(200805.07)

The highlighted area, in the above image, is a good example of why a weather station is being included in the ARPSN project and will explain part of my concept of 'fine tuning' in regard to seismic stations.

The large traces above; including the highlighted area, are due to wind noise (very strong wind on the seismic shed, which is still bolted to the concrete slab) and a weather station will help me properly insulate wind noise in the new shed, which I am now considering changing from wood to filled concrete block (think bunker).

Today, around 02:30 AM PDT (green line in above image), there was a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on the computer running ARPSN-1 (L15B package); after 12 days of error free operation since installation, and here is what happened leading up to Microsoft's error message:

If you recall (written above 200804.13) I had an incident with Windows 98 MFC42.DLL, was 'being nice' when I explained it, and the reason I am bringing it up again, is because I turned Microsoft's Automatic Updating OFF on both machines, when that happened.

Yesterday, I noticed there was a XP update (SP3), clicked Install, clicked Accept, and the download began.

It consumed about an hour of downloading time and produced an error which told me to check 'software download history' to discover why the error happened == and there was NO explanation as to why the error occurred, there.

I closed MSIE on the software update history page and clicked "Windows Update" again, only to have the same thing happen; which, in total, repeated the same error three times. I gave up and went to bed.

When I got up this morning, a BSOD was on my screen, and a weird boot screen when it started, so I restarted Win XP PRO and WinSDR again, with hopes this does not happen again. (fwiw) This machine was/is only allowed on the Internet to collect Microsoft updates, was originally intended as a 'game machine', until I switched to a PS-2, and worked great until the first SP1 update, at which point, most of my games stopped working and I had to reload the original XP discs to get them back.

When XP SP2 was announced, I waited for six months to see what was being said about the update before I tried it myself, and after installing it, the games still worked; however, a chunk of RAM disappeared, even though the RAM and MB (swapped) check out fine, so I retired the machine and it was moved into storage for a future project.

I brought the 'game machine' back into service (for the VolksMeter) with a fresh XP software install up to and including SP2, with all current updates, and noticed the missing memory returned. So, without incident, I've used this machine with SP2, for around a month, with no problems

After this mornings error incident with BSOD, I attempted another SP3 update, it presented me with a new 'acceptance window', which I accepted, and it started the 66+ MB download again, consumed about x? hours downloading time, and the current images, on the seismic page, were created under it.

((fwiw) There is NO high speed Internet (here) in our small populated (12 families), AT&T based, rural area; however, 3 miles North or 5 miles South, where the population is over one thousand, there is high speed access... and (fwiw), because of trees, which I will NOT cut down and winter weather, satellite does not work well here, ...and don't get me started because I worked with Nick Marshall, W6OLO, for four years (Starquest). ...and Nobody wants "historic" QAM experiments allowing for advanced remote control brought up (-;)

11:00 AM PDT - Just to be fair, I took ARPSN seismic data collection off-line (for a while), looked around, a bit, at the 'new stuff', checked to see if any new updates had been listed on the update page (none), verified SP3 had indeed, been loaded (yes), rebooted the machine, missing RAM was back, uploaded recent seismic activity, wind is slowing down, and 'noise' on the gifs is reducing.

It looks as if 'things' may have gone back to "normal"; a term Nobody wants to define (-;