. So, fail.
We did experiments and tests. We poked and prodded. We scoured the internet for help. We put in support tickets with Corsair. Eventually we were informed by Corsair that the headset drivers weren't supported for Windows XP (although the documentation says they are), and that the headset ought to work using the native XP drivers and they didn't know why it didn't work with DDO but since the operating system was Windows XP anyway that probably had something to do with it.
We checked her computer hardware and determined that was capable of running Windows 7. (It wouldn't be optimal, but it would work.) I tried installing Win7 32-bit on her secondary drive as a dual-boot configuration and the process gave me a blue screen of death. In fact, turning on the computer brought up the dual-boot option gave me three seconds to decide between booting XP - which still worked fine - or Windows 7, which was a BSOD every time. Looking into that particular BSOD message was not helpful - it pointed to a kernel problem in either the RAM (which we checked, and was fine), the motherboard (which appears, on visual inspection, to be fine), or the BIOS (which was fine). Recommendation: Replace some or all of these things.
Well, fine. The parts arrived yesterday - a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Ben installed the hardware in the afternoon and I did the Windows 7 64-bit installation when I got home. Around 10 PM we were ready, with the new operating system, the game, the headset, and all of the patches and upgrades installed. And everything worked, and everything's fine.
So, Merry Christmas, Laura! Now you can play with your new headset!
Things to report: On the 11th I served as photography assistant for Glenn as he took promotional pictures for Dream Theatre's next season. This mostly consisted of setting up, moving, and disassembling lights and screens and chimera boxes, but I actually learned some things about photography in the process. On the 18th - Laura's birthday - I visited the periodontist who said that shooting me in the face with a laser seems to have been a success. I should go back in five months to make sure. In other news, I've been doing some theatre things and some SCA things and some things around the house. Life goes on apace, as they say.
This weekend is "It's Only A Flesh Wound" and Theatre of Women, both of which I intend to attend. And hey, people should go see Theatre of Women (Sat, Jan 25, 8 PM and 10 PM). The description is: 6 plays: 6 - writers - 6 - directors - a cast of actresses. THEATRE OF WOMEN (TOW) is Dream Theatre Company’s annual play festival consisting of ten minute plays written, rehearsed and performed in a span of 24 hours that celebrates the actress as performing artist. Dream Theatre Company’s focus on the actress as artist and lead is apparent in all of their productions. The idea behind the creation of TOW was to push the art of acting through the examination of the actress in the play. These women are created to be strong, sexy, funny, villains, heroines, demons or even to play men, boys or genderless roles. “They are created so we can show the world that Passion, Strength, Innocence, and Intelligence are traits to be valued and celebrated.” Over the years this mission hasn’t changed and many artistic relationships and funny, creative scripts have blossomed from these 24 hour festivals. This year we will uphold the traditions of the past while continuing to explore the question: What is it to be a woman in theatre today?
Right. Lunchtime. End of line.
Henry also bought Laura a new gaming headset - a Corsair Vengeance 2100. She's been using an older wireless Logitech model, which works fine but isn't the most comfortable headset in the world. This one, by contrast, is much more comfortable - it's not too tight, and the earpieces are can-style instead of pad-style, so it doesn't put any pressure on her ears. When she received it (in the week between Christmas and New Years) we hooked it up, but had problems - we couldn't install the drivers, and if it was plugged in DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online, the computer game that Laura and I - and others - play fairly often) wouldn't launch. And if we launched DDO and then plugged in the headset, DDO wouldn't recognize the headset. So, fail.
We did experiments and tests. We poked and prodded. We scoured the internet for help. We put in support tickets with Corsair. Eventually we were informed by Corsair that the headset drivers weren't supported for Windows XP (although the documentation says they are), and that the headset ought to work using the native XP drivers and they didn't know why it didn't work with DDO but since the operating system was Windows XP anyway that probably had something to do with it.
We checked her computer hardware and determined that was capable of running Windows 7. (It wouldn't be optimal, but it would work.) I tried installing Win7 32-bit on her secondary drive as a dual-boot configuration and the process gave me a blue screen of death. In fact, turning on the computer brought up the dual-boot option gave me three seconds to decide between booting XP - which still worked fine - or Windows 7, which was a BSOD every time. Looking into that particular BSOD message was not helpful - it pointed to a kernel problem in either the RAM (which we checked, and was fine), the motherboard (which appears, on visual inspection, to be fine), or the BIOS (which was fine). Recommendation: Replace some or all of these things.
Well, fine. The parts arrived yesterday - a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Ben installed the hardware in the afternoon and I did the Windows 7 64-bit installation when I got home. Around 10 PM we were ready, with the new operating system, the game, the headset, and all of the patches and upgrades installed. And everything worked, and everything's fine.
So, Merry Christmas, Laura! Now you can play with your new headset!
Things to report: On the 11th I served as photography assistant for Glenn as he took promotional pictures for Dream Theatre's next season. This mostly consisted of setting up, moving, and disassembling lights and screens and chimera boxes, but I actually learned some things about photography in the process. On the 18th - Laura's birthday - I visited the periodontist who said that shooting me in the face with a laser seems to have been a success. I should go back in five months to make sure. In other news, I've been doing some theatre things and some SCA things and some things around the house. Life goes on apace, as they say.
This weekend is "It's Only A Flesh Wound" and Theatre of Women, both of which I intend to attend. And hey, people should go see Theatre of Women (Sat, Jan 25, 8 PM and 10 PM). The description is: 6 plays: 6 - writers - 6 - directors - a cast of actresses. THEATRE OF WOMEN (TOW) is Dream Theatre Company’s annual play festival consisting of ten minute plays written, rehearsed and performed in a span of 24 hours that celebrates the actress as performing artist. Dream Theatre Company’s focus on the actress as artist and lead is apparent in all of their productions. The idea behind the creation of TOW was to push the art of acting through the examination of the actress in the play. These women are created to be strong, sexy, funny, villains, heroines, demons or even to play men, boys or genderless roles. “They are created so we can show the world that Passion, Strength, Innocence, and Intelligence are traits to be valued and celebrated.” Over the years this mission hasn’t changed and many artistic relationships and funny, creative scripts have blossomed from these 24 hour festivals. This year we will uphold the traditions of the past while continuing to explore the question: What is it to be a woman in theatre today?
Right. Lunchtime. End of line.