Laingan.com

When I was connecting my optical mouse to the USB port of my laptop a few days ago, I noticed that the mouse icon was not moving no matter how I moved my mouse. I landed my finger onto the touchpad of the laptop and the mouse icon was responding well.

I checked the device configuration by clicking the “Control Panel”, “System”, “Device Manager”, “Mice and Other Pointing Devices” and I can only find the “Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad” but not the “HID-compliant Mouse”.

I pulled out the USB connector of the optical mouse and then connected it back again but the mouse was not working. I shook the cable carefully and it was intermittently working by emitting red laser light. This was a complimentary optical mouse that I got during the purchase of my NEC Versa E6210 laptop. Hmm…I knew it was time to buy a new one. 

My Old USB Optical Mouse :

Actually, I can just use the touchpad of the laptop since the mouse was not working. However, I just don’t like to use the touchpad because I find it difficult to maneuver and it slows down the process of using the laptop. Sometimes, it requires the use of both hands just to drag and drop things. It makes the user feel like a handicap without a mouse when using the computer.

I think retractable mouse is not so durable as compared with the straight-cable mouse but I still like it because I find that mouse with retractable cable is easier to manage than those with long and messy cables.

So, I went to the Challenger IT store to select a mouse. There were many colourful and fanciful mice displaying at the Challenger. These types of mouse were more enticing to the school children than to the adult. I spotted a black and glossy USB optical mouse with a retractable cable. Then, I made my purchase straight away.

My New USB Optical Mouse :

My niece and nephew find my newly-purchased USB optical mouse very stylish and attractive. It has a black and glossy surface. I like the look and feel of the new mouse. It definitely looks nicer than my old one. Don’t you agree?

First of all, I wish you have a very happy and peaceful Thanksgiving Day if you are staying in the US.

I went to the SITEX PC show and John Little Mega Sale at the Singapore Expo this afternoon as I was not working today. It was not too crowded over there probably because it was not a weekend. 

I think it is better this way so that I can really go from booth to booth to look at those laptops, desktops, gadgets and other IT accessories on display without having to get squeezed around in the crowd. Besides laptops, Apple’s iPod Classic, iPod Touch and iPhone are very popular IT products which drew the attention of many visitors at the SITEX PC show.

iPhone is in the wish-list of many people :

Besides PCs, there was also a section for selling cars. I think the event exhibitors nowadays are trying to pack a few different events together in one exhibition hall so as to cater to different needs. Maybe this is the so-called killing one bird with two stones.

Here is a picture of the sportscar displaying at the mini car show :

As for the John Little Mega Sale, I walked around and then picked up a few packets of Japanese Wasabi peas and seasoned seaweed. These are the snacks that my sisters and niece like to eat very much.

After spending a few hours at the SITEX PC show and John Little Mega Sale, I was really feeling tired and hungry so I went to the Malan Noodle restaurant to have a bowl of Chinese crunchy prawn noodle.

Here is a picture of the Crunchy Prawn Noodle :

 

I like the prawns which were very fresh and crunchy. You will love the crunchiness of the prawns after taking one bite. It will taste even better when eating the prawns with chili.

I spent my off day at the PC show today but I yet to have any plan for tomorrow which is also my off day. Hmm….let me think about how I want to spend my day tomorrow.

The IT guy of my company has finally come to work on my desktop PC today after it has been down for more than a week. I put up a PC helpdesk request last Thursday after I can no longer have the patience to wait for the IT guy to show his mercy. I just have too many things to do and cannot let the PC problem to bog me down.

Last week, before the IT guy came to my rescue, I was trying to fix the PC problem by copying some of the system files from other PC of the same brand and model as mine to replace the corrupted files of my desktop PC. I did this by following the instructions prompted on the screen. Then, the error messages of the missing files (ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll) were gone upon rebooting the PC. 

I was delighted to see the problem had gone and was ready to use my PC to do my work. However, the PC did an auto-shutdown after about 15 minutes. The system went to the CHKDSK (checkdisk) mode automatically upon powering up. It showed some bad clusters and unreadable security descriptor error messages. I also heard some “act-act” noise quite frequently. After seeing the error messages and hearing the funny noise, my colleague advised me to get a new harddisk in case the old HDD has too many bad sectors which may be beyond repair. 

So, I went to Sim Lim Square to purchase a new 80GB SATA HDD and some SATA-related accessories after work. It costs about SGD $65. I think the price is quite reasonable as compared with the price of an IDE HDD a few years back. This just shows that the price of HDD has really eroded drastically over the years. 

I removed the old HDD and then installed it as a slave drive to my colleague’s PC to do a CHKDSK, virus scan and data backup on my own. After seeing what I had done, a colleague of mine told me that I seem to be more like an IT guy than the real IT guy in our IT department. Hmm….I cannot agree more with what he had said.

I installed the newly-purchased 80GB SATA HDD to my desktop PC and then passed it to the IT guy to do a system recovery and setup for me. After this incident, all I can say is that it can be very stressful and frustrating to have had encountered a PC problem.  Now, I’m glad that my PC is up. I can do my work, check my emails, surf Internet and so on as usual.