My Dell(R) Laptop : Chapter II

My 4-month old laptop, an Inspiron 6000 went comatose last weekend Saturday, while I was listening to some tunes and chatting with Lili and Chye, u know, the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

(there was a home game, EMU @ Michigan... we smothered them.. 0 - 55...that's a great match, well, the fans were lousy though, many students went back at half time, well(at least Quang and I stayed until there's 3 minutes left - sorry for being a pot calling kettle black kinda person) ... Putt came 20 minutes late, and left 2o minutes early... he was kinda sick, and went to Lili's place to rest... scandalous. We went to meet up with them after the game... So, we just chilled at Lili's place (watching America's Next Top Model)... until dinner time. For dinner, we had italian fastfood at Za's cafe... not bad, had the usual, Barbeque Chicken Pizza and a slice of CheeseFactory cheese cake... Lili and Chye came to my room after the visit...

wow, sorry for the long introduction... well, have to explain why Lili and Chia Chye were in my room rite?

Well, since this is not really uncommon, this kinda BSOD is expected to come visiting once in a while, so, i thought that it was no big deal, just forced restart should do the trick...

but, nope, the laptop just couldn't get pass the Windows logo... while loading, it just went BSOD again...

alright, safe mode.... loading... --> another BSOD

nvm, last known good configuration... loading... --> yet another BSOD... dang... my palm started sweating... this wasn't what I'm expecting... this scenario only happened when something serious was wrong...

as i'm desperate (i'm that kinda person that can't live another day without using the computer that's connected to the internet), I even tried formatting my computer(restoring it to the factory settings (reads losing all my data). And the reformatting went well, but the rebooting just couldn't get pass the Windows logo..

Alright, after wasting 3 hours playing with this and that, I finally gave up and went to bed...

the next morning, I went down to the computer lab of the hall to get support from Dell... well, i started with an email, and i think some kinda computer reply me that my RAM have issue... alright... so, i started a chat session with a dell Rep... so, I explained what was wrong with my com, and what i had tried to recover it but the recoverings were in vain... so, more than an hour later, we finalized on Dell sending me 2 replacement RAMs, and a harddisk...(just in case my harddisk fails too)...

it took 2 days for the parts to be delivered... so, on Tuesday evening, I got those parts, and replaced the RAMs... and everything went really well.... i spent 2+ hours reinstalling all those shit (softwares) and another hour transfering songs from my iPod back into my harddisk...

now, my laptop is running fine... so, the moral of the story... is to fully utilize ur warranty... by running ur laptop 24-7... :)

guess wat, i'm back to factoring prime number again... go google for "GIMPS" to learn more about it...

alright... talking about my research program... my involvement in Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP)... so, after those interviews and all, I finally got a project...

Project Title: Growth of Retail and Service Chains in the Economy...

and I'm really elated as this is also my first-choice-project...

Really looking forward to start my project ASAP...

Homeworks are catching up too... readings...
oh yar, about readings... these books that I've just finished recently are really good read...
1) Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt...
2) Blink by Malcolm Gladwell...

go check them out.... even if u don't have time...

all right... got to go...