(no subject)

There is an alarm ringing in the next room.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

My office is located next to our main server room. 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Some piece of critical equipment has gone into meltdown.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Even through the wall it's annoying as hell.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

As long as the network keeps working then I will assume that it doesn't affect me, aside from driving me insane.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Maybe some music will drown it out...

El Mobo Cheapo

The sound didn't work. 

I did some research and I am fairly sure that it is a driver problem rather than anything in hardware (though I wish I had learned that before I unwired the front panel again).

I knew I shouldn't have let Windows pick its own driver - though to be fair, I had no idea which of the dozen or so different sound drivers on the motherboard CD to use.  It looks like they simply shipped the CD with drivers for every piece of hardware the company produces (one way to save on costs I guess).  The box and manual for the motherboard are a little vague about which audio chipset it actually uses, and I suspect that it changes from run to run.  We either need to just start installing drivers until one of them works, or poke around on the board itself and see if any of the chips are clearly marked.

(no subject)

This internet service has been rock solid for years, but in the past month our connection has sucked. Usually it's just a brief disconnect every hour or so - and by brief I mean from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. I was ready to blame the old Nortel modem, but I found out that a friend in our same corner of town has been experiencing the same service outages.

Line noise, perhaps? I think tomorrow afternoon might be a good time for a service call.