RSS Feed

May, 2010

  1. Protected: “What am I doing here?”

    May 19, 2010 by Stephanie

    This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


    Category Me, Rants | Tags: | Enter your password to view comments.

  2. I like The Sims 2 but…

    May 13, 2010 by Stephanie

    Pregnant SimI’ve been playing The Sims 2 (yes, I know I’m behind the times when it comes to the Sims but my laptop definitely won’t be able to handle The Sims 3 at all so I plan on getting a new one) for quite some time now. I’m even entertaining the idea of creating a WWE neighbourhood!

    The only thing that is really annoying me in the game itself is in the picture to the left. The fucking horrible – manky I like to call it – maternity wear. What pregnant Sim, let alone a pregnant woman, would be seen wearing maternity wear like that? I know damn well I wouldn’t be seen in anything like that! Surprisingly, this ‘maternity’ top is somewhat detailed in that you can see the flowers on it – I’m putting that down to the fact that I doubled the RAM for my laptop to 512MB. I’m thinking that the Sim in the picture has the perfect facial expression – as if she can’t believe what she’s wearing and just how horrible it really is. Then again, this particular Sim is grouchy by nature but that should be something to expect when her mother is Lilith Pleasant.

    If you are still playing The Sims 2 for whatever reason, what are some of your pet peeves?

    Category Sims 2 | Tags: | 1 Comment

  3. XP SP 1 to XP SP 2 to XP SP 1

    May 7, 2010 by Stephanie

    Oh, what Windows XP service pack dramas I’ve experienced on my laptop since I moved to Christchurch!

    Ever since my laptop got a new hard drive in August 2007 (the previous one having died rather unexpectantly 18 months earlier), it hadn’t been connected to the internet – consequently, it didn’t have an anti-virus program, an anti-spyware program, an anti-malware program, it had a 2.x.x.x version of Firefox (that I transferred from my portable hard drive) and was really only used to play The Sims 2.

    When I got to Christchurch, my flatmate set up the wireless internet connection so I could use it and download and install anti-virus program, an anti-spyware program, an anti-malware program as well as upgrade Firefox to the most recent version. This went reasonably well. The downloads were quick and the installation went relatively smoothly. Except when it came to iTunes and I realised then that I had to upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2. Automatic updates, you see.

    So I did that, not really thinking anything of it, and saw that the previously green bars at the start were blue so I knew that it had worked. This was when the drama started.

    Surfing the internet
    SP1: Could surf as soon as the desktop showed up.
    SP2: Had to wait at least three minutes for the wireless connection thing to show up in the taskbar, at least three minutes for it to find our network, then at least another three minutes for Firefox to actually load then about another three minutes before I could really do anything.

    CPU usage
    SP1: didn’t really know what it was because I didn’t have Task Manager open frequently but I would say that it was very low.
    SP2: As soon as I opened Task Manager, it would hit 100% and would stay there most of the time the laptop was running.

    Overall system performance
    SP1: Everything ran smoothly. Nothing took forever and a day to load.
    SP2: Nothing ran smoothly. Everything took forever and a day to load.

    So, I went surfing on my flatmate’s Mac to see what I could do in order to try and rectify the problems I was having. I found this page which said the following:

    After you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or upgrade to Windows XP with SP2, you experience slow computer performance. For example, you experience the following symptoms:

    * If you browse the Internet, the performance is slow.
    * If you try to download newsgroup e-mail messages, some or all of the messages are not downloaded.
    * There is excessive hard disk activity.
    * Overall system performance is very slow.

    Then it went on to list some possible causes (what I did is italicised):

    This issue occurs if one of the following conditions is true:

    * You have spyware or malware running on the computer. Ran both anti-spyware and anti-malware programs – nothing was found
    * You have viruses that are running on the computer. Did a full system check which took nearly five hours and nothing was found
    * You do not have sufficient free space on the hard disk. The hard drive is 80GB – I had at least 42GB free
    * You do not have sufficient random access memory (RAM) installed on the computer. The laptop initially came installed with 256MB RAM – upgraded to 512MB which didn’t really help that much
    * You have corrupted or outdated drivers. Nothing was showing up in Device Manager as being corrupted so that was ruled out
    * You have too many files in the Recycle Bin or temporary folders. Temporary folders and the recycle bin were both emptied

    None of those helped at all so a couple of days ago, I found a page that explained how to uninstall XP SP2. It took forever but my laptop is back to its old self. I know that downgrading wasn’t the best thing to do security wise but seeing that I’m currently looking for a new job, I obviously can’t afford to get a new laptop but I do have my eye on one in particular.

    Why my laptop couldn’t handle XP SP2, I don’t think I’ll ever know.

    Category Rants | Tags: | No Comments

  4. XP dramas

    May 7, 2010 by Stephanie

    I’ll be making a rather lengthy post about the dramas of Windows XP Service Pack 2 very soon. It will be somewhat lengthy but at least I can type fast so it won’t take me too long, heh!

    Category Rants | Tags: | No Comments