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MATTHEW BARNABY IS INTERVIEWING FOR A POSITION WITH ESPN ISN’T THAT WEIRD YET AWESOME? I THINK SO.

let’s go pens.

(1:58:52 PM) eveof: It’s not so much bleeding as oozing, like puss
(1:58:52 PM) KGB1 <AUTO-REPLY> : KEEP, KEEP BLEEDIN LOVE

Here are our choices:
-Hewlett-Packard
-Microsoft Windows Vista
-Best Buy’s Geek Squad
-myself
-mysterious parts within laptop that are not made by any of the above said

I have a technological problem I can’t shake. My laptop (HP pavilion dv9628nr)’s screen will blackout seemingly at random. It can happen at startup, when I open it after I just closed it, when I open it after it’s been closed for a time, when I shift my weight, when I move the screen, and sometimes it just goes out while it’s sitting there. This blackout is sometimes only the backlight, but it has also had no information on the screen. What’s the deal?

At the beginning of June New Laptop was taken to the Best Buy in Champaign, where it was purchased in October of 2007. New Laptop was sent away to be looked at by the mystery guys at the mystery location. The issues at hand: screen blacks out, audio output is finicky and will play either the left or right side, not both, and the webcam works intermittently. Four weeks later, it got returned with a clean bill of health: the mystery team could not find anything wrong. It may be an intermittent problem, which sucks becasue the team didn’t see it happen, but at least it’s not happening now! Okay great. I get it, turn it on, and the screen blacks out after I log in. Cooooool. I go back to Best Buy to explain the situation to quite possibly the coolest guy working there, Norm. I like Norm a lot. If you see him, he is the guy you want to talk to. He wrote out a letter describing the screen blackout, complete with old case number, new case number, what he had seen, and what he recommended to check. He put out a special speed-up request in addition to my rush-because-you-guys-fucked-up thing. Two weeks go by and my laptop has new LCD wires. Huzzah! The dude that handed New Laptop back to me said he had a similar problem that was somehow connected to putting his laptop to sleep often.

I use the sleep function when I’m going to be moving around with the laptop in a bag for a short time. Rather than dealing with a slow shutdown and startup, it’s quick and wonderful and holds onto the programs I had open. Unfortunately, the screen doesn’t like it. I have no idea why. So, I do as the kid says and don’t put New Laptop to sleep anymore. Kind of annoying, but the screen only went out once and a while and would come back on after fiddling with the screen’s angle. The laptop had been going to sleep when I would leave it alone, and the problem is back again. I talked to other people with similar models that look the same, and they have not had this problem. There’s been a problem of it not turning on, or screen slowly fading to black then having no information, but not the screen blacking out like a little bitch.

So.

What’s going on? Somebody tell me! I’ve been looking around the internets, albeit not intensely. It’s hard when you lose the screen after being on for ten minutes. As of yet a solution other than getting a new laptop has not been found. I do have a warranty with Best Buy.

THE SUSPECTS

Mysterious Parts
They aren’t by HP, and other than the LCD cables, they have not been replaced. Are they frying easily? Is this a ventilation issue? IS IT THE UNRESOLVED FAN ISSUE HP SEEMS TO HAVE?

Myself
Do I really treat my window to the rest of the world like crap? It is a huge ass 17″ widescreen that I smush into my leather messenger bag. I love the number pad. It’s important.

Best Buy’s Geek Squad
Are the mystery guys being bitches and just not looking at every possible angle? They probably think I’m an ignorant idiot with little idea as to the lack of complexity of computer innards. Innards that I can’t screw with myself because I got that cool warranty that takes away my laptop for many weeks at a time to not fix things.

Microsoft’s Vista
Everybody else is hating on it, maybe I should, too. By the way: needing more than one gigabyte of RAM to do anything fun is BOGUS.

Hewlett-Packard
Thanks for the shitty product.

he moves without moving. ty ty paul.

and making them mad. somehow this isn’t so inspiring.

if this ad was made by a female, i will become sad. if anything, having rotund buns makes it way, way, WAY harder to find clothes in the shops. so fuck you, nike, and you’re treating girls like sexy running things that are primarily here to look good. fuck. off.

deadspin ilu

Okay. Jaime Nared is 12-years-old and playing on boys’ traveling basketball teams, and she’s not allowed to play on the team anymore because she is too good. This is the 12-year-old level. The gal is already 6′1″ and is schooling the guys. Forget the girls’ teams her age. She beats the pulp out of them, too. Her good friend, Kailee Johnson, is one grade older than her. And 6′2″. They play on the local high school’s girls’ team together. People are pissed about Jaime trying playing with the boys because… well i’m not sure why. And playing on the high school team is pissing off the parents of girls that miiiiight be getting less court time because the middle-schooler is there. Dudes… she’s really good. Chill the fuck out.

For those who don’t play sports, the general tradition of females versus males is that males tend to be faster, stronger, and more agile than females. Males naturally have more testosterone and therefore can retain muscle mass growth better than females. They play at different levels and therefore play on different teams. But skill is pretty arbitrary. Jaime and I can only assume Kailee as well are screwing with that. HAH.

This is fucking cool.

NY Times article
Deadspin article

teh dramatix.

giselle directed me to these 38 seconds of ingenuity… er yeah that’s it. me-ow:

Some bats have been getting nailed by wind turbines, but not in the typical bloody mass way birds get canned. Folks at the University o Calgary collected 188 bats in Alberta… 90% of them had internal trauma without damage to their outsides. They’re lungs busted. It seems the turbines’ drop in pressure directly by them makes the batty lungs pop, similar to a diver coming to the surface too quickly after a deep dive. The bats are dying from the bends, and they don’t “see” it coming. The turbines are screwing with their echolocation.

This part of the article in NewScientist that got my attention most:

Bats eat nocturnal insects including agricultural pests, so if wind turbines affected their population levels, this could affect the rest of the local ecosystems. And the effects could even be international. “The species being killed are migrants,” says Baerwald. “If bats are killed in Canada that could have consequences for ecosystems as far away as Mexico.”

Well. Crap. One solution to the banged-up bat debacle would be to increase the minimum speed requirement to get the turbines turning.

spotted on wtf_nature.

My ceramics teacher sent out a link to the Wooster Collective, and this entry stuck out at me: