Rainy season means FLOOD boye!

I passed through a couple spots that had drain water crossing the road today. It was across the southern main road between Point Lisas and Marabella. This was about an hour after there had been a heavy downpour that lasted about an hour. I do not want to see what happens when there is rain all day. Hopefully something is done to help the water run off faster, but I will not bet on it.

Achieve 500 watt power supply installation

I just installed an Achieve 500 watt power supply (model #AX500.N) in an HP d530C tower. The new p/s was $110(TT) at Supertech in Couva, no arguing with that price. The ratings on the label are +3.3V 28A, +5V 45A, +12V 25A, -12V 0.8A, -5V 0.5A, +5VSb 2.0A, Output 500W. The old p/s was an odd shape and the holes on the new one are different from the old one. Also the old unit made 240 watts. The tower being fed had one HD, one CD-ROM, one floppy drive, and one motherboard with everything on board.

Looking at the back of the tower, only the right side screw holes lined up properly on the p/s and case. The left side holes on the p/s were slightly inside the inner edge of the opening for the exhaust fan on the ps. There was enough space to let the screws go in and the head of the screw to catch the edge of the case and secure the p/s. The Achieve unit is shorter/flatter then the old one so there is now a half inch space below the p/s and the opening for the p/s fan on the back. I left the space open but I am considering taping the space to encourage air to be pulled in from the openings at the front of the case. So far it runs nice and quiet, no hiccups, and I don't expect to see anything coming up soon.

Flow digital hookup

I got a digital connection from Flow today and the whole thing took about 3 hours. All wires were switched out and there is now a splitter box on the side of the house. All the connections have to be made directly from the box, no joins on the wire between the splitter box and the tv. If I take an internet connection another looonng line has to be run from the box to the opposite corner of the house where the computer is... wait a minute I can just run the internet connection to the middle of the house where I have a network switch and feed the house from there. The remotes I got are the watered down ones with a more grid like spread of buttons. The bigger remote had a better layout, but the technician said he did not have any big remotes. Also, he asked me if I had any triple 'a' batteries for the remotes as they do not come with any. I found that was total rubbish and told him I did not have any, and he replied that he would check his car for any. He did return with a pair and said even if he did have another pair he could not give them to me since the Company does not supply them for all remotes. We pay them how many thousands a year? and we can't get $5 batteries...

The picture is very clean and the sound is sharp as well. I have not noticed any channels which are much louder or softer than the others, so no big surprises when flipping channels. I hate how there is a pause between when I change the channel and when the sound and picture starts to move. A frame does come up as soon as I change the channel but there is a pause and silence before things move. There is also a question of how I can get HDTV quality from the coax, or RCA connectors at the back of the digital cable box since there are HD channels available for additional cost.

29th July -
So far so good for the digital connection. I did not get the remotes switched yet, hopefully soon. There was one day last week with a few channels not showing, I cannot remember what the message was exactly, temporarily unavailable maybe?? This was around the same time some channels were showing 'garbage', or parts of different frames mushed up and you could not see anything really. The tv guide is a definite plus. A couple channels do show with dull colours and some boxy/pixelated images but only for a short period and some people may not even notice it. Is it that poor reception still affects quality of digital data? hmmm

I'm trying to download apps to a Nokia e66, but in order to load apps with the data cable I have to download and install Nokia PC Suite, so i go to the site, fill out my details and download the exe. The first thing the app does is go online and search to see if a new version is available. YES there is a new version available... so apparantly the download page is not updated to ver 7.1.30.9 which is what ver 7.1.30.8 is downloading now... sigh @ u Nokia