August, 2005

Boring Site Stuff — 17 Comments
16
Aug 05

Happy 5th Birthday, Nerd

Today marks 5 years of animoller.com. On one hand I find this quite an odd occasion; on the other, I find it stupid seeing how I’ve had a stupid personal website on various other hosts and random do/ma/in/~names since 1998. However. To mark this absolutely and truly momentous occasion I have compiled a list of made-up statistics:

  • 23,000,000,001 million hits
  • 5,001 user accounts
  • 49,001 insightful articles
  • Plus other made-up statistics too

I have posted:

  • About an annoying ex-workmate with a gigantic hairy mole on her cheek, which almost got me dooced before the term was even coined
  • About a nutty ex-flatmate who kicked me out because I didn’t inform her the night before of my late shower before work and because I watched her television without thanking her for being so kind as to let me watch one of her two televisions which was in the lounge, whom I never heard from again, thank God
  • Obnoxious goth poetry involving words such as “angst” and “blackened heart”; thankfully, I started wearing colour again before I killed myself for being such a fucking twat
  • About politics. Twice. Can’t say if there’ll be a third time, unless I turn off commenting.
  • A slagging off about girls on the Internet, because I am full of enmity
  • A retarded Apple Switch parody, which is sadly my biggest claim to Internet fame to date and probably forever
  • About Lindsay Lohan. Worst mistake ever.
  • About breaking a nail on October 11, 1999

Since uploading my first post, I have:

  • Moved from Microsoft Publisher, to Dreamweaver, to Notepad, to Adobe PageMill, to Blogger, to Organizine, to a custom CMS, to TextPattern
  • Grown from an angsty 18-year-old goth to a grumpy 25-year-old
  • Had a terrible total of four long-distance relationships, not all due to the Internet; each time telling myself “that’s the last time I’ll be doing that!”
  • Left New Zealand and moved to Texas with my burly American fiancĂ©, then husband, then ex-husband
  • Travelled lots. Like, quite a bit really.
  • Made one friend. His name was Harold, and he only showed up when no one else was around. Sadly, he died in a tragic wheelbarrow accident.
  • Become painfully unfunny in my old age
  • Invented the Internet. Or Bob Dole. Actually, I think I invented Bob Dole.

In conclusion, happy 5th domain registration birthday. I wonder how many more there will be, and will I be getting a cake?

Technology — 6 Comments
7
Aug 05

Faulty PowerBook Memory Slots

Back in June, my boyfriend’s brand new PowerBook broke. He’d had it about two weeks, so it was one week out of the full replacement time. As it turns out, the lower memory slot failed, and putting any memory in it stopped the computer from booting. As a freelance developer, he now had two choices – take his main work machine into the utterly slow local authorised Apple service centre and wait weeks for it to be repaired, or deal with a broken RAM slot.

Now, why would anyone put up with a broken computer? Because apparently, Apple don’t have a fix for it. All they are currently doing is replacing broken logic boards for faulty logic boards. My boyfriend set out on a massive internet search to find other people who have also had this problem and found a lot of people who were on to their second, third, or fourth service repair for the same problem. The threads he started on the Apple forums were closed or deleted.

The problem is that Apple have not yet acknowledged this hardware fault, and as such, people who are just out of warranty are having to shell out for brand new logic boards (expensive) in an attempt to fix an inherent problem with Apple hardware. Sure, you can get your logic board replaced if you are in warranty as many times as you can stand, but you will still not have a permanently fixed computer. Yet.

My boyfriend is currently in talks with a law firm in the United States to start a class action lawsuit against Apple, in an effort to get them to recognise, acknowledge, and start a repair plan (similar to the iBook logic board fault programme) for anyone who has a Mac with this fault. Please help him out and sign the petition.

Faulty Lower Memory Slot Petition