A walk in the woods

Amy, the dogs and I hiked the two mile ‘Virginia Day Memorial Nature Trail’ in Babler state park Saturday afternoon. The weather was nice, just cool enough to keep me from sweating, the leaves have started changing colors and Amy slipped in the mud and fell on her butt (lol). All and all a fun day.

I was really surprised by the number of October campers in the park, though most of them were in campers rather than tents.

That Darn Foxconn Motherboard

Last night I finally flashed the bios with the instructions they sent me, that were outdated and had incorrect links, by booting to a dos CD. I really don't want to have to ever go through that again. Now I just have to reinstall all the drivers and software.

I’m not vary happy with my new Foxconn motherboard!

Im not vary happy with my new Foxconn 755A01-6EKRS motherboard. One week after getting it from Newegg the board only runs on 256mb of ram. After sending emails back and forth with Foxconn's tech support they came to the conclusion that I need to update the bio's. Keep in mind this is a model that was released sometime in 2004, I would think bios upgrades would not be an issue by 2008. None of the parts I'm installing fall outside the specks of what the board is advertised to handle, nor is there any thing odd or unusual about my build. And yes, there are a lot of posts from people using Sempron with this problem, but I'm using a Athlon 64.

1. Motherboard would not boot past the bios memory test. Disconnected everything but the power, cpu, and keyboard from the motherboard
   
2. Motherboard still will not boot past the bios memory test. Foxconn tech support had me reset the bios.
   
3. Still, nothing past the memory test. I was told to boot up with 256mb single sided ram…. Problem, I don't own any 256mb single sided ram. Fortunately I was able to borrow one from someone at work.
   
4. System now boots but I have 2gig of ram I want to use in this pc so the bios still needs to be flashed.
   
   1. I installed Windows XP and ran there bios flashing software. The software gave me a message that the bios file dose not exist on the server.
      
   2. I tried to find the bios file used when flashing from a command prompt, after booting from a dos disk. When I got to where the file should be on Foxconns web site I again got a message that the file did not exist.
      
5. Foxconn tech sent me a zip file with the updated flash file. When I ran their windows software to update the bios the message I got was that this was the wrong bios file. Foxconn tech has now suggested I confirm the bios version and try the boot from dos method.

Of course all the contacts with Foxconn are via email so basically every step take a day to accomplish.

As I said, Im not happy with my Foxconn motherboard.

Timing Belt

On October 17, 2008 I Finaly took the Car to Dave Mungenast-St. Louis Honda to replace the timing belt. Something they recomend be done every 100,000 miles. I waited alot longer.

They quoted me $679.92. I was lucky enough to find a 20% off coupon on their web site. In addition to the timing belt they recomended replaceing some leaking cam and crank shaft seals($93.89) and replacing the coolent ($15.50)

Service was great.

Free!

Link to Free Cappuccino until October 31, 2008

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/email/nav.asp?r=1&r=1&PID=24816

Goings On

I have to say, life is vary frustrating when your main PC is down.  Its been a week since I've balanced my check books and credit cards and worst of all I haven't been able to record my TV shows or watch them off the Internet (my PC is hooked up to my TV)   I ordered a replacement Foxconn 755A01-6EKRS motherboard from newegg Monday night and it came in on Friday.  Saturday I put it together.  The bios boot up stops right after the memory test.  I sent an email to Foxconns support but since it was over the weekend I'm having to wait.  As of this Monday morning I'm still waiting for a response.

Friday night I went over to Steve's and watched "Chuck"(Yvonne Strahovski is soo... hot!), "Big Bang Theory" and two episodes of "Stargate Atlantis".  Yeah, I know, I'm a real couch potato.

Saturday I was feeling a little sick,  Stayed home most of the day trying to get the computer working except for a trip to the grocery store and to Grants farm to see the civil war re-enactments.  

There wasnt much to see at the re-enactment for me.  Im sure it would be great for kids.  My big thrill was the two free bottles of Budwiser productes they give out.

Still was feeling kinda sickly on Sunday.  I did some cleaning around the house but that was mainly it.

Stupid Computer

My computer died on Friday.  I got the blue screen of death a few times so I though I would run spin-rite on it, I only ran it through 80% then canceled the scan. Now I don't even get a bios screen :-(