$800 Worth of Brick?

Everyone may be wondering "Where is the 2nd half of the update?"

Well, ask the $800 dream machine.
Yes, that would be the new PC running windows 7 and fighting tooth and nail against productivity of any kind. It has never worked for an entire day without doing something horrible.

This last time though...CAN a PC brick itself?
Is this the largest, shinieist and most expensive doorstop? While sitting idle for about 10 minutes (between editing a video, and starting up the 2nd half update) it BSOD me. It said atikmdag.sys had done something awful, and if it's the first time seeing that BSOD, to just restart.

No amount of ctrl alt dl'ing would restart it, so had to push the power off. Now, pushing the power on...does nothing. It simply flashes slowly, sleeping, and never waking. Monitor doesn't even 'wake up' or say 'no signal'. Nothing. This PC is OUT OF THE BOX fresh! It has no fancy rams, or new video cards, or external devices besides the mouse and keyboard it came with! The only thing fancy on it is the Samsung large monitor! That's it! I know it argues with the monitor but it can't brick itself over this!

Is SonicGear in geopardy?
As long as the old pc stays working fine and turned on at all times, not really. It just can't be updated. But how long will that last? At this rate, it had damn well better be "forever" because I looked up atikmdag.sys and it looks like something that there's no fix for, it's just going to keep happening. (well providing the damn thing can ever be turned on again!) It's only supposed to happen to people who play gfx intensive games, or have installed odd RAM amounts or are using souped up vid cards. I'm doing none of the above with this out of the box pc!

So, if you have items...hang onto them. It could be a while.

Update Floundering - Upgrade of Downgrades!

The update is not going well for the week.

It skipped last week so the show MUST go on, but everything's not all-well on the new PC. The newer version of Golive which will run on Windows7 (as you recall, the other version is too old to do it normally) is actually an AWFUL DOWNGRADE to the older program.



They made EVERYthing much more difficult to do. Obtuse menues, text boxes that don't want to cooperate, a horrible uploading interface that I can barely FIND, and 99% MORE tool switching makes this program a terrible one to use. Why did they feel the need to make everything take 5 more steps than usual? Aren't higher #'d programs supposed to be improvements? They've sent this thing back to the stone age! (and that's really saying something, if 1996-ware can beat the hell out of what you did in 2002!)



So far, work-arounds, juryrigging and squeezing by with copy/paste have enabled a few things to get done, at a slow pace. The only spark of hope being the famous "XP Mode" which hopefully is oldskool enough to be able to run the decent older golive...but it must first be aquired!



While I do all I can here...the inbox has seen a flood of mail like never before 167 messages total. Part of it is from the recent toyfair, but the rest seems to be an unfortunate coincidence. Right now, when everything is hardest to do, the most items flood in.



Actual Update News:
The JW Racers are the item of the week. They look great. If they're not plagued by paint errors or bad parts like some of the previous figures have been, they'll be excellent. Everything looks pretty much game accurate from the early fair photos. One question remains:

WHERE IS TAILS

He has a cool airplane/car/combo thing, it's sure to be an interesting choice in the game...and Amy in her pink buggy is in the pull-back-n-go line up, so why not Tails? People are going to want him and his vehicle, so this is a mystery.


Sonic / Metal Sonic Comic 2 Pak

The Series 3 of 3inch figures 2-pak has been revealed. It was previously reported that it would be the logical Amy/Sonic combo, with some random number of the Archie Comic, but instead, 3inch MS appears instead, and it appears to contain issue 207 (which is not of any particular signifigance, it's just whatever happened to be around at the time)



Why not Amy?
It would make more sense to put her in the 2pak than it would MS. Metal Sonic always sells like hotcakes. The only case in which he didn't, was the exclusive JUVI--and that's only because it was cutsey and wierd. Everything else always gets blitzed then commands high prices later. While no one can say who has more fans (Amy Rose or Metal Sonic) she seemed like a safer bet to place in the 2pack.



Piko?
Is it BECAUSE they have decided to release her solo-carded so she CAN have her famous Piko Piko Hammer? That seems like the only logical reason to do it that way.



Wacky-est Item of the Week:
Has to be the bootleg backpack. Gaining infamy on it's own, will it rise to become the most famous fake of all? It's certainly one of the strangest. A backpack with mis-colored Sonic on it that says Obama Harry Potter. It's like they wrote anything famous they could think of, for no reason. Who would buy that?



The update will (of course) be part 1 of 2. There's too much stuff to fit all into 1 marathon night. Likely, another blog post will appear with the 2nd update.