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Showing results for tags 'the saga of KIE's computer'.
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Not that I've actually done anything to the computer, well, I have: we had to replace the monitor. Went from a 19" ViewSonic VX922 at 1280×1024 to a 22" widescreen ViewSonic VX2233wm running 1920×1080[p]. When they say HD, apparently they aren't kidding: text is awfully tiny now. But anyway, just wanted to drop a note saying I'm 3 years late to the party, but here I am: this entry was typed using the internet channel on our Wii. And yes, I am using the remote, not a keyboard. -KIE
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Today is launch day for Red Alert 3, and I do not have an advance copy. In fact, I didn't even know the game existed until this past Sunday, when my brother called me while I was at the airport. (Why was I at the airport? I was getting €310 at a nice-ish rate for some spending money on the honeymoon next year: I have to expect to have passed the exam.) The good news is that my computer can run the game. The bad news is that my brother can not. The worse news is that, in the process of searching for a new graphics card for my brother, I discovered that I missed my opportunity to get a second ASUS EN8800GTS for SLI. Can anyone tell me if SLI will work if the specs on the cards are identical, but not from the same manufacturer? Anyway, the strange title comes from the progenitor of the entire Command & Conquer line: Back in high school, I had the privilege to play a game put out by Westwood Studios called "Dune II". It was the neatest thing, in that it wasn't Wolfenstein 3D, Tetris, or Scorched Earth (an old tank shell-lobbing game, long live the Funky Bomb!). It was my first taste of RTS, and I was quite hooked. I'm still not very good at RTS, but I take the same attitude as I do the Pyro in TF2: I'm not playing because I'm good at it, I'm playing because I'm enjoying myself. In any case, from Dune 2 came Command & Conquer [Tiberian Dawn], and from C&C came C&C:Red Alert. From C&C:Red Alert came C&C:RA 2, then C&C2, C&C3, and now C&C:RA3. And for the first time in...5 iterations, there is a third party without an expansion. Ordos, meet Rising Sun. I can tell I'm going to be torn between Allied & Rising Sun. Where my brother goes from Soviet, I'll just have to find out when he gets a new card. -KIE
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(This entry is mostly for the benefit of my friends who know of this blog through Ultima Online.) I've been spending time re-playing Ultima IX: Ascension. I've referenced this game before, both the game and the series from which it comes: it's the lead item in my BOTW 27 "acceptance entry". The game itself is not very playable right now: one of the major goals of the game is the cleansing of 8 shrines of virtue in the game world. Once the Avatar (you, the player) collects the mantra, town sigil, and corrupted glyph, he can cleanse the shrine, gain a level, and progress to the next shrine. There's a neat animation that happens, too. But see, the animation is the problem. What is supposed to happen is the sigil "corrects" the glyph, and the shrine is cleansed in the process. At that point, the sigil and former-glyph-now-rune fall from the sky and land on the stone table in the center of the shrine. When operated by most nVidia AND ATI video cards, the sigil and rune do not fall from the sky, and are stuck 30 feet in the air. This is bad because the Avatar needs these 16 total items to finish the game. Fortunately, I never got rid of the old HP computer that I replaced with the custom rig I built last year. I can migrate the save game files to the old computer, cleanse the shrine, migrate the files back to the new computer, and not have to build a giant pyramid of staves, bows, and flasks to retrieve these two items all 8 times. Despite the category in which this entry falls, swapping rigs is not really what this entry is about though. Halfway through the second dungeon (Hythloth), Richard Garriot used Executive Producer powers and had a teleporter to the end of said dungeon installed so that the upper, more difficult, half could be omitted from the task list. The logic apparently went like this: the Avatar character is relatively weak at this point, and there is little margin for error. Plus, the upper half requires a lot of swimming, something that doesn't lend itself well to tactical retreat. Well, I'm proud to say that I completed the upper half of Hythloth. All 8 statue keys were used, including the second red and the orange ones. In other words, I have more skill than the game production crew in 1999 gave the typical player credit. Yay me. And the mandrake root made it all worthwhile, too. -KIE
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Oh, believe you me, I have entries worth posting. I just don't have time to type them up. I do, however, have time to relate this to you: The best fried chicken on the face of the planet is served by a man named Arthur Davis in an old country store in Lorman, MS. Point your GPS to 31° 49' N, 91° 3' W to find it on a service road on US 61. You will not regret this trip. People from Vancouver, BC, have signed the guest book, saying as much. More to come later this week, assuming I get time to type it. -KIE
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I'm giving up. No, I'm not breaking down and buying a Wii. As badly as I want one, it would be my undoing. I'm giving up on this video card. When I downloaded Team Fortress 2, I had to download a new GeForce driver to make sure the game operated smoothly. While the game has worked wonderfully, the brightness of my screen has been overcharged, and video playback has been a bit....garbled. And recent attempts to find another EN7950GT for the purposes of SLI have been futile at best. So, I'm removing the 7950, in favor of a new EN8800GTS. Two story card, so I've got a little juggling to do in the box, but nothing big. It'll still fit. Oh, and they're still making these, so I can get another later on, after nVidia gets their GeForce 9 series in full swing (so that I can nab the outgoing top-of-the-line 8800 on the cheap). Only problem with that is: I'll need a new $350 power supply at that point, in addition to the $400 graphics card. Whee...fun. Anyone want to buy a $250 graphics card for $180? -KIE
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18:50 CDT, 29 Jun 2007. That's post time. Okay, clarification: Post here stands for Power-On Self Test. It's a series of internal checks that happen when a system is powered up, before anything comes on screen. For a system to successfully post in this sense means that the hardware is cooperating with itself and the computer turns on. Well, my computer posted on the first try. Yay. HOWEVER, the RJ-45 (network) ports aren't working to let me connect to the internet. I don't know if it's a problem with my cable internet, or if it's the ethernet jacks on the motherboard itself. I don't want to find out now that I've had a partially dead board all this time. Really. Because of that, this entry is being typed on the old computer. -------------------- I'm being pushed out of my comfort zone right now. A week after the fact, I'm starting to grasp what I actually said to Amanda. NO, I'm NOT backing out of what I said: it's just taken this long for me to wrap my head around it, around what change I would be effecting in her life. See, it's one thing for me to experiment with my own life. It's another thing entirely to experiment with someone else. I was worried about this before driving to Monroe, and it has revisited. Whichever way it goes, it promises to be humbling to get out of the way. It's like I want to help, but what happens if I screw up? More than myself is hurt if that happens. What's more, I may be transferred at work. Still working out of the same Louisiana office, but moved to be a representative, for lack of a better term, at the Yenni building (the main parish government building on the East Bank of Jefferson Parish). I confess, I've gotten comfortable in my office in Kenner. Probably too comfortable. I went in saying I could be flexible. I need to remember that. So yeah, that's where I am right now. -KIE, who wouldn't wish what happened to Rayg on anyone but those that perpetrated the crime.
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Craig Biggio saved the Houston Astros. Yes, folks, there is a Major League Baseball team in Houston. And yes, there is a member of the 3,000 hit club that didn't play (except wearing road greys/reds) in New York or Boston or Atlanta. Or even Los Angeles, for that matter. Bidge's career accomplishment last night legitimized the Astros franchise: there will be an Astro in Cooperstown by 2015 (two, if you count Bags [Jeff Bagwell]). And if he's not first-ballot, well, that's East Coast Bias for ya. Even hit #3k, where he was thrown out trying to stretch the landmark hit into a double, shows after 19 years, he still only has one gear: Hustle. Final component. When I mentioned this to Tim, another friend off BZP, he said I'd finally become a man: "Women come and go, but state of the art technology? Mmmmmmm." Anyway, the crown jewel of the Windsor cores, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3.0 GHz Dual-Core processor: [gallery] Sorry about the nondescript link: it's the spec sheet on that particular processor. This thing pulls 125 W at full load, so you'd better believe I'm going to install Cool'n'Quiet, as I don't need my power bill to shoot up to $70 unless I forget to pay it. Now begins the fun part: making it all work. -KIE
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I kind of like this new fad of individual seals of approval that Omi, Smeag & Mak have started. I almost like it enough to make my own. If I had the time, y'know. I've got a computer to build, and then there's this thing called "work". Not content to leave a monster unmarked, I had to add a bit of style to my computer. The following are either pure excessivities, or just things I could have paid less for, if I hadn't insisted on some silver or illuminescent bling. Because that's all this really is: bling. I'm not yet 30 years old: I need my eye candy. Aerocool Silver Lightning 120 mm silver/white LED fan: [gallery]BTC 6300CL slimline keyboard, silver with backlit blue keys: [gallery]2 LOGISYS Computer CLK4BL 4" blue cold cathode case lights, to be installed under the top vent: [gallery]-KIE
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Ten thousand views. Or functionally close to ten thousand views. Wow. I only wonder how many of those views were me, trying to draw attention to this blog. Probably 70% of 'em. One day, I might have as many views as Dok has comments. One thing I hadn't mentioned I'd picked up over the weekend was a trio of insect bites: left Achilles tendon, left shin, right thigh. I thought they were mosquitoes, but they're now red & blotchy like an allergic reaction to fireants. Which is odd, because I'm supposedly not allergic to fireants. I'm hoping they heal before the game Saturday morning, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I want to pass along another component: the Koutech FPM220 front panel Floppy drive/card reader [gallery] Well, the one I ordered was from Koutech, but the box says SOHOUSB. *shrug* This was mostly something to fill up the external 3½" bay in the case, but I like it. The only thing I *don't* like is that it uses an external USB port, instead of an internal USB header. If they ever redid this to use a 10-1 pin motherboard header (and migrated the other USB port to the front panel), well geez, it'd be perfect. In the meantime, I removed USB ports 7 & 8 from the expansion slot in the back of the chassis (1-4 are on the I/O panel, 5-6 are on the side of the case), and plugged the cable into one of the ports 7/8 and left it in the bottom of the case. I will keep my nice front and back, thankyouverymuch. Y'know, 3 months ago, I would've had no idea what I just said. Last components arrive Friday. Then, I get to try and make them all work together. -KIE, who is happy for Denver
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By the congratulatory messages, you can probably figure that it went well Saturday. Amanda didn't know I was coming, and was quite surprised. We went out to eat at Jim Bowie kitchen, a place she was first brought to by James, her ex-boyfriend who henceforth need not be named. It's located in Duty, LA, about an hour away from civilization. Think Cracker Barrel on steroids. I haven't had fried shrimp like that in a good long while, and Dr. Pepper out of a widemouth Ball jar is still a unique experience. Afterwards, we walked around outside, trailing her parents and her sister & brother-in-law and their two girls: it was a family outing. There were so many opportunities to confess, it felt like a big setup. Even the Sweetheart Bridge. I guess I'd had it set in my head that I wouldn't be able to cleanly say what I'd already typed, so I delayed until we got back to their house and finished a game of Yahtzee. (I ended up winning with a score of 246.) We finally got the computer outside to cooperate: cable doesn't reach back to her place, so she's on dialup. Through an elaborate...okay, circuitous, path, I led her to the blog entry below this one, and let her read through it. I then wanted to reiterate what I'd said: I didn't want us to be over before it was ever started. And thus, as of about 11:30 PM Saturday night, we are officially dating. I confess: I'd learned from her mother that she was thinking the same things I was, so I was fairly certain I would be received well. However, that did not mean I did not have to make a bold move. There comes a point where sliding along will not cut it anymore, and I consider myself lucky to have been presented a perfect opportunity to make said move. Right now, she's off to camp, not terribly far away from Lady K's house. I am tasked with finding a job for her down here that could support her relocating: she has no family down here. Man, it's been three days, and my emotions are still all over the place. Since I'm going to have someone other than myself to spend money on in the near future, I feel compelled to hurry up and get this computer running. To do that, I need to finish going over what I recently bought. GeIL 2×1 GB dual channel DDR2 800 [gallery] I was worried about the heat spreader, that it'd be flourescent orange like the traffic vest I wore when I worked for the DOTD (Highway Department), but instead it's a copper color. More memory than my first hard drives. Oh, how far we have come from "640k should be enough for anybody"... More entries this week: time to finish this rig. -KIE
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Another new component for the computer. I feel a sense of urgency about finishing it, to be honest. It's taking 4 months from thought to first boot. Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0 Gb/s 400 GB hard drive [gallery] Two reasons why I waited so long to buy it. When I first picked it out in March, it cost $130. I bought it Wednesday for $100. The price of computer components has been steadily trickling down, making way for the newer stuff. This is why a conspicuously key component remains absent from my "bought" list. Anyone paying attention should be able to determine what component that is. I'll give you two guesses. Unlike every previous component, I only have a 30 day period (instead of 365 days) to determine if it will work or not. Thus, purchase close to completion.I remember the computer Mr. Chico (Raphael Capo, next door neighbor back home in Moss Bluff) built for us back in the day. The one with the Pro Audio 16 sound card. I thought we were something to have a 386, with a 50 MB and a 330 MB hard drive. Now, 15 years later, I have a single drive that's more than a thousand times the size, combined. Oh, the memories.... I'll be honest, though: that hard disk is not the purpose of this entry. I've mentioned Amanda before. Quite a few times, to be honest. Even if it hasn't always been by name. Her birthday is tomorrow, and she'll turn 26. I've known her since 2001, before BZ ever existed. We were summer missionaries, waiting for film to be developed in a CVS Pharmacy in Kent, OH, when I found an Onua canister on the shelf. She was there for my college graduation, as I was hers. I narrowly missed her return to the states from Ecuador a year ago this month. We've shared Saints games, late night phone conversations, and of course, two Pieces of the Puzzle. (something for a later entry) What can I say, except that for the first time in a long time, nay, too long, I have the feeling of being party to something bigger than myself. It's not about me. For this weekend, it's about her. In the grand scheme, it's about us. And right now, it's about what I've got to do to make "us" work. So, right now, after posting this, I'm going to get in my car and log the 300 miles to Monroe. I have a dozen roses that I'm not sure how I'll wrap, and with intentions of working half the dozen into a "Happy Birthday" thing I will purchase upon exiting the interstate. Back in February, the roses were supposed to be white. No more hem-hawing or posturing. Today, they're red, and that's not by mistake. I'm coming, Amanda. I love you in agape, and in philaeo, and I hope that we can take it a step further. I was afraid I'd lost you when you left for Quito. Permit me a moment of avarice to say that I don't want to lose you to a seminary before we ever got started. -KIE
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It's done. My portion of the report was submitted at 12:25 PM CDT Friday, 55 minutes after the conclusion of my work day. It wasn't all of it: there's still the Helios (not the "not a phone") being stupid. That'll likely be an addendum after Wallingford Software gets a bolt of intuition as to how to fix the problem: I'm tapped out. I almost don't know what to do with myself, to be honest. Oh wait, there's the other half of the modeling that had yet to been touched. That was a short vacation. Anyway, Friday night I played some miniature golf at the Clearview Mall. Everything was lit up with UV lights, and it kinda hurt my eyes after a while. (I am SOOO not going to install UV cold cathodes in my computer. Those of you who noticed the category under which this entry is filed, this isn't about that.) I was told par was 45, and I shot a 44 and a 51 in consecutive rounds. Marked an ace on the second round, primarily because I had to get used to the carpet height. Somewhere over the course of the subsequent 18 hours, I misplaced my graduation ring. As I type this, my eyes are roaming around, hunting for it. Why did I just say that? I dunno, it's the way my mind works I guess. Softball game Saturday morning could've gone better: FBC-Kenner 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 Metairie #1 2 0 4 5 6 3 X 20...don't you agree? It's not that we lost by two touchdowns and a field goal. It's that their pitcher/coach kept pushing his team all the way through the top of the seventh. I mean, come on: you have to figure a lead is safe when the other team has to bat around twice in the seventh to make the game interesting, huh? And with the bottom of the lineup leading off. ANYWAY, I grounded out 5-3 in the third, 6-3 in the fifth, and 5-3 to end the game in the top of the seventh. Now batting .125 on the season. We were without our starting pitcher, and two of our biggest bats. I can only hope the vicious thrashing we received will only serve to lull them into a false sense of security of our ineptitude come playoff time. And now our record falls to 5-1-1, good for a .786 winning percentage. Not content to end a day on that note, I went up to Baton Rouge for the afternoon. Got to help shop maternity for my sister-in-law, and got to help move bricks & sand for their patio, which one would hope would be complete sooner rather than later. Another new component to report: Bose Companion® 3 Series II speakers. [gallery] Because what would a $30 sound card be without $250 speakers? I bought these speakers on the heels of buying the Bose Tri-Port in-ear headphones. These earbuds are worth every penny of the $100 price tag, let me tell you. I've listened to songs I've had for 10 years, and I'm hearing things I've never heard before. They are amazing. Period. I did think about the Companion 5 speakers, but decided against it for two reasons: As much as I want digital surround sound, I don't want it going through a USB port. I want it to come through my sound card, thankyouverymuch.I don't have $400 +S/H to spend on computer speakers.Seriously, if Bose made a Companion 4 or something, everything that is Companion 5 without the USB, I'd probably jump on it. Like the LCD monitor, this was hot-swapped into my current system. Believe you me, it's like audio butter. -KIE
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I think I'm going to make it... By whatever stroke of luck that Helios continues not to cooperate, the amount of work that I have to get done for Friday's report has been pared down to a manageable level. I may escape from this [relatively] unscathed yet! I just can't forget about the mapping that still needs to be done tomorrow. I promised a computer component sometime this month, and tonight I deliver. This is probably the only item that is a replacement more than an upgrade: my favorite trackball in the history of computing, the Logitech Trackman Wheel. [gallery] This is what I have currently installed on my own computer. I bought a new one because, after, say, about 4 years, the optic ball itself has become scarred. Not marred colorwise, but that one of the metal contact points that support it has cut a groove into the ball, causing it to stick every so often. I love how neither the trackball nor my hand has to move to operate it: the pointer is moved by the thumb on the ball. I also love that I was able to find it online, which let me buy it for $15 less than I would have had to pay at Best Buy, the only retailer to date where I've found it for sale. -KIE
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First things first, I have never been more ashamed to be from Louisiana than I am today: William Jefferson (D-LA), who I toed the line in denouncing in my blog back in November, was indicted today on federal bribery & corruption charges. I will not address that topic for another couple of days, so that I don't post anything I will later regret. Just know that it did not go unnoticed. We won a game I didn't expect to win: Riverside is having an off year, it would seem... Riverside 1 0 0 1 0 2 FBC-Kenner 5 5 4 4 X 18 I went 1-3 with a run scored. Grounded out 4-3 to lead off the bottom of the second inning. Grounded to short, yet beat the late throw, (and eventually scored) in the third inning Grounded out 3-1 to lead off the bottom of the fourth inning. Yeah, Riverside is a lot better than that usually, but not this year. Our winning percentage is now .900 (4-0-1), which, if I say so myself, is one of the softest .900's ever. ONLY if we win the next two games will I believe that we are that good. To justify the category, I must tell you what happened Thursday. Thursday, I did a habitual check of my "to get" list at Newegg, and I noticed the total price had dropped by about $240. "Uh oh", I think, and surprise, surprise, Newegg decided to pull the graphics card I picked out. I panic, and start rifling through ASUS' website to find another vendor: 5 O'Clock computers. Considering myself fortunate, I bought a card right then and there. Behold, the ASUS EN7950GT 512MB DDR3 Splendid card. [gallery] My buddy Terrance (more than likely not his real name), who encouraged me to get the XFX equivalent, says this graphics card has as much processing power as my current machine. I could install this into my current box and it'd be twice as good. I won't do that, however, for two reasons. 1) It'd be an insult to the card. 2) The current box doesn't have any PCI-e x16 slots, necessary for the installation of this card. Yes folks, I'm THAT far behind the curve. -KIE
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197¾ lb., 24.8% body fat Ugh. This week has been terrible. Sunday, I come to the office before church, and start the design storm runs for Houma & Cleary, and those finish. I go over graphs with Rob Monday and we went over the graphs for Helios/Galleria (the part of this project that will be its undoing because it's taking so long), and, in the interest of time, we're calling it done. I go to start the design storm runs Monday morning, and in the middle of the night Tuesday morning, they cut out. Crash. Okay, panic. I fire off an email to Wallingford Software to get tech support working on something they'd apparently forgotten about for me. On a whim, I change one parameter, a statement of the ceiling for number of iterations I'd let the model do. (This is a numerical model, not an empirical one.). Like magic, the model runs in the same manner as all the other ones did. It took 4 hours instead of 4 days! Success! I get the design storm runs complete Wednesday morning, and I'm off to start the can't-take-long-because-I-don't-have-time process of making improvements to certain areas of the model: the last part of the contract (at which point comes the report writing, something I'm dreading for entirely different reasons). Well, the parameter change I made Tuesday only worked on Tuesday. Yesterday morning, and this morning, the model died on the same problem as it did before. Still, no word from Wallingford Software. I promised another component this week, and thus, I give you the Creative Soundblaster Audigy SE sound card:gallery. I thought about the X-Fi and Fatal1ty series cards, but I picked this one to go in my lagniappe bundle, which is what I bought at the same time as the replacement power supply. It's interesting, really. The computer my brother & I had growing up, and even the computer I have now, never had the mainstream sound card: the old 486 had a Pro Audio 16, and my computer now has on-board sound. Man, that Pro Audio had to force us to mess with sound settings to no end. One might ask why I didn't just go with the riser audio card that came with my motherboard. Well, I tried out the microphone that also came with it. While I recognize the noise cancelling function it's supposed to use from several physics classes on acoustics, the microphone just doesn't work. Just ask Turakii & Lady K, that time I tried to get that mic to work that night a few weeks ago. Anyway, sound card. Yay. There's one more element in the lagniappe bundle that warrants its own entry, and that will come some time in June, as I'm not buying anything else computer-related for about 5 weeks. -KIE
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Macros are your friends. Especially when you're making repetitive changes to Excel worksheets. Now, to convince Excel to let me use the macros I recorded myself, in that they're NOT damaging to my computer. Gosh, I just love how Microsoft Office XP has taken upon itself to think for me. In other news, the model is officially behind, but, if it's correct when it wraps up the run tomorrow, I'm back on schedule. Probably won't be, but I can dream that I'm that good. Now, to validate my choice of category, I shall offer a new component. See, I ordered next day delivery on that power supply, which I will not chronicle here. My computer is back up & running, but, to justify the high shipping cost, I bought a lot of lagniappe to fill the boxes, as it were. One such thing was the Sony 16× DVD....drive. gallery (Note that I linked to the Newegg.com product page: Sony is too good to list its own <$50 products now, it seems.) Yes, I know they make a Blu-ray burner drive now, but come on: $650 for a drive? Do I look like I'm made of money?! I mean, if I had $650 for a DVD drive, I'd just go ahead and buy a PS3. There was some nifty egg-carton things on the drive, though. -KIE
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I have seen the future of bandages. Last night, I scratched my left pinky on an exposed, unfiled screw hole leftover from a chair in the choir room at church. It bled, but I let one of the photocopy-of-the-hymnal sheets of music soak up the blood. Wasn't much. Today at lunch, I stopped in at Walgreens and bought a box of ActivFlex bandages by Band-Aid. With a foil box and clearly stated 10 bandages for $5, I figured this was not cost effective. However, I rarely break my epidermis, so I figure I could afford to splurge on this. I'm telling you guys, this is the future of bandages. It looks, feels, moves [almost], even cuts like real skin. My only regret is that it doesn't adhere perfectly to real skin, as in the process of using my finger joints, the bandage started to come off. (This is how I know it cuts like real skin.) There's a scab forming underneath already, and I've already washed my hands twice since. If it survives a shower tomorrow morning, I may never go back to normal bandages. What does that have to do with a trio of Australian birds? Absolutely nothing. But I did get a new computer component. An instant upgrade, at that. I got my monitor only two weeks after getting the power supply: the ViewSonic VX922 LCD display. $260.55 at NewEgg.com Gallery Why so soon? Because, there's a $20 rebate that expires at the end of next week, and I need to determine if this monitor is a keeper before the rebate time runs out. I remember the first time I saw a ViewSonic monitor: it was this 21" CRT at D.W. Jessen & Associates in the year 2000. Wasn't for years later did I realize those birds were the company's logo. What irks me, though, is that not 2 hours after I place the order Monday morning, I get an email from Newegg about a 22" widescreen monitor that's on for $230, after rebate. Eh, whatever. 19" is a more natural size. And it's an immediate upgrade in that I can plug it in to my current computer: it came with a VGA cable AND a DVI cable (which is good, because the graphics card I'm getting has no VGA port). Off to change monitors. I'm offline for much of the day tomorrow, attending seminars I don't need, to end a week that could've gone a lot, lot better. If I don't get the chance to give a softball recap over the weekend, happy Mother's Day. -KIE
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I think I rolled my ankle at some point this morning. Or it might have been when I landed as I jumped backwards down three steps after a meeting upstairs. Either way, I don't feel like I can put any weight on my left ankle unless it (my leg) is absolutely vertical. The meeting, by the way, was about my troubles at work: the prime firm now knows how far behind I am, and how it's impossible to catch up. And, how it's not my fault. While the EPA will have to wait on my computer to do its thing, I do feel better about the situation. In some sense, I'm off the hook. Or at least, the barb isn't biting in as deep now. Meanwhile, Traku & Turakii should have instantly recognized the title of this blog entry. I had a lot of Tesla Trooper soundbites to choose from, but my apparent ankle injury made this most appropriate. Why a Tesla Trooper? Because tonight, I check my connections. The power supply unit arrived today. BEHOLD, the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad: gallery 750 Watts at 40 °C, peaking at 825W. SLI certified if I ever decide to build and SLI bridge down the road. Enough power to last me until 2015, at the rate I go through computers. [Tim Taylor voice]Harh harh harrh[/Tim Taylor voice] Believe you me, I thought about the full kilowatt. I did, but then I figured I didn't want to trip the breaker every 20 minutes. Next purchase within 2 weeks. Why so soon? Well, you'll find out then. That is, if you care about my computer. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't at this rate. :wakeup2: -KIE
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Of Registry Errors And Chicken Fingers
Kopaka's Ice Engineering posted a blog entry in blogs_blog_100
And wouldn't you know it, those are the two things that happened this weekend that I'm not going to go in depth over tonight. Friday, I finally got some time to run by the post office. Tarakava II, ChocolateFrogs, and Toaraga, your MOCs are on their ways back to you via Priority Mail: they should arrive no later than Wednesday. To recompense my tardiness in their return, I've included something for you: make sure you fully empty the box. Oh, and PDX is the three letter airport code for Portland International Airport, like IAD is for Dulles, and MSY is for New Orleans. I know, I'm terrible. Just cut me some slack, please? Work has been busy, and my situation is getting grim. Before I gloss over my work troubles (I said I wasn't getting into that.) there was a softball game Saturday against the second Metairie Baptist team. This is a second team, comprised of several NOBTS students, and filled out by a college department. Metairie 1 is the same old MBC team the rest of the league loves to hate. These guys have the potential to be good, but they need practice first. The line score: Metairie #2 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 FBC Kenner 0 0 0 1 7 3 X 11 F And in the Kenner box score, once again batting 10th (out of 11: 10 fielders + a DH) No. Name Pos. H-AB R BI .... 47 Foret C 0-2 0 0 I came up with the bases loaded with 2 out in the bottom of the second, and grounded out 5-3. I came up again with the bases loaded, but with one out, in the bottom of the fourth, and popped out to the pitcher. I came up one last time in the bottom of the fifth, two on and one out, and drew a walk. Got stranded at second. Their pitcher couldn't throw a strike to save an inning: once we quit swinging at balls at started drawing the walks we were given, it started to unravel. Still, it was the fourth inning before we logged our first base hit. Metairie 2 will be good next time we play them at the end of June. We've got next weekend off, but Neil's right: we haven't been tested yet. In any case, we end April at 2-0. Then came issues with the server, and a lost weekend at work. Bad timing. Really. Then came my extended bothering of Swoop, in which I found a new place to sell feathers, and eventually cut my fourth lifetime million gold check. 5 years to earn 4 mil: not a good rate. Then again, I'm not a power gamer. Ultima Online is a fun game if you don't force yourself to "win" it. Then came a dinner date with my mom and brother, who came in to watch the third round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans (the PGA tour event at the TPC of Louisiana this weekend). What I neglect to mention is that, over the course of Friday afternoon, I was playing with the computer case, and to my delight, the I/O panel that came with the case simply popped out. And, since the new I/O panel (I'd get pictures if I could, but....) installed so easily, I got the urge to get techy. I installed the motherboard, and hooked up as many chassis connections as I could (soft power button, HD LED, Power LED, system speaker, reset button, front panel IEEE 1394 (Firewire), front panel USB, and an extra pair of USB ports where a spare PCI x16 graphics card would go. (I'm not going to build an SLI bridge: I'm just going to get the muscle (7950GT, 512MB) in one card.) That makes for 8 USB and 2 firewire ports, with room on the board for 2 more USB ports. Too bad I had to make a run to CompUSA and spend $44 on a "computer repair kit" just to get a screwdriver that'd screw in the board mounting screws. I'm tellin' ya, it's intoxicating. I can almost taste the power this machine will exude. I'm buying the PSU (610 W, I don't want to have to move because the wiring can't take my computer), a DVD+R recording drive, and a new keyboard on the first of May, and then making an order every 3 weeks thereafter. I want to ramp up the timetable. Oh yeah, and vote Craig Biggio for NL All-Star 2B. -KIE -
New component! Some of you may remember my posting of a dual socket ASUS AMD-compatible motherboard before BrickFest. It was the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS Dual Socket......board. It really, really intrigued me to perhaps be running dual 3.0 GHz over 8 GB of RAM, a beast of a machine if ever there was one. And then I came to my senses. I shouldn't get that, for multiple reasons: Cost: $2100 for just a board, RAM, & processors. That's a lot of pretty pennies.Excessivity: If you have to think about your answer to the question if you need that much power, the answer is no.Operating System: There's a difference between a Vista-ready machine, and a machine built for Vista. I want the former, because I don't have the money for the latter.Timing: AMD is going to release a Quad-core processor by the end of the summer, relegating the second socket to "dust trap" status: not even Vista Ultimate can utilize more than 4 CPU cores.All that said, no "god"-board for KIE. Instead, I present to you: the ASUS Crosshair. Plenty of muscle for my means. $243.31 including shipping, from NewEgg. Photo gallery here, when public. It's not coming out of its box until I build the computer, which will be several months. One, I don't want it collecting unnecessary dust, and two, I don't want to static-kill it before I install it. Sorry, no pics of the actual board until then. I'm so excited, part of me wants to buy the rest of the stuff right now. But I'll wait, as I've spent my computer budget for the month. Thoughts welcome. -KIE
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New category! The computer case arrived today. It's ÜBER-freakin'-spiffy. It's a Cooler Master Ammo 533 RC-533-SWN1. I bought it off of NewEgg.com. This thing is going to rock once it's all been put together. I could break down each angle of it, or I could just link you to a Maj gallery. In any case (), the company takes better photos than I do. OS, check Case, check >minimum 600 W power supply >Motherboard >Dual processor (Not dual core. Two processors) >2 GB RAM >sound card >video card >hard disks >new keyboard >flat panel monitor >CD/DVD drive >network card >additional fans & interior lighting Like I said, this thing is going to rock. Eventually. Now if you'd excuse me, I've got an RA2 channel to open up for Turakii & Traku. -KIE
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Sadly, it's a view still obscured by work on this sewer model. I got next to nothing done yesterday. I need a new computer. I don't want a Mac or Microsoft Vista, because I still have some 16-bit applications (read: games from the turn of the millenium) I still like to run. Thus, it would appear that I need to buy the computer *now*, or get an operating system while I can. But, an operating system means I'd more-or-less be building the box by hand. This scares me, as I have said before. Enter a book of faces. Obscure reference, sure, but I found a friend from high school, whom I'd not seen for nearly 10 years, on a social networking site yesterday. He is currently a student at Tulane Law. He lives 20 minutes (okay, more like 30 minutes, 90 if you factor in this morning's traffic) away. BEFORE he went to law school, he was working for Dell. He's volunteered to help me build my computer. I just need to get an XP box, and get one fast. Thanks, Earnest. He's also taken me up on my offer to play Red Alert 2. As have Turakii & Traku. Played a 70 minute 3-on-5 battle last night. Kinda protracted, as I'm sure I could've moved sooner. But, I got to see some teamwork in action. Nighthawk Transport helicopters are great like that. That was fun, guys. Let's do it again sometime. -KIE