I've got to say that the fact that my newest laptop, the Samsung Notebook 7 Spin, broke down recently wasn't an entirely bad thing. This event not only forced me to take out and fix my oldest laptop. It also made me seriously think about fixing another laptop that was lying around. First of all, the replacement motherboard for my Notebook 7 Spin finally arrived in the mail from China. When I replaced the motherboard, which was quite simple to do, the laptop began to work again. So, I'm glad that I turned out to be right when I ordered a replacement motherboard. I've never had to replace the motherboard of a computer before that, and the new motherboard cost me about $150 on eBay. I've already made a post about how I fixed my oldest laptop, the Acer Aspire 5750. The replacement keyboard for this laptop cost me almost $30 on Amazon, and a new battery cost me about $40. I'm certainly glad that I got this old laptop, which was released in 2011, to work properly again. Still, this old laptop is considerably bigger and heavier than my Notebook 7 Spin. One of the reasons why this is the case is because it has a built in DVD drive. If I put it next to the Notebook 7 Spin on my table, it takes up a lot of space. This inconvenience made me think about fixing another laptop that I had lying around. This third laptop is the Sony Vaio PCG-3E2L. This model was released in 2008. So, it's even older than the first laptop that I ever bought. This white Vaio laptop was given to me by my sister years ago because it had to be fixed. When I recently spoke to my mother about it, she told me that my sister bought it for about $2,000. When I was looking for information about this beautiful white laptop on the internet, I couldn't find the exact price of a new model because little information is available about the PCG-3E2L online. Apparently, from what little information I was able to obtain about this laptop from my mother, my sister gave it to her boyfriend of the time. This boyfriend of hers is an immigrant from Slovakia, though he's not her boyfriend anymore. As far as I know, his birthplace is some village in Slovakia, and my sister had actually travelled to that village with him once. Anyway, when it came time for this simple Slovak peasant to give the laptop back, he decided to erase everything that he had stored on the laptop. I can only guess what the stuff that he stored was. As a result, he ended up causing a problem with the Windows operating system. I don't know how he managed to do this, however. So, when he gave the laptop back to my sister, Windows didn't start up on it. Since my sister couldn't solve this problem, and it seems like she tried, she gave the laptop to me because it became useless to her. Some time after I received the laptop from her, I decided to fix it. This wasn't easy to do. I don't really remember what the problem was exactly or how I managed to solve it because this happened years ago. But I remember that I had to do a lot of searching on the internet in order to find a solution. So, I managed to get the Windows operating system going again. However, for some reason, the version that began working was incomplete. Either it was a trial version or it was a version without a product key. Still, at least Windows was working again. I didn't really use the PCG-3E2L even after I fixed it because I already had two laptops of my own by then. But even after I fixed it, a new problem appeared. The laptop began to turn off by itself after a few minutes of use. Because of this new inconvenience, I put the laptop away and pretty much forgot about it because I didn't want to spend more time on fixing it back then. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I decided to finally fix the PCG-3E2L for good because I had some time on my hands because I temporarily didn't have a new working laptop. I ordered a DVD with Windows 7 Home Premium and a product key on eBay. After I installed this version of Windows on the PCG-3E2L, I finally had a working version of Windows on it, though it cost me about $40. However, the laptop continued to turn off by itself after a few minutes of use. After looking for a solution to this problem on the internet, I found a helpful video on YouTube by some man from Pakistan. It turned out that the reason why the laptop was shutting down by itself is because it was overheating. Therefore, the fan needed to be cleaned. I had to open up the laptop and thoroughly clean the fan and its metal casing. So, finally, after several years of delays and problem solving, I now have a working Vaio laptop of my own, to my pleasure. I was actually the one who recommended that my sister buy a Vaio laptop. Back then, I wanted to have a Vaio laptop of my own very much, but I didn't have enough money of my own at that time. I ended up buying a desktop computer as my first computer because it was much cheaper. But my sister managed to somehow buy a pricey white Vaio laptop. It has 4GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, and bluetooth technology. It also has three USB slots, an SD card slot, a Memory Stick Duo slot, a headphone jack, a microphone jack, and an ethernet port. Needless to say, this laptop is much better than my old Acer Aspire 5750. The PCG-3E2L is smaller than the Aspire 5750 and it has a very good keyboard. I've wanted to have a Vaio laptop of my own ever since I found out about these laptops. And now I have one. Sure, the model that I have is 14 years old, but it has so many features and it looks so good that its age doesn't really matter to me. In fact, it may be my favorite laptop now. I think that I won't tell my sister about the fact that I got it fixed because I don't really want to give it back. This laptop had been used by my sister for at least two years, and it had even been used by her peasant Slovak boyfriend, who managed to break it, but even now it still works fine and it makes almost no noise when it's turned on. I sure do like the way it looks on my table. This old, well-built computer does bring joy to me.
As for the books that I've been reading, I can say that I finally finished reading Ivan T. Sanderson's 'Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life'. I think that I bought this book out of curiosity on Google Books about two years ago. I remember that time quite well. I think that it was autumn. In the evening, I was sitting at a cafe (Waves Coffee) in Downtown Vancouver for a little while, and I was browsing and thinking about which books to buy on Google Books. For some reason, books about bigfoot caught my attention. At that same time, I also bought 'Bigfoot' by Rupert Matthews and 'Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America' by Loren Coleman. But 'Abominable Snowmen' is the only one that I have finished reading so far. This happened a few months ago. Sometimes, when this book interested me, I read several pages at a time. Other times, when it got less interesting, I read a few pages at a time. The book is, overall, interesting because Sanderson wrote not only about the so-called bigfoot but also about human evolution and geography. Because of this book, I found out about the aquatic ape hypothesis, for example. Sanderson wrote the book as if he really believed that bigfoot exists. I don't believe that bigfoot exists, but the book still makes for interesting reading. Since 'Abominable Snowmen' can be easily purchased, there's a good chance that the establishment supports such books either as a distraction or as propaganda. Even if this is the case, 'Abominable Snowmen' is still worth reading because it contains plenty of interesting information. In order to learn more about the aquatic ape hypothesis, I downloaded 'The Descent of Woman' and 'The Aquatic Ape' by Elaine Morgan. Another book that I finished reading is 'Agriculture in World History' by Mark Tauger. I found out about this book because I read Grover Furr's book 'Blood Lies' a few years ago. I have recently begun reading another one of Furr's books, which is 'Stalin: Waiting for ... the Truth!'. Initially, I was reluctant to read Tauger's book because I thought that it would be a boring read. But I was wrong. Tauger's book isn't that thick, and it gives a straightforward account of what happened in the world from the beginning of agriculture to modern times. It's easy to read and to understand. I learned a lot from it. For example, I finally found out who Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa were because I haven't read about them before. I also found out about the An Lushan Rebellion, which took place when the Tang Empire existed in China. The Tang Empire was the first military (post-expansion) empire of Chinese Civilization. I knew about the Tang dynasty before reading Tauger's book, but I didn't know about this rebellion. This rebellion claimed the lives of about 30 million people, or about half of the population of China at that time. Tauger's book isn't exactly easy to obtain because it's not promoted by the establishment, but it can be found and purchased online. A thick book that I finished reading one or two years ago is Carroll Quigley's 'Weapons Systems and Political Stability: A History'. I promised to review it, but I haven't done so yet. It's the last book by Quigley that I had to read. I finished reading all of his other books before I began reading 'Weapons Systems and Political Stability', and, like all of his other books, it's filled with good information. Here's an excerpt from the book that I found to be interesting: "The average Roman was unimaginative and uncritical, rather dull, unlikely to see that there was any way to deal with problems other than by war and violence, ready to obey his leaders and accept their justifications of their policies with few questions, and prepared to go on accepting and believing all kinds of contradictory, obsolete, and nonsensical ideas, customs, and institutions." In 'Weapons Systems and Political Stability', Quigley wrote in detail about Sinic Civilization, Islamic Civilization, Russian Civilization, Byzantine Civilization (which existed for only about one thousand years), and Classical Civilization. This is something that he did not do in 'Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time', which is mostly about what happened in the world from 1850 to 1950. I have to mention that Quigley was a conservative. In order to get his books published in the USA, he was very critical of the Soviet Union and even dishonest. But I find his approach to examining history and to making sense of history to be practical. This is why I use it. With his approach, I can logically explain what happened and I can even predict what will happen in general.
No comments:
Post a Comment