20051016

Mmm, biscuits

I was browsing the aisles of a nearby supermarket, and hidden in the ethnic foods section under, bizarrely "Irish", I found that they stocked Bourbon creams. Naturally I snapped up a couple of packets. It's such a struggle finding real food in this country that you have to take the opportunity when you can. Still it's odd to think that people view 'Irish' as a food style to beplaced alongside Indian, Chinese, Mexican and Spanish. The shelf also contained other random items, such as Ambrosia Rice Pudding, HP Sauce and "Irish" Tea (distinct from the shelf upon shelf of "regular" tea elsewhere in the store). Well, I won't complain if it means I can enjoy a few more home comforts.

Meanwhile, hughanchor has not been well. That's hughanchor, my home computer, rather than Hugh Anchor, the ill-considered fictious weblog author. hughanchor (the computer) has been rebooting repetitively, often when I click on a new file. That's quite annoying. It almost certainly isn't caused by software, since it sometimes reboots a few times in the middle of booting up. It's quite annoying, and after checking all the leads and blowing the dust out of the innards, the problem seems to remain. It's most likely a power problem, although difficult to know what to do about this: probably get a new power supply, which means getting a new case and attempting a live transplant which would be quite time consuming and fiddly. It might just be that my electrical supply is dodgy, although there's relatively little one can do about that, and not much one can do to diagnose it short of packing the machine into a vehicle and taking it somewhere else to see if it works any better. Of course, after snapping in and out of life repeatedly over lunch, it seems to be behaving this afternoon when it doesn't have anything to do, but I don't really want to trust it with anything too important for a while. And naturally this problem is exactly the kind of "heisenbug" that you are never entirely sure whether it is gone or whether it has just gone away for a bit.

Ah well, I'll just nibble on a bourbon and see if it gets better over the next week.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

you may find a cheap 4-way mains extension with surge protection would help.
is there a good reason why you couldn't change PSU without buying a new case?

Hugh said...

Thanks Anon, but this is already with the surge protection... I'm not sure that this is a problem with the external power, since it sometimes seems to be triggered by opening a file on a disk that has spun down: thus it seems that the extra drain on the power supply is what pushes it over the limit and causes the reboot.

It might be possible to change the PSU without scrapping the case; I'm sure in the past that it used to be the case that you couldn't remove the PSU from the case, I suppose things have improved since then. I'll see if the problem reoccurs, then see if my local PC retailer has any thoughts.

Hugh said...

Hi Average,

You should reconsider that name -- I initially thought that you were a sex bot. Maybe you are. Anyway, the rice pudding still costs me $3 a can, but I think I can afford the luxury now and then. I also managed to get some Assam tea today, which is something of a rarity in these parts. Seems to be several places around these parts (Summit/Madison/Chatham, or "So Macho" as I have failed to persuade anyone else to call it) that have a shelf or two of imported UK goods. Best of look with the cooking, Desperate Housewife!

Anonymous said...

This could turn into an entire new blog, but can I also record my jealousy that you were able to find HP sauce? I found myself needing some of that the other day (just as I sometimes find myself needing Marmite), and I live in Oregon. Although, admittedly, I hadn't thought to look for an Irish section in my local supermarket.

But we do have Assam tea, although in some places they give it a different name. (I will check.) If you google for long enough you can find a page which says "our Irish Breakfast blend is 100% Assam tea". Surely it is therefore just Assam and not a blend of any kind?

On a more bizarre note, there is a shop dedicated to Scottish kitsch in my town, which sells not only kilts and sporrans but British chocolate (made by Nestle, alas) and Irn Bru. They also sell Yorkshire Tea. I'm not sure whether they understand how weird this is. But maybe you should look in that Irish-kitsch shop in Summit.