Ah, crap
YIKES, I think my graphics card has blown. But I’m suspicious it might be a driver issue.
See, I ‘upgraded’ to Windows 10 this weekend. And actually, honestly, things went pretty swimmingly. The process was painless, I was finding my way around. Big sigh of relief.
I have a two monitor system. I sat down to it earlier today, turned on both monitors and…my main monitor was dead, my side monitor was effed up looking. Windows Display Settings currently only sees one monitor. And that monitor is 1024×768 and looks like shit — covered in jumping white horizontal lines. Trippy.
I plugged in the monitors the other way around, and they swapped position. In other words, it’s not a monitor fault.
The Device Manager shows an error on the video card: Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43) All the internet’s suggestions for fixing that (basically uninstalling the driver and re-scanning my hardware) have failed.
I’ve gotten several suggestions that it’s a driver error, including multiple requests to reboot to finish installing the driver. And the fact that I know drivers have been messing about in the background.
However, what makes me think it’s a hardware error is that the display is screwed up from the very beginning of the Power On Self Test, before any drivers are loaded or anything.
I’ve done all the obvious things — swapping the cables around, taking the card out and re-seating it. Any suggestions? Ways to tell if I have a hardware or a software problem?
I can just about make out the screen well enough to type (obviously) but I’m definitely out of the Photoshop biz until I get this sorted.
Ugh, is it gin o’clock yet?
July 7, 2016 — 8:57 pm
Comments: 19
All the principal countries of the world, dammit!
Soooo, I stopped on the way to work this morning and bought a pair of pistols. I rode right past a boot sale (read: flea market) and decided to stop for a mo’.
Well. Yes. They are pellet guns. Don’t rub it in. I thought Uncle B an’ me could set out back and plink tin cans or something. Looks like I’m going to have to do a little maintenance on them first, though.
They are Webley Juniors, like the one in the picture. Unfortunately, I got the picture off the internet — if I had the original boxes for them, they’d be worth three times as much.
The thin tube on top is actually the barrel — and also the pump lever. The fat tube is the spring/air chamber. You lift the back end of the barrel all the way back until it’s facing straight up (this takes all my strength), pop a pellet in it and close it up again. Cocked, charged with air and ready to go.
Only, one of mine doesn’t charge and the other one goes “pop” but the pellet doesn’t make it all the way through. Bad seals, I suspect. Incredibly, you can still get parts.
Playing with these things set off Uncle B’s manly instincts, and he’s over there gun shopping. You can get some very powerful air rifles here, and incredibly persuasive air replicas of all the familiar handguns, often made in the same factory with many of the same parts as the ‘real’ version.
I just hope we don’t hit a chicken.
July 6, 2016 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 10
It’s good to have friends
One law for them, one for us.
July 5, 2016 — 9:13 pm
Comments: 20
Freeeeeedommmmmmm!
Happy Independence Day, my fellow liberated colonials. Which I guess includes my British neighbors now.
Early afternoon was lovely here, which makes a great change (we’ve had the most miserably cold, gray Summer so far). We sat in the garden with a couple of books and a bottle of wine and grilled burgers and corn on the cob and hummed Stars and Stripes Forever.
And then fell asleep, because wine, and had terrible dreams, because sleeping in the daytime.
Hope you had a wonderful Fourth. I’ve vicariously enjoyed the parades in my FaceBook feed today.
You remember that pic, of course, Weasel Attempts to Murder Woodpecker. From the header of the photographer’s Twitter feed, it looks like someone made him a ceramic one.
July 4, 2016 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 5
RIP Dr Stanley
Ralph Stanley died last week, and that’s an end to all the original men of Bluegrass, I suppose.
I know it doesn’t seem like it, but Bluegrass was strictly a Twentieth Century musical style. It borrowed heavily from traditional music, of course, but it was a highly formalized and particular form that started with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys (hence the name), particularly when Earl Scruggs joined them in 1945.
Stanley and his brother Carter had performed together since the late Forties, though Carter drank himself to death in the Sixties. Their sound was very heavily Appalachian. Ralph’s singing style was typical of the genre — a high-pitched, whining sort of sound called “high lonesome” and often compared to a ghost wailing through a forest. It’s eerie. And probably an acquired taste.
Listen to the chorus of The Fields Have Turned Brown to hear what I mean.
Stanley’s career had a sudden resurgence late in life when he did the soundtrack for the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou. The album — particularly the song Man of Constant Sorrow — was a surprise hit.
As a personal aside, I hated that fucking film. It was the beginning of the end for me and the Coen Brothers. Films like Fargo poked fun of people but seemed to do it with affection, but O Brother was full of tone deafness and sneering contempt. But good on Ralph for ending his life on a high note (oh, pun, I suppose).
And thus a sad footnote to a strange week. Good weekend, everyone!
July 1, 2016 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 13
Could be worse
Ah, there they are. We hadn’t seen the swan fambly for a while, but here they are Sunday. Sorry about the distracting vegetation, but it’s only because Unkle B has a fancy-pants camera that he got any pictures at all: he had to raise it over his head and tilt the backscreen down so he could see what he was aiming at.
I know what you’re thinking; there were nine. Maybe there still are; it was awfully hard to count without being able to see beaks. But there are eight for sure, and that’s pretty good around here.
Foxes. Badgers. Stoats. That one stinking mink.
My cousin called me from the States tonight to ask what the heck is going on over here. I suppose it’s being reported that gangs of Hitler youth are roaming the streets beating up brown people. Or something. That’s The Narrative and they’re sticking to it — most of the papers, the pundits, even the police.
Whether there’s been a real rise in racial conflicts, I have no idea. They say calls to the police abuse hotlines are way up, but most of the actual reports seem to be Rudeness in the First Degree or Really Hurtful T-Shirt Slogans.
Exit question: if your thesis is that most English people find it terribly, terribly hard to get along with non-English people, is by-god we’re going to force them to really the most workable long-term solution?
June 29, 2016 — 10:10 pm
Comments: 9
Did I mention the tractor show?
Yes, this is a regularly used airfield. There’s a wonk in it halfway down that tossed the little planes back up in the air on landing. I’m amazed there wasn’t a bird strike, as clouds of gulls ascended every time a plane went over.
Well, of course I’m going to give it to you in color. Bonus cloud shot. Those skies! All images courtesy A. Badger.
So Corbyn is hanging in there, despite losing the no confidence vote 172 to 40. More than 50 people in his cabinet have resigned.
He was elected leader by a large majority of party members — sixty percent, I think — and he’s insisting that has more legitimacy than a vote by MPs. Which may accurately reflect the current populist mood of the electorate.
Orrrr…it may be that he’s hanging on until the Chilcot Report is published next week. He’s vowed to use his position as party leader to push for prosecution of Blair for war crimes, if anything in the report will back it up. Many of the MPs voting to oust him are, at the least, Blair sympathizers if not actual Blairites.
Wheels within wheels, eh?
June 28, 2016 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 9
IT’S BREXIT!!!
IT’S BREXIT!!!!
Holy shit.
HOLY SHIT!
I’m sure all this schadenfreude can’t be good for me. My social media has been glorious today. The leading Remainiac warcries seem to be:
Old people shouldn’t have the vote because they don’t have to live with the consequences for very long.
Ordinary people shouldn’t have the vote, or at least important issues shouldn’t be decided by a popular referendum.
People who voted Leave didn’t really know what they are doing and regret the decision already. If we had a do-over this afternoon, the vote would be totally different.
All the educated people voted to remain. Stupid Leavers are only now doing Google searches of “What is the EU?”
And, of course, every variation of white people suck and are racists.
I am seriously proud of the British people for this vote. Sticking with the status quo is always the easiest and safest course (sometimes even the wisest). They’ve had had a firehose of scary claims trained on them for weeks. All the cool people begged them to vote Remain. And still they took this step into the unknown.
And, yes, my boss looked like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle this morning.
June 24, 2016 — 7:24 am
Comments: 47
Axed and answered
Feast your eyes, ladies and gentlemen. This is what ‘above average’ looks like.
Above. Average.
Nigel Farage has just come on teevee to say he thinks Remain will win by a few points. That’s been the consensus all week, but to hear Nige say it is depressing.
It solves nothing. The margin is likely to be slim, and all the passion was for Leave. In other words, half of this country is likely to wake up very pissed off at the other half tomorrow. Including a majority of the people who 23andme would call ‘the English’.
This will not end well, and it certainly will not end tomorrow.
Hm. Time to go practice more axe throwing, I think.
June 23, 2016 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 16
Twilight zone…
In case you missed the conversation, the blog is currently being migrated to another host. Because it’s been in the same place so long and I’ve been less than tidy in my workspace, the process is a little…messy. Anything I post (and any comment you make) during the transition is likely to be lost, so zero effort for tonight. I’ll ‘splain the particulars when it’s done.
June 20, 2016 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 11