June 19, 2009

Sentimentality

Even though it’s five years old and practically unusable, I just can’t bring myself to junk my laptop. I got it as as high school graduation present, and despite being massively outclassed by modern machines I can’t really find any reason to justify purchasing a new laptop. So, I’ve decided to do the next best thing – upgrade it.

As it is right now, the battery lasts about four minutes, the DVD/CDRW drive doesn’t work, something rattles on the inside when you shake it, and the touchpad and mouse buttons are on their way out. It has half a gig of RAM, which just barely cuts it for Windows XP, and it tends to get really hot when in use.

So, to start with, I opened it up and took out the fan/heatpipe for the processor. Surprise, surprise: The thermal grease had all dried up and flaked off. I cleaned that up with some rubbing alcohol and applied a fresh coat of arctic silver, which should help mitigate the processor overheating problems. I still may need a cooling pad though, we’ll see.

Next up, battery. This is the second battery that has burned down to nothing, so I’m guessing it’s a design flaw. The power jack on the side of the laptop is also at an odd angle, but I don’t have a soldering iron so I can’t easily replace that. Hopefully it won’t burn up my new battery, which is slightly larger in capacity than the old one (4400 mAh instead of 4000).

I found the source of the rattling after taking the optical drive out – the drive itself. I’m not even going to attempt to fix that, just replace it with a new one. As for the RAM, I just bought a gig stick to replace the 512 MB stick. The touchpad poses a bit of a problem, as I really don’t want to muck around with the internal wiring too much. So, instead, I just bough a mini bluetooth dongle and travel mouse.

The total cost for all of that came out to just a hair above $100. There are still two bits I could upgrade further, but haven’t decided about yet. Shockingly, the hard drive hasn’t given out yet, so I’d be happy to leave that alone if it wasn’t a 4200 RPM drive instead of the faster 5400 RPM. The faster disk speed would be nice, but it would also generate more heat. Actually, what I’d really like to do is just replace the HDD with a SSD. I’ll have to think about it. Also, I could technically upgrade the processor from an XP-M 2000+ to an XP-M 2200+, but that’s only about a 133 MHz gain. I’m pretty sure the added RAM will resolve a lot of the performance issues, and it’s not like I’m going to be using this thing for anything more than the Internet and word processing, so I think I’ll leave that alone.

Voila, new life into an old laptop.

Posted on Life | 1 comment

June 16, 2009

Movin’ Along

Well, I got into grad school. Now I just need to setup a time to speak with my new advisor, hammer out some sort of schedule (which will be complicated considering I’ve already taken three of the required courses during my undergrad), and hope that the financial aid office will be able to throw a few grants in my direction. It feels nice having a plan again.

Japan trip is in a month. Adam and I have a sort of rough itinerary worked out, so it should be fun. Luckily for me, it looks like I’ll be able to do most of what I put in my last post, including getting a picture next to a Gundam. Adam also brought up the topic of staying at a ryokan for a night, which I hadn’t thought of, so that adds another thing to my list of things we’re going to do.

I’m finally starting to see some good results at the gym, which I attribute to my rather drastic change of diet. I’ve never really been able to put on any weight, so I’ve started focusing on constantly eating high-protein food. This has amounted to me roughly doubling the amount of stuff I eat every day, mostly of the dairy and meat variety. My daily intake looks something like this at the moment:

Breakfast
Large bowl of cereal
Cup of yogurt
Two eggs

Lunch
Meat and cheese sandwich
Protein shake

Dinner
Some sort of meat (ie, chicken breast, etc) or whatever I order at work
Veggies

Snacks throughout the day
Two more eggs
Can of tuna
Colby Jack cheese sticks and crackers
Another protein shake (if I’ve been to the gym that day)
Another cup of yogurt
Peanuts
Lots of milk and OJ

(Plus 2-3 Mountain Dews, a multivitamin, the occasional fruit, and my creatine and glutamine supplements)

I definitely feel more energetic now that I’ve added a bunch to my diet (combined with my 4-6 gym visits per week). I’ve also only been sleeping 8-9 hours per night, as opposed to the usual 10-11. I’m hoping to put on ten pounds of lean muscle by the time school starts, although my trip will probably interfere a bit.

Posted on Life, School | 2 comments

June 5, 2009

What to do in Japan?

It struck me for the first time today that three weeks is a long time. I’ll be in Japan for three whole weeks, so I have to figure out how to fill that time with stuff that is interesting. Therefore, I’m going to make a checklist of things to accomplish while I’m there, hopefully completing all of it before I leave. Here’s what I have so far, feel free to suggest more:

Find my Way to Tokyo station from the airport. Adam’s meeting me there, so getting lost before that would be a bad thing.
Visit Akihabara and see what all the fuss is about.
Visit a robot museum.
Ride the bullet train.
Bathe in a natural hot spring.
Waste money in a Pachinko parlor.
Eat real ramen.
See a castle or one of those gate thingies.
Play DDR in Japan (and, by extension, spend some time in an arcade).
Observe a Japanese classroom (can I do this?)
Swim in the Pacific (if possible)
Get my picture taken next to a Gundam statue
Hike up a mountain