Oct 16 2006

Pretty Good Weekend

We took our kitten home, from the in laws, today. Not yet named her, the proposals are Pippa, Socks and a word I’ve forgotten already (Karra?) that means black in Kazakh. Anyone else think of anything? It needs to be easily pronounced by Russian and English tongues, be feminine, and be shortened easily…
The last one was suggested by KZBlog owner’s wife; we met up at the Chelsea (an ‘English’ ‘pub’) again Saturday night. Had a good time, ate a little, drank a little more, and talked a lot, their prices are definitely higher than the average bar, but the selection of food is good for wimpy westerners like me, and I tend to feel a little freer talking about life over here than I would normally…

FINALLY the PC Hardware was all fitted. For the last 5 months, I’ve been waiting (we’ll get the stock next week, next week, next week, oh we had it, but sold it to someone else etc. etc.) for a Graphics Card upgrade (nVidia 7600GT>7900GT) and a replacement 320 Gig Seagate SATA hard drive; for the last week and a half, Ucon (the PC shop in question) has PROMISED to visit our flat and deliver them (to make up for the delays) . Each day, they didn’t turn up, and each day they didn’t bother to call and let us know they couldn’t make it. Sadly, this isn’t exactly unheard of, in respect of customer service levels, here in Kazakhstan. We gave up in the end, and went back to the original plan, so we took the PC to the shop and dropped the printer off to be repaired. They laughed at the amount of programs I have running (what’s the point in a well specced machine if you don’t fully utilize it’s resources), and the lights I had fitted. Had being the operative word, they took it all out, fitted the hardware, then put it all in a bag for me. Also caught the shop assistant trying to copy some of my games. 1) Don’t do it without asking, it is rude 2) Don’t be stupid, simply copying the directory the game is installed into onto their machine will not likely result in a working application, and oh yeah 3) Copyright theft is bad hmmm. Well offered to copy my installation DVDs (only for Public Domain games, obviously…), and they could have it when we came to pick up the repaired printer. Hoping that is enough motivation to see the printer back soon…
I now have just over 850 Gigabytes of storage space, so shan’t be running out anytime soon. Especially not downloading via dial up access to the internet. Irina’s mum had ADSL installed in the last week, so I’m hoping we’ll either get that or WiMax sorted soon….
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Sep 21 2006

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 4:08 am

For those that haven’t heard already, I’m currently waiting for a few things from the local PC shop over here, and have been for a while.

Actually, five and a bit months so far for most of them. However, Irina called them for me today, and apparently….

A 7900GT grafx card should be ordered in for me arriving next week (paying the difference in price between it and my current 7600GT)
The 320 Gb Seagate SATA hard drive I gave them wasn’t recoverable, data wise, but they’ll replace the unit, as it appears to be faulty (hmmm, I’m guessing that accidentally reversing the polarity of the DC input, via plugging in lighting system incorrectly might not have helped, but shhhhhh ;-> )
If they can’t service the printer, they’ll replace it. (The printer pretends it doesn’t have any paper loaded, you click on the continue button, and then it notices it, multiple times per print job)

When they come over and swap the grafx card, they’ll hopefully disconnect my case alarm as well – before anyone laughs, yes I do think I’m just about capable of doing that job solo, but I’d invalidate their guarantee…

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