snowed in and karaoke paradise

We finally had a snow storm yesterday after days of forecast warnings that came to naught. Actually it was kind of funny because they keep warning that it will snow in Wednesday so everybody got all prepared, the school closed down, people stayed home etc etc. But it was perfectly clear on Wednesday, and apparently this was the reason.




You see the large amount of green ? That is all snow storm, you see that hole in the middle where we have perfectly clear weather? that is us. thats right. But finally on Thursday, our snow bubble burst and we got the full onslaught. Although, for once, the west side got the bulk of the dump while my house only got the very edge of this Canadian storm front.

So being at home, and couldn't remote into work because the other 30,000 people were also trying to remote into work at the same time. I decided to put my exciting plan for Karaoke Paradise into action.


Now I have like 3 karaoke machines at home of various age. The problem is tho, I don't have songs to go with them, and I don't want to keep changing disks every 3 songs. So it is highly inconvenient. Now I was thinking originally of buying a karaoke machine in China like we did a long time. But after shopping around I realize apparently home karaoke is no longer popular in China. People just go to a karaoke place where they can sing and get food for like 10 yuan or something ridiculous like that. So the selection is seriously lacking. Then i have found out that my friend here has a home karaoke setup using a laptop, Internet connection and a microphone mixer. So I decided to copy that. Now, I couldn't convince myself that I need a $700 laptop so I can sing karaoke so I decided to rebuild my old machine (the one that the hard drive died). it still have everything intact, except it is missing the HD and a CD player for booting. So I took my old DVD drive off my new uber-machine so I can put it back into KP machine. I also have a spare 80gig IDE HD Cloud gave me when I was whining about my HD last time so I figure it is all a go.

The machine assembly was relatively easy, although the master-slave thing gave me so much trouble because I keep switching them around and the DVD won't boot. So after I got that set up. Time to install XP pro. A process I have only done like 5000 times before. The first time it was a success. I installed everything, hooked the machine up dual monitor with a spare monitor (for song selection) and my plasma ( for mtv). Now all i have to do is upgrade to SP2 get the 1000 security updates and download a karaoke program with songs. It all went downhill from there. Right after I upgraded to sp2, the machine wouldn't boot. It says


file is corrupt or missing : system32\config\system.


Now this is kind of a serious error. I thought maybe I corrupted the registry when I was installing sp2 cause I really was forcing it down its throat pretty fast. So I tried like 10 more times to install XP using various different options like deleting old partition, quick format, full format. And none of them worked. GRRR!! so my next plan is of course.. whine to Velius. Velius is awesome as he suggested that I wipe down the install disc and try again. Amazingly it worked! This time everything was perfect until I decided it is a good idea to upgrade to sp3! boom, the error is back. After almost tearing my hair out. I have decided the failed HD drive curse of 2008 is still with me and there is only one solution to this problem, a new SATA HD from newegg. When all else fails, throw more money at it =P


oh and this is the mixer I ordered.
http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-Stereo-Monitor-Matrix-MON800/dp/B000MJ40D2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1229372329&sr=1-1

So now i have to wait another week or so before continuing my KP saga.