I finally got my DAW computer working today.  I got a Dell D630 Core 2 Duo laptop a couple of months ago and have wanted to use it to replace my old Pentium 4 Dimension 3000.

Problems began when the laptop arrived with Windows Vista.  ProTools (the DAW software I use) doesn’t work on Vista, so I started by downgrading to Windows XP Pro.  Not as easy as you might think, because after paying 75 cold ones for the downgrade, I couldn’t get the XP installation to recognize the hard drive.  After spending a weekend with Dell, my local tech support guys, and completely erasing the hard-drive with U.S. Department of Homeland Security approved software, it still didn’t work.  Turns out I had to set the hard drive to compatibility mode in the BIOS.  After doing that, I got XP installed.

Next I installed ProTools.  But, of course, it didn’t work.  Playback would randomly terminate, and Stylus RMX would only play back about one note out of every 20.  The program kept telling me that it was having resource conflicts with the OS, and I was screaming “You have a Core 2 Duo!  You have 2 GB of RAM!  How can there be a resource conflict?!”

I contacted Digidesign tech support, and they told me that my machine wasn’t supported and so they wouldn’t do anything.  I was ready to give up on it, but I decided to spend this morning messing with it one last time to see if I could find a solution.  I disabled the internal network cards and WiFi, and booted up in diagnostic mode.  Still nothing.  Finally, as a last ditch effort, I disabled dual core support for the processor.  That was it!  Everything works!  Amazing!  I was dancing around for a few minutes with Winnie and Jo.  After two long months, the thing finally works.  It’s a miracle.

In other news, the Ring of Scribes will be featured on the WeasleyCast Halloween special this week.  I believe you can tune in to WeasleyCast on iTunes.  If you would like to help us out, tune in to the podcast and leave a comment about us.

Hope everyone has a very bad, very sad, disgusting Halloween.

I met this guy the other day that really bugged me a lot. He was the systems administrator for a small web company. When he found out that I was a mac user he started to go off on how much he hates macs and what not. I’m not usually bugged by people who hate macs, but I’ll have to admit that I was quite bugged by some of the things this guy said. One of the statements he made was this: “Apple can’t do anything right so they just have to be critical of Microsoft.” Now if dominating the music player industry and having your stock rise from $7/share to $180/share in 5 years isn’t doing something right, then I don’t know what is. I’m completely accepting of anyone who has a preference of operating system, but to say that Apple or even Microsoft aren’t doing anything right is just ignorant.

Okay, so I’m colorblind. Well, technically I’m not color “blind,” but I’m color deficient. That means that there are a few colors out there that I don’t see as vividly as other colors. Some colors, such as browns and greens, look similar to me. No, this doesn’t mean that I can only see as well as a dog. I do see colors, just not as many as you see. I know it’s fun to poke fun at people like me and I enjoy the jokes as much as you. I just want you all to know that when people say they are colorblind they don’t mean that they can’t see color.

I enjoy visiting gadget websites as much as the next geek, but I’ve got to tell ya, the rumors have got to stop. It’s amazing to me that rumors are taken as “almost” fact by some people. The funny thing is I could write something here like this: Apple is releasing an iPhone next month, with GPS, dual touchscreen, and 3G data connection. Indeed it holds much the same truths as the other rumors that fly around the gadget community. What’s the difference? Because it’s on Morrise.com and not Gizmodo, Engadget, or Macrumors. I guess there credibility lies in the fact that they sometimes, and I mean sometimes they get it right. I’ll tell you right now though, I could come up with a bunch of Apple rumors based on my “analysis” of various things I hear around the internet and I could make up some pretty good things too.