The Grammy Awards were on television last night, but I missed the show. Judging from the list of winners, I didn’t miss anything earth shattering. That time was spent doing some work for my class and fixing my desktop computer which has been having more hard drive problems.
Hopefully a hard drive reformat and software reinstall will take care of that for now. Darren will be happy to know that I solved the problem I was having with noise from my computer speakers. The low pitches were caused by trying to use my component stereo system to function as my computer’s rear surround speakers (since my stereo and computer face each other). I unplugged the cables going from the computer speaker amp into the receiver and that solved the problem. That makes sense now that I think about it. I probably shouldn’t have been putting output from a powered amp into the receiver, which adds its own power when sending the signal to its speakers, but I don’t know.
The medium-pitched noise was due to power issues inside the computer. The ATX power cable that was powering my second hard drive was traveling through one device — an ultraviolet tube light that I almost always have turned off anyway. I took the black light out of the power chain and now there’s no noise. Problems solved for now. I’m glad the problem wasn’t with the sound card since I paid a nice amount of money for a good external audio processing device with which I can do fancy things and supposedly has a 108dB SNR.
I took the LSAT this weekend. I did about as well, maybe a little better, than I did on the practice test, but we’ll have to see. I’m not getting my hopes up, but it’s better to have options than not. For now the most immediate choice I have to make is whether I’ll be moving out of my apartment at the end of April. They have decided not to raise my rent this year, which is always a good thing. On the other hand, the apartment, put delicately, blows the big one and is a waste of money.
Today’s Links, updated in this spot until I post again, since I’m sure no one’s really visiting my del.icio.us:
* AntiMagnet: Buying those silly magnetic ribbons that say, “We support the troops!” doesn’t really support the troops, does it? The car in the middle photo on that website may match the make, model, year, color and censored license plate of my car, but you can bet I wouldn’t have a pink magnet on my car — ever… unless I share the car with my future wife and she really wants one. Still, the probability is low enough to be considered an impossibility.
* Déjà vu: CNN used the same satellite photo to show a suspected North Korean nuclear weapons site and a suspected Iranian nuclear weapons site three days later.
Whoa…you were sending a speaker level signal into the input of your amplifier??? I didn’t get that part when you said it earlier. Yeah…you’re lucky you didn’t blow up your receiver. 😛
Also, flourescent tubes are always bad. All of your problems make perfect sense, and I’m glad there were easy solutions.