I faced a couple of my fears tonight. I stood in front of a group of people and delivered a message. For a long time now I’ve known that I have a fear of getting up in front of people to speak. It’s something I’ve struggled with, but never really had a reason to overcome. In the Wednesday night class the men have been taking turns getting up and delivering the message. Tonight was my turn. I put about a month of preparation into what I wanted to talk about, but I still didn’t feel like I was ready. Given six months I probably still would not feel ready. I just went out there and did the best I could. All in all I feel good about how it went. I don’t think I want to make a career out of public speaking, but I know I can tackle it again if I really have to. I know it won’t kill me, even if it is unpleasant.
I have the strangest computer problem. I am baffled by it. I have no explanation for it at all. I’m so frustrated at this point I’ll try almost anything. Here is a detailed description of the problem, and maybe somebody I know will have some new insight to help fix it.
The computer has the AsRock K7S41GX motherboard. The manufacturer calls the on board video “Integrated Mirage Graphics”. The device manager in Windows XP Pro says the Display Adapter is the SiS 661FX_760_741_M661FX_M760_M741. The on board video works, kind of. It sucks.
The motherboard also has an AGP 8X/4X 1.5V slot. In that slot is a GeForce4 MX440SE. This does not work. I can not find a way to get the computer to use the card in the slot instead of the on board video.
Here is the kicker. The on board video only works if that particular video card is in the slot. I’ve tried several other AGP video cards. The computer will not even display the motherboard bios. The only way it boots is with that specific card in the AGP slot, and only displays to the on board video. It will not boot with an empty AGP slot.
I’ve made sure it’s the latest bios and device drivers. There is no option to disable the on board video in the bios. There is an option for the video priority to be either the AGP or the PCI. I’ve tried either way. It makes no difference.
The goal is to get any AGP video card to work because it would have to be better than the on board stuff. Even if it just frees up the system memory that is being taken by the video. I only have 256MB of ram, so the 64MB being used by the video really hurts. Any suggestions or ideas will be greatly appreciated. If anything I got to vent.
I went to watch The Predators play tonight. I had never gone to a hockey game before. It was a lot of fun. It’s a very unique experience. It’s even better since is was free. I know somebody who got some free tickets as a result of being in the Armed Forces. All in all I had a great time. I just wish the Preds hadn’t lost 6 to 1. If I get to go again I hope they do better. It was still a good game to watch, and the crowd interaction was equally entertaining. I even met some cool people sitting near me. It was a good night.