Geekgothgrrl

The other day I noticed the server had locked up on me. Odd I though, so I reset it. Within minutes it locked solid again, with kernel crashes on the monitor I'd left plugged in to it.

So I rebooted and ran Memtest86+ (always handy to make sure it is in your default grub list for such occasions!).

It started spitting out over 9000 errors with the memory. So not knowing which of the 4 1Gb sticks (Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800), I took the second pair out (installed in pairs for dual channel mode). Rebooted and re-ran Memtest86+. This time no errors, let it run for two complete passes. Not one error. Good I thought, so turned off, took the 'good' ram out, put the other two sticks in and rebooted, motherboard cried at me with loads of beeps, oops! definitely hates that ram! Not tried individual sticks to see if it is just one stick or both yet, but till I get more ram for the server, it'll have to manage with just 2Gb rather than 4Gb. Annoying, but at least ram (DDR2 anyway) is cheap, 4Gb can be had for about £30 these days, 8Gb isn't much more expensive really either.

It is the second time I've had Crucial Ballistix ram go bad on me (first time was in my main PC, also on a gigabyte motherboard). Certainly won't be buying it again I think just to be on the safe side.

I've not done more drupal oriented stuff recently due to having bought a copy of Need For Speed: Pro Street on a whim for £7.99 for the Xbox 360. So been playing that a fair bit. I've enjoyed playing it far more than I thought I would, as I'd gotten the impression it wasn't all that great compared to Most Wanted/Carbon/Undercover. Reminds me, need to see about getting the NFS:Carbon disc for the Xbox 360 repaired/cleaned to see if that fixes the Xbox 360 locking up solid when trying to play that game (we've had a lot of issues with duff discs with this game on our Xbox 360). NFS: Most Wanted seems to be the only Xbox 360 NFS game I don't have (though have it on the Sony PS2, which is rather inferior in a lot of ways!), other than obviously the soon to be released Need For Speed: Shift, which is going to seemingly be closer to Project Gotham Racing than Most Wanted/Carbon/Undercover have been, which might be an interesting change, though whether EA can pull off a decent game which is also serious remains to be seen.. my impression of them is they tend towards lazy when it comes to games, which leads to lots of bugs and annoyances. When a games company gets bought by EA I kinda cry a little, as profits take over from producing a solid game which sucks.

Oops I've ranted a bit there. Sorry.

Now back to playing NFS: Pro Street on the Xbox 360, intersperced with watching Bones and Grey's Anatomy on the Xbox (which runs XBMC).