Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I have two identical computers under my desk. One is to my left and another is to my right. My workstation is to the left. The computer to my right is not mine and I don’t have anything to do with it. It just has to stay there.

During the last two days I spent more than two hours troubleshooting all sorts of wierd problems with my PC. Yesterday I had a problem with DVD writing. I was inserting the empty disk, but the drive woldn’t recognize it. Software was insisting that no disk was in the drive. Today I had a problem with USB storage. I was sticking it in, but nothing was happening. Not like it wasn’t recognized. More like the USB port itself was dead.

I was running all sorts of debugging, tracing, and monitoring. I almost got as far as kernel compilation. Luckily I realized the source of the problem before that.

You see, I am right-handed, so reaching to my right is easier and simplier for me. Add to the fact that for the last five or so years, my office workstation was always to my right. Needless to say that I have to be more careful and pay more attention in my new setup. Otherwise, strange things can happen to my productivity.

It’s been a really long while since I looked at Brainbench.com. I used to take a lot of tests an even have few certificates from the early days. I even remember when it was called something else.

Anyway, today I got reminded about this huge repository of tests and certifications and I decided to check it out. Overall there are more than 600 tests that cover a large part of both practical and theoretical computer industry. Here is the list of free tests that you can take.

Just to see if I still have it I took a couple. And passed. The results weren’t as high as they could have been because I wasn’t fully focusing and I was in the middle of the noisy office, but I am satisfied anyway. Check the results below, if you are interested enough.

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Ovid once again does an excellent job. This time he talks about choosing proper tools for the job, using computer programming languages as examples.

Do not choose solutions if you don’t know what the problem is.

Here is a paradox that I encounter most often - the more news and announcements I read, the more I stay behind. The most recent examle of this happening to me is the release of Quake 4. This game is something I has been waiting for the last three or four years. It was The Reason for all hardware upgrades. It was The Reason for all gaming SPAM I receive. And now I missed it.

On October 4, 2005 id Software announcent that Quake 4 was done. On October 18, 2005 Quake 4 started shipping. Trailer has available for some time now too.

And all this passed me by - unbelievable…

Ladies and gentlemen, charge your credit cards!

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