GARGH. Didn't get my license, so I'm not in the superhappy mood I was hoping for today. I did get an old grumpy guardian though to join me and evaluate my driving skills, which weren't topnotch due to certain nervosity factors and a new previously untried vehicle to take the test with. I was especially careful to be careful because it seemed like an obviosity. No speeds past the limits, slowdowns whenever possible and frequent cast of eyes towards all available mirrors and outside locations. We drove through varied areas and passed by various obstacles, and everything went seemingly fine. I received short abrupt directions on when to turn and where to go, and eventually we ended up back at the start of journeys. I was then given the horrifying news.
The reasons I didn't pass:

- I drove too slow on the freeway.
Apparently staying as close to the limit as possible is an unwritten law, despite there being two lanes for different speeds, and despite many different vehicle types allowed on yet not allowed to drive any higher than what I did and less (around 85-90 km/h, limit is 110, trucks aren't allowed to go over 90, trailers limit is 80). It seems like a pretty unbelievable reason to me, but their word is law . . .

- I geared down one level before the freeway Exit...
... in order to glide through the sharp curve as smoothly and economically as possible. Conceptual eco-driving, something my driving school teacher gave me valuable lessons in, but which appearantly have no cause or effect on freeways.

- I changed lanes one time too many.
I mean, literally, that I switched one lane that I didn't need to switch. No laws broken, no traffical flow harmed, WTF is wrong with that?!

- I used the brakes too often
Must admit the drive was a bit choppy at times, but it shouldn't have been choppy beyond reasonable choppiness. I paid special attention to all possible circumstances where harm could have been done to individuals and other vehicles and controlled my speed with this as reason. The brakes were also much more sensitive on this car then the one I've grown accustomed to, 25 minutes isn't enough time to fully adjust.

Other than this, everything went smoothly, so he told me as well. Still, the reasons above were apparently enough to fail my trust. Society now seems senseless and corrupt, and a retry is a must, in about two weeks or so. I'm thinking they just flunk people randomly to stay in business, but there's not much more to do about it, I am now valuable experiences enrichened. Hope I get better luck with company next time . . .

Driving for my license in roughly an hour, and I can't seem to focus much on any of the things I'm trying to work on during the long long loooong wait until my time to come, so I thought I'd write a blog instead. Wish they'd schedule these things mornings only so I could get it over with and spend less time on more tasks at hand... that's the way it was with my test of Theory yesterday (passed that, results 61/65, the threshold for passing being 52, it is a good result). It's a different thing with theory and practical usage though. Yesterday I had room for mistakes, time left over to go back and correct any questions I might have done wrong (didn't, though) but today I won't have any space for error. One missed sign and chances I flunk align . . . and I usually do at least something wrong when I'm out driving. Not as many mistakes as the experienced drivers around me do, forgetting to flash their lights when switching lanes, driving at least 10km/h too fast mostly everywhere, but they make their mistakes by choice, and therein lies the difference.

So anyhow, keep positive comments in mind and let the vibes flow so I pass fine slow. Now off I go.

ort

Tributive

I know I posted this a few years earlier, but now, I can post it again! :D

Oh jolly justice, everything is fixed and functioning now, ran one more wipeout and refreshing install with the right order of discs this time, installed everything again, installed a little more, did a little bit of everything, and my PC is once again working better than ever. Next step, buy a 750GB external drive before summer and secure copies of all files available. Now, studies are waiting for me . . .

If you have XP yet feel the need for some fresh newsense, go get: winflip (gives you a 3d window view thing), Razor 2 (black win7-ish theme, very nice) & the Windows 7 fonts & icons (just Google that). Made a selfinstalling package of them myself, and a dussin other newly downloaded apps incase my computer once again on a rare occasion decides to crash on me.

My speedup process yesterday didn't go quite as well as I wanted to. Some unknown DLL file went missing and I had to do a standard system restore. Only did a partial replacement though, in order to keep all files intact, but the system was still bugging when I logged in and thus I had to go through safemode to retrieve the files I wanted to keep, run them all over to an external drive, and then wipe the hardrives clean for a clean install of Windows. It took me a few hours, and a couple more to install all old and new updates/other programs, but I'm happy for the opportunity. PC runs faster than I can remember it's ever done before, boots up in about 15 seconds and shuts down in less than 5. I installed Opera as my default browser as a change, and I think I'll be liking it more than I did FireFox before, maybe, it's blazing fast and filled with a fleet of neat features.

System is still a bit ackward, among other things there is no sound, and I'm wondering if maybe I should have just wiped out the C drive and not that other one as well . . . oh well. Made the mistake of surfing online to grab myself a firewall and a free Anti-Virus before I actually had one installed, big mistake, now a trojan is winding its way through my system and I'm doing both an automatic scan/removal and a manual such where "Some files cannot be healed", no doubt some of my programs will start malfunctioning again with some files missing here and there, it's a bummer. I think I'll just leave most of my stuff on my external drive and buy myself a brand new spanking stationary PC after summer, this one no longer has the sufficiant resources I need. 512MB Ram and a 160GB drive no longer cuts it, even though it was the best of the best seven/eight years ago. I can't run GTA 4, nor the latest Adobe CS4 suits, not even my modded version of GTA SA any longer! Figure it's best I get a drive big enough to keep all my files on as well, so the external can be used for backup purposes only, would be a shame if it gave up on me whilst being the only source to my gigantic archives of files.

Bad things always come in trologies, so I guess these were the ones for me this May. Three accounts hacked first, Invoice overdue second, Computer crashed third. Sounds reasonable? Only one of the three proved fatal, but it's a bit irritating that all this tough lucking comes now. I really really have to finish all studies before summer, I have times scheduled for all three driving tests (risk/theory/official) the coming two weeks, and my buddy Andreas appearantly has a short one week vacation this time of this month as well, won't be able to spend as much time with him doing muchly nothing as I would have liked, had I been in time with things.

PC all booted up and ready to go? Connected to the eternal net? Harddrives hacking and spinning around viciously after seven years of non-stop digital action? Then lets go.

1.) Get CCleaner @ ccleaner.com
It's free to download, the full version, and has been for years. This is a multifunctional and very reliable utility you really do need if you want to get your old busted up PC functioning perfectly again. Once you have it downloaded, be sure to install it to, setup should be a breeze.

2.) Get Lavasoft Adaware @ lavasoft.com
The free version is free, but if you can get your hands on the full version, it is reccomended. This program will get rid of any spyware you have hanging around polluting your digits. Install it and move on.

3.) Get Spyware Doctor @ pctools.com/spyware-doctor
It's all free, and a useful addition to the ^. Install and get going.

4.) Run a full scan with Lavasoft
Not much use if it's not put to use is it? Found me 470 ugly things. Quarantine everything it finds, and then get rid of the record.

5.) Scan the Registry for issues with CCleaner
Just click the button to scan, and the "fix all" when it's done. Not going through these manually might mess up some programs, but if you have over 3500 errors like I did the automatic option is definately the pick of choice.

6. ) Run a full scan with Spyware Doctor to get all the crap that Lavasoft missed
Run! The program may go a bit slow though, but it only slows down your PC when it's running. Found me about 90 more of the vicious spies.

7.) Get PerfectDisk @ perfectdisk.com
Not free, unfortunately. Not legally . . .

8.) Run CCleaner Cleaner on both all "Windows" and "Applications"
I had files worth of 4 585.7MB under Applications, and around under Windows. Good way to free some unused space. No worries, only temporary files and some other unused settings are removed.

9.) Get AVG Free @ free.avg.com
If you don't have a good Antivirus already. It's free and easy, install it and keep it running.

10.) Get ZoneAlarm @ zonealarm.com
No worries, the free version is free. The better version is reccomended though, of all the firewalls I've tried this is my favorite. It combines speed and security better than most others. Keep it running all the time you're online.

11.) Run a virus scan with your Antivirus
If you've had it on it'll probably have detected any malicious beings creeping onto your drives a long time ago, but a checkup doesn't hurt.

12.) Check Firewall access lists
Some programs that shouldn't be there might be there, and might be clogging up a good deal of bandwidth for you.

13.) Run PerfectDisk Defrag
Oooh, your PC will run like a charm after this, hopefully. All defrag does is reorganize the file structure, tidy it up a bit. You won't notice a thing though, everything that happens does so under our graphical interface borderlined. If you can't get your hands on this program, the built in Defragment tool will do just fine, though not as fine.

14.) Check Startup Programs in CCleaner
Most of the ones listed you can probably do without, so just delete all the ones you know you won't need. Be careful though, deleting system processes might mess up your system completely.

15.) Get rid of any unused Programs
This here is usually the real big source of spacewaste. Anything you don't use, won't use or shouldn't use. Get rid of it. Specially the big programs. Collective updates of for example JAVA also take up a great deal of space, and are not needed once the new versions come along. So if you have updates 1-11, get rid of the first ten (they take up about 150MB each). Lots of programs work this way, and there are probably a shitload of small applications you never use anymore stashed away you can save some space on.

16.) Get rid of any useless files
Tidy up, check folders you haven't checked before, get rid of early version of things you now have later versions of. Source files for things you don't need source files for, images you don't know why you downloaded in the first place, crappy music, bad video, all the stuff you don't need.

17.) Remove any Duplicates
Search Google for "Duplicate File Search" or "Duplicate Image Search" or any other filetype or format, a great deal of good programs will pop up. If you have large archives of files, finding duplicates manually is a pain in the ass, so let these goody programs do the task for you.

18.) Keep it going
Defrag at least once a month if you use your PC daily, conduct a spyware search regularly and clean up unused programs once in a while. It'll save up good speed. I'm no educated expert on this subject, but it works wonders for me. If all else fails, backup your important files and reinstall your OS. And whatever you do, don't get Vista, XP still has both the support and speed needed.

So, I bought two air guns/rifles, as displayed below. The rifle on Saturday, the Pistol this Monday. I went out shootin' (at recyclable cans) with a friend and fired the rifle maybe twenty-thirty times before a bolt just fell off, I brought it home, tried putting it back into place, no deal. So on Monday I went back and got a refund, and thus decided to buy a pistol instead. Maybe such a small and compact device would last longer, I thought, Nope. The grip just split in half whilst reloading after not even the same amount of firetimes as the rifle. I went back and got my money back. Moral of the story? Nah, I don't think I learned it, an even cheaper offer cought my eye and I'll be buying it next week. Just beware of the two below if to shops you go.

I watched a few movies: Disturbing Behavior (1998), My Bodyguard (1980), Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Brotherhood of the Rose (1989), True Lies (1994), The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Fist of Fury (1972), This Boy's Life (1993), Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990) , What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Queer as Folk (2000), Police Academy (1984), Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985), Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987), Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988), Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989), Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow (1994), Big Trouble In Little China (1986), The Beatles - Yellow Submarine (1968), The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night (1964), The Beatles - Help! The Movie (1965), Forrest Gump (1994), S.F.W. (1994), The Lookout (2007), The Rock (1996), The Terminators (2009), Dead Alive (1992), Gummo (1997), Outbreak (1995), Target (1985), Deep Rising (1998), The Warriors (1979), The Ghost And The Darkness (1996), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Blankman (1994), Posse (1993), Lost In Space (1998), Logan's Run (1976), Bravo Two Zero (1999), Joy Ride (2001), Black Cadillac (2003), 5ive Girls (2006), Puff, Puff, Pass (2006), Crazy as Hell (2002) . . . and them some. I think I should go outside for a while now. :/