Down the Quays

In part of my effort to get semi-fit (or at least to not get any unfitter), I try to do a long-ish walk at least 1, 2 evenings a week. Normally I take the DART out to blackrock and walk back in, either via Ballsbridge (about 8.3km, 1h20m) or via Strand Road/Irishtown (about 7.5km, 1h15m). Sometimes tho I don't want to take the dart out, as that adds maybe another 20mns onto the walk time, so I walk down the quays as far as the O2 (formarely point depot), cross the East-link bridge, down by Ringsend and come back down by Grand Canal Dock, for a walk of about 5.5km.

Anyway, while I'm doing so I occasionally take a few pictures with my mobile phone, as it's not a walk you'd do very often. So, I've decided to throw a few up here, for no particular reason (descriptions underneath):



Am not sure of the name of it, but it's an Argentinian sail training vessel that was moored on the quay for the docklands festival a few weeks ago. The ship in the foreground is the Cill Airne, a floating restaurant/bar on the quays.



The new Samuel Beckett bridge, just before they actually put it across the river.



The view upriver from the Eastlink bridge, just before the new bridge was put up.



The Jeanie Johnson, an old famine ship which is moored on the quay as pretty much a permanent exhibition (altho I've never actually seen it with ppl aboard...)



The new Beckett bridge in place, looking out towards the mouth of the river.



Looking back upriver from the Eastlink bridge, with the Beckett bridge in place.



The new Aviva Lansdowne Rd Stadium under construction, as seen from the bridge at Ringsend. I dunno about you, but to me the shape of the new stadium's roof always reminds me of the front of the Battlestar Galactica from the new series...

There we go, not too bad for a camera-phone camera, eh? Are reduced from the original 2048x1536 resolution as well. Will maybe add in more here as I take them.

New Laptop

I finally heard back from the computer shop yesterday, after I dropped in my laptop there about 3 weeks or more ago. The news isn't really good. As I was suspecting, the graphics chip is shagged. Unfortunately, the gfx chip is soldered onto the motherboard, so I need a new motherboard. And that ain't cheap. Combined with parts & labour, it'll probably cost me about €600, maybe €700 to get it repaired. It seems that when it comes to HP & Compaq laptops, the build quality isn't exactly the best, they have a habit of subcontracting to parts manufacturers who may not be exactly overly concerned about quality control. They've had to do a few recalls of laptops in their 6xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx series (mine's a 9500 series, wasn't any recall on them), and in quite a few other cases, ppl have had laptops die on them just after the warranty expired, with similar problems to mine. Some have gotten HP to extend their warranty and so didn't have to pay for it, most didn't.

So, my options are not very appealing:

1) I get it fixed by the guy who has it now, which will take a few weeks, cost €6-700, and I'll have no real guarantees that the same problem won't happen again with the new card.
2) I get it back from him, send it off to HP, have them charge me €300 for just looking at it as it's out of warranty - and then probably have them charge me as much as the other guy for parts & labour.
3) I keep using my 7 year old Alienware laptop running OpenSolaris (so no games, videos) whose DVD drive works when it wants to, whose PCMCIA slot doesn't work so I can't use wireless (is the last-gen laptops before wireless came in as standard), which reboots spontaneously every now and then, whose battery life is about half an hour, and whose display flickers on and off if you have the screen tilted at the wrong angle.
4) I say "screw it" and go out and buy a new laptop with the money that I would have to spend on the repairs, and just use the old banjaxed laptop for parts (RAM, HD etc)

I reckon I'm definitely leaning towards option 4 at the mo. I know one thing for sure tho, if I do get a new laptop, it won't be a HP......