| HP Compaq NC6220 and NC6230 BIOS reset procedure |
[Jun. 8th, 2009|09:04 am] |
I recently acquired a new to me NC6230 laptop. The only problem was the BIOS were password protected, and I just couldn't have that. So after some searching, reading (the HP manual sucks) and some trial and error I finally got it right. Here's the procedure, hopefully it will save others some time.
HP Compaq NC6220/6230 BIOS password reset procedure:
- disconnect the power supply and remove the battery
- remove the three screws that hold in the keyboard on the bottom
- up top slide the four tabs on the keyboard closest to the screen towards the touch pad
- fold the keyboard over (no need to disconnect it from the mainboard)
- using a tiny flat head pry up the power button panel along the edge of the screen
- bow the power button panel in the middle of the laptop and gently ease one side up
- unplug the connector for the power button panel and remove
- locate the CMOS battery in the upper right corner, follow the wire to the left and locate the connector at the upper left corner of the dvd drive
- remove the two screws located in the immediate vicinity of the CMOS battery connector
- detach the CMOS battery connector
- have a beer, sip slow and take at least five minutes
- DO NOT reconnect the CMOS battery or the laptop battery
- connect the power supply and power on
- hit F10 to enter setup
- if you did it right you should get right into the BIOS setup; change whatever settings you fancy, save and exit
- let the laptop finish POST then power off and disconnect the power supply
- reassembly is the reverse of above
when you power back on and right before the OS boots you'll get a message about the date and time not being set, this will go away after the first full boot into the OS |
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| Dinner last night |
[May. 10th, 2007|10:21 am] |
So last night A and went to Tysons 1 to buy some neck ties for the wedding and get something to eat. We wander through a few stores, find the ties, then head to food court 18, the nice one, for some dinner. We sit at the bar because it's the only place you can smoke and you always get better service at the bar anyway.
So we sit down, order drinks, light a cigarette and the woman two stools down starts talking on her cell phone. She's going 100mph talking about the most inane bullshit. We finish our cigarettes and she's still talking. Eating, and drinking, and talking like a 12 year old with ADD after six cans of Jolt and a box of girl scout cookies. We gave each other a glance, then looked over at the guy in between us and the socially inept socialite who returned the knowing glance.
A few minutes later our food arrived and the bitch was still going full bore. Then the man at the synthesizer starts to play... He covers a Sade tune (according to A) in a way only a large, gay black man with a soprano voice imitating lounge music can do. The woman adjusted her volume to compensate. Then the man played another Sade song. At this point we start shaking our heads and talking to the other guy eating. We make a few jokes and rude comments but the farce continued to play out as before.
And then everything got very surreal. The music man finished his song and started fiddling with the beat track while the noise box bitch started in on a more frenzied story. Just as I'm shoveling a fork full of chicken into my mouth the entertainer started into the chorus of his next lounge stylized song... "Let's get it on... OOOOooooooh, let's get it on..." I lost my shit, laughing out of control, only able to compose myself long enough to call the bartender over for another Makers. I was in the middle of some cruel comedy, the kind that's painful to watch yet irresistible like a train wreck.
The rest of meal was brief but continued in exactly the same way. I paid the check, downed my drink in two gulps, and we got up to leave. The bitch was still spewing bile into her cell phone. We left.
This, my friends, is why I hate the suburbs, and more importantly why I don't go to malls.
As an aside, I'm posting this because, as I told A last night in the midst of this, the only way to make the evening more perfectly awful would to blog about it in the morning as a commentary on how our society is swirling around the toilette bowl towards it ultimate destination in a sea of banality. |
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| Electric Cars, Alternative Fuels and the Future |
[Apr. 10th, 2007|01:37 pm] |
This all started as a rant in a forum thread about Dubya plugging an extension cord into the filler hole of a hydrogen car on the Whitehouse lawn. All I have to say is it seems I care about the subject.
My original post:
Seriously, hydrogen cars are the dumbest idea since hydrogen airships. Not only is it dangerous, the technology is at least a decade away from being commercially viable. Meanwhile, technology for electric cars has been viable for the PAST DECADE, and the improvements in battery technology can give them an effective range nearing that of internal combustion engines. AND WE COULD HAVE IT NOW! BUT, WE DON'T! Now ask yourself why. Why don't we have electric cars? Why is the President and the auto industry so gung-ho about hydrogen? Why did they choose hydrogen at all? I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, at least not seriously, but I smell one here.
/rant This was followed by some agreement, some disagreement, half truths, flat out misunderstanding, and petty bickering. So I responded with the following:
Let me elaborate:
There are two main points to my original post, why don't we have electric cars and hydrogen cars are just plain dumb. The two are directly related in that we have the technology and infrastructure to implement a fleet of electric cars RIGHT NOW in the USA and we are decades away from having the same level of technology and penetration of infrastructure for viable hydrogen cars. So, why not start running electric cars now? This leads me to my new points.
We have the tech for electric cars right now. These cars would not be for everyone for several reasons. First and foremost, because, just like hybrid cars, the cost is prohibitive to a large section of the population. Second, because of the range and time to fuel they would not be a viable mode of transport for a smaller cross section of the populous. Third, outside of the USA, there is limited or no infrastructure in place to support an EV fleet. Fourth, the cost to implement required infrastructure in the rural USA, some lower ranked first tier nations, and all developing and third world countries make it non-viable.
So why, with all these downsides, would we want any EV's? There are two main reasons, it's better than doing nothing and they are viable for some people. However, I am by no means advocating EV's as the be all end all solution, they are simply A solution, and far from the best, if there is such a thing as the best.
To put it simply, I do not see a future of transportation powered by one, two, three or even four individual energy sources. Energy will be diversified. The energy source used will depend on the person using it and the purpose. We've used petrol based energy sources for transportation for over 100 years because it was cheap and easy, not because it's efficient. It's not efficient by any measure. Now, as knowledge, technology and needs are becoming greater than we ever imagined, the way we do things will continue to change, and need to continue to change in order for these things to continue advancing. We are stifling our development by limiting ourselves to 100 year old ways of doing things just because it's easy.
Of course the diversification of energy sources is not going to happen over night, over five, ten or even 20 years. Like every other significant change, it will take time. Just think about the changes to emissions systems and the move from leaded to unleaded gas. The time for these changes to occur are greatly impacted by the governments of the world, read the USA and the EU, in their decision to embrace or denounce the change and the voracity with which they do so. So if the USA decides not to embrace bio-fuels it will take decades for the bio-fuels to become viable while if they embrace hydrogen it will take less time for it to become available, but still decades in the case of hydrogen because of the lack of prior research and the advanced nature of the technology to use it safely.
Electric vehicles have not been embraced by the influencing governments, in fact in the case of the USA they have been out right shunned. Instead the governments have chosen to push for hydrogen powered vehicles, which is where my OPEC centered conspiracy theories come in. I will not elaborate on those theories though. So we will not see EV's as an alternative any time soon. Since biodiesel and ethanol are even less viable as a widely used energy source right now, and they're not being embraced like hydrogen, we won't see those any time soon either.
Where does this all leave us? Back where we started, reliant for the most part on petrol based fuels. What can we do about it? That's the topic for a completely different discussion.
postscript:
Something I'd like to mention but didn't find relevant to my discussion above is that I am advocate of nuclear energy. It's far more plentiful than any other major energy source in use today. It definitely has it's drawback which I don't feel I need to mention, but with careful planning and research they can be minimized. I really wish there was more research going into cold fusion, but it's nice to wish for things, isn't it? To this post I got responses such as "you killed the funny", "die thread die", and more angry and misguided rants. So I decided to post it here.
Cheers. |
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| Thursdays are lame |
[Jul. 6th, 2006|04:26 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | my iPod lost my playlists | ] |
I've read nothing of any interest today, not even a bit of book this morning since I woke up late and was rushed. I did see one site posted on SP that would show you what places would look like if the sea level was elevated by 7m or something, using google maps of course. It was mildly interesting, but not enough to hold me for more than 5 minutes.
Reading two books at the moment, Year Zero by Jeff Long and Alas, Babylon by someone else. I'd give you URL's but I'm feeling particularlly lazy at the moment. Year Zero is long and fairly sophomoric from what I've read so far. Alas, Babylon is better and shorter buy dated, it was written in the 1940's or 1950's. Both books are about the end of the world, which I seem to have a strange and possibly unhealthy obsession with. I'm probably going to put down Year Zero if it doesn't get any better in the next 50 pages and either pick up Catch-22 again or the Postman.
Might be going to see the DaVinci Code tonight. Having read the book recently and thinking Tom Hanks is completely wrong for the roll I'm not really pressed to see it, but who knows, maybe it will be good.
Tons of work to do, all of it tedious. A lot of waiting for processes to finish. I really should automate everything, it would be a nice challenge for a week or two.
Other than that just really blah. Didn't do enough over the long weekend and now I'm still trying to break out of the lethargy. Ah well, tomorrow is Friday so maybe the regular weekend will help get things back to normal. |
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| VW to bring back the Scirocco |
[Jun. 30th, 2006|03:23 pm] |
Someone posted to the VW group, but with out pics. As an avid VW lover I felt compelled to check it out further; this is what I found.
VW is alledgedly going to begin production of a new Scirocco in 2008. I love the original Scirocco from the 80's and the Corrodo that came after it in the 90's. For a time I was considering trading in my 2001 Audi S4 for a Corrado G60, but ended up getting lucky and snatching up a GTI 337. A few years after I got my GTI VW brought the all wheel drive R32 Golf to the states and I salavated, but could not bring myself to trade in the 337. The new Scirocco solves all my problems.
According to jalopnik.com, edmunds.com, and some random blog called circa1973.net/bossanova the new Scirocco will based on the MKIV chassis, be equipped with AWD and the R32's 247hp V6. circa1973.net has pictures that appear to be from another site. The pictures look like a cross between a Coraddo and a MKIV GTI, only much, much hotter. It's the best looking car of the new VW lineup IMHO.
So now I start saving my pennies. I will have the 337 paid next year, leaving me another year to save for this. However, in the next two years I'm also going to be trading up my house and getting married. Both of these make me nervous, mainly because I don't want to give up my toys. :-P We'll see. |
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| EtiVo: Archive your Tivo programs |
[Jun. 30th, 2006|02:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  hopeful | ] |
EtiVo - By Shahar Prish:A friend showed me this on his current Tivo setup this morning. It lets you archive things off your Tivo, which would be really nice. Pretty damn slick, but I wonder if it cuts out the commercials like BeyondTV(?) that runs on your PC. It really makes me want to get off my ass and hack my DirecTivo, or at least finish building the PVR PC I started 18 months ago. I'll see what I can do this long holiday weekend, but I'm not going to set my hopes high as the fiancee and I already have plans for tonight, Sunday and Monday.
Also check out TivoWebPlus , another app my friend showed me this morning. Tre-cool.
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| An Interesting Idea |
[Jun. 30th, 2006|02:23 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  curious | ] |
Boing Boing: P2P insurer will pay your fines if RIAA sues: $19/year!:So, some Swedish company has deceided to offer insurence against RIAA suites for $19 USD a year. A pretty cool idea IMHO. However, in a case where someone had insurence like this would the RIAA lawyers press for (more)jail time and/or a non-suspended sentence?
I think this is something to keep an eye on; it's either going to go nowhere or become rather sucessful.
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