Careful analysis had finally revealed that it wasn't the memory that was faulty, but the connector that the memory was plugged into.
So today I went to the diànnǎo yīyuàn, the "computer hospital", which is about an hour away at the other side of town. After some unsuccessful trials I finally found myself talking to a yellow-shirted guy who spoke about three standard deviations (99.7%) Chinese and 0.03% English. "Memory hen hao, kashe zhege donxi bu hao", etc, etc.
After a few interactions I finally decided that this was leading nowhere and I called a Chinese classmate for remote translation assistance. What then followed was the ususal humiliation by an IT service desk that doesn't distinguish between computer professionals and stupid users.
NO, it's NOT a VIRUS, it's the CONNECTOR that's faulty. What do you mean, how can I know? It also hangs in the boot menu. NO, the MEMORY is FINE! I swapped it with another laptop and it works perfectly there, I SAID IT'S THE CONNECTOR! NO it's NOT the wrong type of memory, it has been working fine for more than a year! IT'S THE CONNECTOR! YES, I know that viruses cause sudden crashes, but THIS IS NOT A VIRUS, goddammit!
The whole thing then culminated in the guy trying to pull out the memory of my laptop while still in sleep mode (i.e. the memory fully powered on). Reluctantly I finally left my treasured device at the place for further analysis, sincerely hoping that the actual engineers would know what they were doing as much as the front office guy didn't.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Time flies...
Today we had the midterm exam for Operations Management and this Friday we'll have the Corporate Finance exam.
It's unbelievable that the second term is already half over... Time really flies!
Tom Callarman (the Operations Management professor) saw me today and said something like "you don't seem to be overly nervous". So I told him that even though I had no clue about the formulas and theory covered in the textbook, I was quite confident since I see operations problems as something that can (and should) be approached by means of logic and common sense - and my IT engineering background certainly helps in this regard.
In any case, both the OM and CF professors are excellent. I could grasp all the essential concepts in class and didn't have to read any textbook to make sense of the material.
It's unbelievable that the second term is already half over... Time really flies!
Tom Callarman (the Operations Management professor) saw me today and said something like "you don't seem to be overly nervous". So I told him that even though I had no clue about the formulas and theory covered in the textbook, I was quite confident since I see operations problems as something that can (and should) be approached by means of logic and common sense - and my IT engineering background certainly helps in this regard.
In any case, both the OM and CF professors are excellent. I could grasp all the essential concepts in class and didn't have to read any textbook to make sense of the material.
Monday, February 25, 2008
My laptop is dying
SHIT!
My laptop started randomly crashing a few days ago. It seems that the memory DIMM is broken. I promptly took it out of the machine, and now I'm writing this from a system that runs on Windows XP and has only 128MB of RAM.
If you think you know the meaning of slow, think again. It has just been redefined!
Let's hope I get this sorted out ASAP.
My laptop started randomly crashing a few days ago. It seems that the memory DIMM is broken. I promptly took it out of the machine, and now I'm writing this from a system that runs on Windows XP and has only 128MB of RAM.
If you think you know the meaning of slow, think again. It has just been redefined!
Let's hope I get this sorted out ASAP.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Party, Party, Party
Pweeh! Student life can be really tiring...A few days ago was Rod's birthday. So we all met in a Korean restaurant for a great dinner and then headed downtown to Richy to party.
Yesterday Dani hosted a party in his apartment. Nice place, great crowd, loads of alcohol...
Gosh, how I hate does drinking games! Ever tried Jenga with a Whisky shot penalty for toppling the tower? It's the perfect example of a downward spiral. The more you drink, the more you overestimate your abilities, the more you gotta drink. The really bad thing, however, is that we run out of Whisky pretty soon, and then had to move to Vodka, then Tequila, then Gin and finally red wine. Do not ask about the next morning, please!
Turn's out we trashed the place quite a bit... Sorry dude, but I'm sure the bed would have broken anyway, so you better be grateful that we preemptied a possibly embarrasing situation in your future love life!
This Friday will be a party at "Terence & the girls". This lucky bastard shares an apartment with three girls. The only drawback? For each threesome, there's one jealous girl ;-)
Monday, February 18, 2008
I've made up my mind
I'm gonna do my exchange to London Business School.
I know, London looks like much less fun than L.A. (and please don't even mention the difference in terms of girls...). But at some point you have to grow up. And take informed decisions. And emphasize long-term value over short-term fun. Otherwise you'll never become an influental, big, rich CEO of a large multinational. Such as Kenneth L. Lay. Or Bernard J. Ebbers.
However, there's still a tiny glimpse of hope! I listed L.A. as my second choice and there is a slight chance of being denied the exchange to London ;-)
I know, London looks like much less fun than L.A. (and please don't even mention the difference in terms of girls...). But at some point you have to grow up. And take informed decisions. And emphasize long-term value over short-term fun. Otherwise you'll never become an influental, big, rich CEO of a large multinational. Such as Kenneth L. Lay. Or Bernard J. Ebbers.
However, there's still a tiny glimpse of hope! I listed L.A. as my second choice and there is a slight chance of being denied the exchange to London ;-)
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Chinese New Year
Just in time for Chinese new year I came back to Shanghai. I absolutely wanted to be in China during Chinese New Year...Was it worth it? Partly. Chinese New Year is a family reunion kind of thing and most Chinese travel across half the country to meet with their parents and/or grandparents (although, this year, they got stuck in the snow along the way)
So we had to celebrate within our own CEIBS family. Which we did. We we nt out for dinner and then to captain's bar to have a good view on the city and its fireworks. As I should find out later, the big fireworks happens on the fifth day of Chinese New Year and not the first. That's because the fifth day is the day of the God of wealth or so. Although it somewhat defies logic to burn up your money in the sky in order to become richer...
The interesting part was CCTV1. They screened an insanely boring new year's special show from 8pm till midnight. I've been told that all China watches these full four hours at home. Not much difference to Switzerland and Benissimo, here. Except that watching CCTV1 probably doesn't make you a millionaire. Ever.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Surprise!
Several people among my valued readership have complained that the blog doesn't move anymore. Let me say to all of you that I feel very honoured that my humble blog apparently brings sooo much joy to your (miserable?) lives!
Anyway,
I skipped the last day of class this week to catch a flight back to Switzerland. Let me tell you one thing: Lufthansa sucks. Big time. How can an airline possibly decide to show 2 (in words: TWO) movies during a daytime flight of 12 hours? Would they not have the benefit of hubs close to Switzerland, I'd switched to BA (nice planes, disgusting food), KLM (ouch, that's what I call missing legroom), or Finnair (never tried it, but heard good things only) a long time ago!
Where was I?
Ah, yeah, I went to Switzerland just in time for my mother's 83rd birthday. Surprise! Surprise!
She didn't expect anything like that and was totally blown away when the flower delivery boy in the door turned out to be her own son. I love you mom!
The stay in Switzerland was not all fun, though. Apart from the torture of the long flights, I spent only four days in Switzerland, two of which I used for interviews of stakeholders for my Strategic Management project.
Anyway,
I skipped the last day of class this week to catch a flight back to Switzerland. Let me tell you one thing: Lufthansa sucks. Big time. How can an airline possibly decide to show 2 (in words: TWO) movies during a daytime flight of 12 hours? Would they not have the benefit of hubs close to Switzerland, I'd switched to BA (nice planes, disgusting food), KLM (ouch, that's what I call missing legroom), or Finnair (never tried it, but heard good things only) a long time ago!
Where was I?
Ah, yeah, I went to Switzerland just in time for my mother's 83rd birthday. Surprise! Surprise!
She didn't expect anything like that and was totally blown away when the flower delivery boy in the door turned out to be her own son. I love you mom!
The stay in Switzerland was not all fun, though. Apart from the torture of the long flights, I spent only four days in Switzerland, two of which I used for interviews of stakeholders for my Strategic Management project.
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