2008-06-09

Countdown, Magpies and Unnecessary Phone Calls

Previous night I decided to sleep with my window open. I usually don't do that but after a quick glance at my thermometer (which read 25°C or 77°F) I decided that the drag racers did not disturb me as much as the temperature. Around 04:30 in the morning I was proved wrong. Magpies were bullying my cat which had decided to go out for a stroll in the night. My cat has been bullied before by these nasty creatures and has since long preferred the tranquillity of my bedroom chair. Whole my family was awakened by the magpies, which should give you a picture of how loud they were. My first idea was to shoot the bloody birds, but apparently that's illegal in residential districts… but who will ever notice a few missing birds 04:30 in the morning.

My first idea was to shoot the bloody birds, but apparently that's illegal

The second thing that troubles me this lovely Monday afternoon is my new Samsung hard disk drive. As you might now, my previous HDD died unexpectedly and I had noticed strange clicking sounds. These clicking sounds seem to originate from the driver heads when they fail to load/unload properly. Dick from notebook review forums has noticed that the S.M.A.R.T values prove this right. Now I've also discovered that the G-Sense Error Rate values are increasing and the current and worse values are alarmingly decreasing towards the threshold value. This could be the data that predicts the life of my HDD. According to calculations based on G-Sense Error Rate values only my HDD has 2 years left to live. Just before the warranty runs out in other words. Those calculations should be valid unless the ECC Error Rate goes through the roof.

Other than that I love my Vaio. And Vaio Support seems to love their customers. Or why else would they phone me every day? You feel you missed something? Read my other blog posts!

3 comments:

Malin said...

Magpies! Yes please!
Spiders. NO WAY.

Ruub said...

well that depends, spiders you can kill if they annoy you... magpies are too clever to get killed. Please see "The Birds" and you get an idea what it's like when our cat get outside.

Anonymous said...

A cat is a fearsome preadator in the eyes of a bird. It is supposed to chase the magpies, not the other way around. Why are they called Magpies anyway? It sounds like a religious title. or sth.