Giant Squids DO exist!

And we have the pictures to prove it.

When my old roommate Matt told me that no giant squid had ever been photographed alive, I took to telling people that nobody had ever seen a live fish. Shockingly I was able to convince some people that this was true.

If it Ain't Broke, Destroy It

WARNING: The following post contains some technical language. I will attempt to clarify the terms you don't understand in that down-to-earth folksy manner for which I became famous on The Andy Griffith Show. Please try to make sense of this. I believe in you.

SECOND WARNING: The following post is long. Clear your afternoon.

My computer's been working quite well since I, you know, completely reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled the operating system, and tracked down the registration key of every program I'd ever stolen. (Just go to Google, type '"program name" "registration key"' or "serial number" or whatever the program calls for, and then go to like page 10. Works every time.)

Part of the process is updating everything. Take my sound card, for example, which, unless I'm mistaken, I first purchased in 2000. That was the year I first built my computer (we'll call it Mark I), and then I did it again in 2002 (let's go with Mark II) using many of the same parts along with some new ones. So, all my hardware is kind of old, and all of the drivers have to be updated when I do something drastic like reformat my harddrive and reinstall my operating system.

And if you don't update everything, if some little thing slips through the cracks, then that video game you play too much won't work, and you'll write an angry email to customer support, and they'll come back at you with "hmm, your sound card drivers are five years out of date, MORON." They won't say it that way, but they'll be thinking it.

That's how I discovered that I needed to update the firmware on my Linksys Wireless Access Point Router, something that had never even crossed my mind. This was a relatively easy and educational process, and it got me thinking: "what the hell is firmware, anyway?" (As a person with a degree in computer science, I often get cajoled for not actually knowing how or why computers work.) As I suspected, it's just software embedded in hardware. Wikipedia points out that the BIOS on your motherboard is a kind of firmware, which makes perfect sense.

Which reminded me, I had in fact never updated my motherboard's BIOS in the three years I'd owned the thing. That couldn't be good! Imagine the function and usability I'd been missing out on. So I began to research just how to update the motherboard's BIOS.

First I had to figure out what my motherboard was. No, no, I know what a motherboard is -- I mean I had forgotten the brand and stuff. I was pretty sure Mark I had an A-Open brand motherboard, and Mark II was Asus, but all I have lying around is the A-Open installation disks, so there's no telling. I quick reboot showed that I have an Asus A7M266-D, and sure enough, the BIOS was at least four revisions out of date. Unacceptable!

A quick note on this motherboard: it was expensive. This was during the year when I got my first job, a year that included a string of extravagant purchases, including a certain spider-infested television, and even I didn't think I should buy this motherboard. The "D" stands for "Dual," as in "Dual Processors," as in my computer has two processors (why get one when you can get two for twice the price?). Those are 1.3 GhZ processors, which isn't too impressive by 2005 standards, but man, back then it was fast.

So there I am researching just how to update the bios, and I keep coming across the same phrase: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Sensible, if hackneyed, advice, and certainly a lesson my computer has taught me again and again over the years. (How many times has your dorky friend insisted on "fixing" your computer, and then you turn around the next day and the thing crashes and won't start up again? Because I now have a policy of not even letting my dorky friends web-browse on my machine. Dorky friends are like computer kryptonite.)

Anyway, with an expensive motherboard BIOS, this advice probably goes double. If you didn't know, the motherboard is the "spine" of the computer -- everything is plugged into it. (The hard drive is the brain, the processor is the heart, and the power supply is, I don't know...something food-related? Not the intestines though. I digress.) So the motherboard is essential, and it depends on its BIOS to know what it's supposed to do. Without the BIOS, or with a damaged BIOS, your motherboard becomes a big worthless lump of nothing. That...would be bad.

Now consider that the process of updating your motherboard's BIOS naturally means erasing the current BIOS -- the one that you know works -- and replacing it with the newer one, the one you've never used before, the one you're taking it on faith from the kind people at Asus that it isn't damaged even though they don't speak English particularly well. I'm pretty sure that Asus is not a Japanese company, but a company run by the 1940s Japanese stereotypes we see in old Superman cartoons. Do me a favor and read any of the warnings on this Asus page that ostensibly tells you how to update your BIOS. Specifically look at the warning next to the drawing of the creature with giant closed eyes and buck-teeth wearing overalls and a tie. Please look at that.

Right, and also keep in mind that those are the instructions I was following.

I know this post is getting long, but I want you to fully comprehend how stupid I am. I was well aware that updating the motherboard's BIOS had no tangible benefit; extreme potential for disaster; and directions that were clearly false or incomplete. I knew they were false or incomplete, because the first instructions didn't work -- I had to go to other sites written by native English speakers for tips. Sites that repeated the mantra, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." That, my friends, is how stupid I am.

So I followed the instructions to the letter. I booted in DOS; I loaded the Asus utility; I saved a copy of my old BIOS (a lot of good that would do if I screwed this up); and I loaded the new one. The next instruction had been "follow the onscreen instructions," so I was relieved that there were, in fact, onscreen instructions. Less relieved, though, to see that they were also written in Japanese stereotype English. "We recommend powering down..." That's all I remember. The rest of it was nonsense, so I'd have to play it by ear. I powered down.

I turned on the computer again. The fans started running. I waited for the new BIOS to load up...but the screen was blank. "BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP..." I broke out in a cold sweat. I had done it. I had destroyed my motherboard for absolutely no reason. So, so stupid.

I vaguely remembered that motherboard beeps are supposed to indicate various fixable problems. So I went to Julia's computer, which I never touch and which is thus working just fine, and checked the manual online. For this pattern of beeps, it advised that there was a problem with the memory -- that maybe the memory wasn't "seated" properly on the motherboard. Of course, I hadn't actually touched the inside of the computer yet, so that clearly wasn't the problem. I removed and reinserted the memory anyway. No go.

Panic setting in. My shirt is now entirely unbuttoned, and I'm still feeling very hot. (Yes, I wear button-down shirts sometimes. Don't dress for your job, dress for the job you want, right? I usually wear a robe.) I look around online for troubleshooting tips. What I find is people writing into tech support with a similar problem; tech support asks some obvious follow-up questions; and the person who wrote in never responds. No help.

Then, somewhere in the back of my brain, panic triggers a memory -- nay, a vision. Somewhere on my motherboard, there are three tiny, tiny pins, maybe a couple of millimeters in length, lined up in a row very close together. Two of the pins have a removable plastic cover on them. What did it mean? Was it a genuine memory? Was there really something like that on my motherboard?

Naturally I couldn't find my flashlight, which makes finding teensy pins inside a box with only an overhead light very difficult. I moved aside some cables, and there they were, south of the memory cards, west of the hard drives. Three teensy pins, plastic piece on the left two. What did it mean?

In the vision, I had removed the plastic piece; put it on the right two pins; removed it again, and put it back on the left two pieces. I tried that. I want to impress upon you how difficult this was, as the piece of plastic and the pins were so small and packed into such a small crowded space, and it's so dark in there and my fingers are comaratively huge...but no luck Still with the beeping. This was clearly madness.

I went back to the online manual. The three teensy pins had something to do with jumpers. Consciously, I had a tenuous grasp of the manual's meaning -- I'm pretty sure that, in one position, something physically on the motherboard decides how fast the processors are, and in the other position, the BIOS decides the processors' speeds -- probably something unrelated to memory, which seemed to be the problem I was having. Subconsciously, I felt there was a connection.

I went back to the computer and moved the little plastic piece again, this time leaving it on the right two pins. I start the machine up. No beeps -- rejoice! I win, machine! But the monitor is black. Panic again. Oh wait, the cable just came out because I had to move the computer around. Rejoicing again! The emotional rollercoaster continues.

Yes, in a way, everything worked out in the end. Here I am, blogging and listening to internet radio. Something is working. But why does updating my BIOS mean that I have to move a teensy piece of plastic from the left two pins to the right two pins? Why on earth should that have worked? Why did I think to try it? And, is my computer just giving me a last few days to say my goodbyes before it kills itself? If so...I'm sorry computer, for whatever it was I did to you. I hope you'll understand when I use your insides to make Mark III.

EPILOGUE
Yes, this post was exactly that long. So what have we learned? Don't update your BIOS, kids. It's stupid. I gained nothing -- my computer works just like it did before -- except I have a nagging feeling that there's something very, very wrong with having that piece of plastic on the right two pins. Something horribly, disgustingly wrong. This has been my story, Internet.

"My Lucky Day"

Here's the movie I made this summer. It's around 7 minutes and 17.5 MB -- thanks to RM for compressing and hosting it.

My thoughts: I needed more time to edit (especially where sound was concerned). I got some complaints that the score wasn't whimsical enough. My most consistent praise concerned casting, which, yes, I did, but I can't help but feel like that's just complimenting the actors. Ah well.

COMPUTO UPDATE: Some of you are aware that my computer, COMPUTO, recently suffered a cataclysmic crash and refused to start up (the words "Unexpected Kernel Mode Trap" are forever burned into my brain). After several days worth of failed attempts, I came to the conclusion that my problem was not hardware related, but could not be fixed via safe mode -- and so the hard drive had to be formatted, and the cycle started anew. My computer is now called "ASTATRON."

Interestingly, all kinds of stuff is working now that didn't before. My DVD-ROM drive works. It can actually read discs now, instead of just sitting there like before. And, the "New Hardware Found" wizard doesn't pop up every time I start up my machine. So it all worked out for the best.

Months out of date TV post!

Julia and I are catching up on Lost since everyone likes it so damned much.

We're almost at the end, but I thought it important to point out that, in early episodes, the little kid is reading a Spanish language copy of Green Lantern/Flash: Faster Friends, which I really wanted to like since it has a Mark Waid credit, but which I found mostly incomprehensible. Ah well.

I also think it's important to point out that, while searching for the cover to that comic book, I found about a billion other sites that were able to identify the obscure late-90s comic book in the show. So, you heard it here last.

(Did everyone else catch the reference to The Office, when Merry's girlfriend says her father just bought a paper company in Slough? Oh, only about 165,000 people noticed that. Great.)

Well, in more current news, I'm watching this Prison Break show. I'm pretty sure it's terrible...but I love it! They're trying to break out of prison!!! Have you ever seen a bad television show or movie, besides Life, where people construct elaborate schemes to escape from prison? I haven't! Besides Life.

Michael Brown's resum

Apparently, Michael Brown wasn't assistant city manager, but was in fact assistant to the city manager.

Beyond Superdome

Conditions in New Orleans are more post-apocalyptic than I had realized.

The Superdome, where upward of 25,000 people had sweltered in conditions described as unfit for animals, was mostly emptied, though 1,500 were still there late Friday. They had renamed the place, rife with overflowing toilets and reports of murder and rape, the Sewerdome.

...

An estimated 20,000 were said to be at the four-story convention center, which at some points apparently attracted as many refugees as the Superdome but was ignored much longer by rescue operations. Conditions there were even worse than at the Superdome, with armed thugs seizing control and, the authorities said, repulsing squads of police officers sent to retake it.

On Friday morning, people huddled in small groups inside the center or sat on orange folding chairs outside, a gruesome mockery of an actual convention. Amid overflowing toilets, an elderly women and a teenage boy were having seizures in the arms of relatives.

Evacuees said that seven dead bodies littered the third floor. They said a 14-year-old girl had been raped.

Yeesh. I guess this isn't one of those crises where people come together and get patriotic.

So what I want to know is...will there still be a New Orleans? Or is it just gone now? Hey, about 2/3s of our readers have PhDs in history, so tell me: when was the last time a city was destroyed and didn't come back?

Julia points out that Tulane's new temporary website, which includes an interesting blog-like list of messages from the school's president, indicates that there will be no Fall semester. We have at least one friend at Tulane, who of course can't be reached by Tulane's email system -- all of their on-campus servers must have been destroyed, hence the temporary website and their need to "obtain new contact information for each and every employee." It looks like Tulane's students will be transferred to other schools.

Eugene

So, if you didn't already know, I'm living in Eugene, Oregon, with my girlfriend and cat. Julia (the girlfriend) will be attending the University of Oregon's arts administration graduate program; Asta (the cat) will be posing cutely on various surfaces; and I (me) will be moping around until I become employed again.

(As I type, Asta, posing cutely on Julia's new desk, knocks over a wireless internet card with his paw. That would be his "April" pose.)

Yes, I had a super-sweet job in Atlanta and saved up all kinds of money, but then I spent it all on a class in 16mm filmmaking at USC. It would be nice to not worry about being unemployed for the next six months or so, but on the other hand that class was very rewarding. Matt B. often reminds me of a day when he called me -- I had been up for something like forty hours, and was just frantically putting together my things so I could go out and help a classmate on a shoot -- and I told him I'd love to talk, but I was too busy, an unprecendented statement from me. What amazed me was how rewarding the extra work was, and how instantly gratifying. Even doing menial tasks on a film shoot was energetic and fun and creative. I loved it.

That being said, I'm applying for two different kinds of job in Eugene: the same-as-before type, like graphic design or database administration, which would keep me in large televisions; and the film/video production type, which would keep me super poor but probably a lot happier.

Speaking of large televisions, yes, the one I had for the last several years is now in the hands of some young rich Emory undergrad co-ed. ("Co-ed," as porn has taught me, means "girl.") We've gone from four televisions in a variety of sizes back down to the normal-size one I've had since 1998. (And, pending a birthday gift accruing about a month of interest now, I still don't have a computer monitor. I'm using Julia's. Oh sure, she'll buy one for herself...)

So that's where I am: comparatively teensy little Eugene, Oregon, jobless and now with two pieces of furniture. If you live in Eugene and wish to hire a Furdell, now's your big chance.