Random Tech Notes

Two random tech items tonight:

Many thanks to Jofish for his recommendation on solving my DVD-R hardware problem:

You may need to buy a new drive. Newegg has this for $21 shipped right now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?nm_mc=AFC-SlickDeals&cm_mmc=AFC-SlickDeals-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA&Item=N82E16827136149


It arrived a few days after ordering; the bigger delay was getting my butt over to MicroCenter for a 4-pin molex connector to SATA power adapter. Pretty amazing: I plugged it in, and it worked--no scavenging for the right driver, installing, removing, reinstalling--what I expect for Windows hardware installs. It works, it burns DVDs. Go newegg!

Second, while running the energy simulation software I use all the time at work, I got the following error message:


Wow... hadn't seen that one before... it gave me a bit of a chuckle, despite crashing the program.