A Historian, A Nerd, A Man With A Lot Of Freetime On His Hands
The new computer is up and running...and scarily fast. I am typing this blog on the new system and can not believe the speed of this computer. I have only installed Sims 2 and it can play that without almost even a hiccup. Finally, I have a gaming system again!
My CPU left Salt Lake City at 7:38pm, Thursday night. It is only about a six hour drive from Boise to Salt Lake so, since it is almost 4am here, the chip should be arriving in Boise right about now. Excellent...most excellent.
By the end of today, if all goes well and UPS doesn't screw me, I should have my new systyem up and running and playing the Sims 2 and Farcry and Doom 3 in all of their glory. It's about damned time. I love my laptop and it has gotten me through almost five months of being without my big system but I really long to play good games again. This will hopefully be my last post from my laptop for a long while. We shall see what the coming hours bring. Hopefully a cpu. :) Now it is off to bed, seeing some people are probably getting up around now.
Mushi and I watched Napoleon Dynamite and laughed the entire time. The movie is about a kid that grows up in a small town in Idaho and it is hilarious. That movie has to be one of the more random movies I have seen in a long time.
On another note, I have no patience. Earlier today, I was sitting around without a lot to do and looking at all of the boxes of computing goodness sitting above me. I couldn't take it any longer and proceeded to put together the system. I haven't done any of the wiring yet but all of the hardware except for the CPU and heatsink is in it now. I must say, it looks pretty tight. Now I really really really want to play with it but can't. Woe is me. :) That is ok, at last check my CPU was in Illinois.
Anywho, if you want to see a fun movie check out Napoleon Dynamite.
Thats it, and then we won't have to listen to anymore ads about what Bush did or what Kerry isn't going to do. Personally, I am sick of the Presidential race and while it may be a very important topic, I could care less who wins at this point. I know who I am going to vote for and I have had my mind made up for months now, as has the vast majority of the American populace. The ten percent of the people who have yet to make up their mind on who to vote for are the people that keep the ratings for the Real World up on MTV and really could care less who wins this election as long as they can still order pizza and have it delivered to their door.
I am all about voting and feel that we all as Americans have a duty to do it but damn, I hate television and radio ads for the candidates and just wish they would leave me alone. I live in a state where the letter "D" does not exist in the alphabet so it really does not matter what way you vote because the vast majority of Idaho is going to vote Republican everytime. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a swing state. Ugh. The agony of it all.
WOOHOO!!! WOOT!!!! My CPU and Motherboard have shipped from Intel!! The final part of my computer is on a brown truck headed to my house as I type this. YAY!! I feel like a giddy schoolgirl on a spring afternoon in the Swiss Alps. The wind blowing up my cotton dress, the smell of daisies filling my nostrils...err...nevermind. :)
In anticipation of my computer's completion, I have started to compile all of the games that I will want to run on it like Doom 3, Farcry, Sims 2(actually bought that one), and soon, Half Life 2. Ahh. The holidays are definitely in the air. I may also start playing City of Heroes again, I liked that game. Soon I am going to post some picks of all of the parts before they go into my computer. I will probably be posting shots during the build phase as well. Why? Because I am a nerd.
Speaking of building things and being a nerd, I will probably be revamping the blog soon as well. I will be adding and subtracting links from the page and probably changing the overall style a little bit. I am not sure when this is all going to take place but it will be sooner than later I am guessing.
I am going to start building my resume soon because I have a job prospect that may be opening up to me soon. I may be going to work for Micron in I am lucky. Micron is the world's second largest memory chip maker behind Samsung. I can definitely see myself working there. I like computers and there are many more job opportunities there than at my current job so I am hopeful. Anywho, today has turned out to be a pretty good day considering the fact that it has been a tad cold and wet here the past few days. Fall has definitely kicked into full gear and winter is just around the corner. I like the Fall and Winter seasons better than any other time of the year. I have never much liked the sun and can only tolerate a couple weeks of summer at any given stretch. It is wierd to think that Christmas is exactly two months away. Woohoo!
Looking out my window right now, I wouldn't call today the sunniest day on record. It has rained steadily here for the past couple days and has been very overcast. Good thing I am not a fan of the sun. In general, I like cloudy and rainy days. I like the level of luminocity, the smell of the rain, the feel of raindrops on my skin, and the sound it makes when it hits things. I love rain.
Intel is moving faster than I anticipated and that pleases me. They called my work yesterday to verify my employment and I received my email last night, giving me the code I needed to order my CPU and Mobo. I checked its progress this morning and it looks like the order has been sent to the warehouse for shipping. If all goes as I am predicting, I should have a bleeding edge computer up and running by the end of the week. I am hoping that the bundle comes on Thursday or Friday because I will call in sick the day it does to build the system.
My Crucial Ballistix DDR2 533 sticks came last night. They are good looking chips with yellowish-gold heat spreaders on them. They should look pretty sweet in the case once it is assembled. I have been going over the assembly in my mind trying to visualize the way I want the cabling to look inside the case. I am very picky when it comes to cabling. Good cabling improves air flow and looks tons better than a rat's nest of wiring. I will definitely devote time to planning my wiring for this system.
In other news, Mushi is not feeling well today and the interior of the house has taken on a grey look thanks to the clouds outside. I think I am going to have to leave soon just to escape the gloom. Hopefully, Spyder will call me soon so we can go eat at Din Fung. Ahh.... Chinese buffet. Oh, Spyder is her now. Time to eat!
I ordered the ram for my system and it should be here tomorrow. I have all of the parts for the new computer sitting in front of me right now. Except for one. I still need my CPU and Intel is telling me it will be about 4-6 weeks before that is going to happen. Beh. All I need is that one little part. On piece of silicon that measures less than two inches across to be nestled on to one of the best motherboards on the market and I can't do it....damn you Intel.
On the upside, I am glad to have the task of amassing all of the parts behind me. I still need to buy a storage drive for the system but I am not too concerned about that at the moment. I can manage on the 74 gig Raptor and my externals for a bit. I am sick of thinking about very little other than how to get all of the parts for as little money as possible. I am really sick of thinking about building this machine.
I have this problem, I am very one-track-minded. Once something gets ingrained into my head, it is there until I do something about it. I can get so focused on something that it will actually give me a headache or make me sick. This has happened more than once. I am like the antithesis of OCD. I am an ultra-focuser....I don't think that is a word. :) Anywho, now I just have to practice my patients...something I have a lot less of when it comes to this kind of thing. At least Half Life 2 doesn't come out for a few more weeks.
For the past four hours, hours that I can never get back, I have been attending a meeting. Basically, the people I work for insisted that all employees at my warehouse attend this stupid pep rally. At this event, we were given the companies growth numbers, expectations, and a list of other crap that you would expect to be at one of these things.
I never liked pep rallies in high school. The definition of a pep rally to me was an extended lunch in which a couple of buddies and I would go to McDonalds or something. I loathed pep rallies and when I was caged into attending them, I usually played my Gameboy most of the time. Tonight, that didn't work; there were so many mangers at this thing that I could only get in a couple minutes of quality playing time. Yes, I brought my Gameboy SP...that little bugger goes almost everywhere with me. So anywho, I ended up being forced to sit in a very uncomfortable chair for about four hours and listened to stuff that interested me about as much as what Senator Kerry's tour in Vietnam was like.
Bottom line: Corporate pep rallies suck balls.
So I am doing something that I rarely do, tooling around on the internet, and I come across this site:
The Ghett-Oh
These guys do some crazy stuff on their site but the one that cracked me up was their tutorial on how to make a vibrator (yes, that kind of vibrator) out of a broken CD-ROM or DVD drive and a vacuum cleaner attachment. Just click on the link above and be amazed by the....ingenuity...yeah ingenuity...of the Afrotech Team.
BTW: MY X800XT CAME TODAY!!!! WOOT!
Sorry I haven't updated in a day or two, I have been moderately busy. Where to begin?
First, I ordered my video card and main hard drive for my system two days ago. The video card is an Asus Radeon X800XT and the hard drive is a 74 gig Western Digital Raptor. This computer is going to rock. Those parts should be here on Monday or Tuesday, leaving me still needing to buy the CPU and RAM for the system. Not too much more to go now.
On that note, I must say that Newegg.com has by far and away the best service of any computer retailer ever. Those guys rock! I order something and two days later it is here! I have no clue what would happen if I paid the money to have them rush delivery, it would probably be at my house by the end of the day or something. Their speediness is frightening. So to those at Newegg.com, I salute you. You get a gold star.
Work has been surprisingly pleasant over the past week. I think I have come to a point of acceptance with my job for the time being. I know that I need the money it provides and appreciate it for that. My boss is giving me better hours now as well, so that helps. The holidays are definitely approaching though; the shopping crowds are going up leaps and bounds with everyday. Which reminds me, I need to get a jump on Christmas this year myself. I am going to make it my goal to have all of my friends and family out of the way at least two weeks prior to the big day.
My mom still makes me write up a Christmas list every year and I did that this past week. This year's list breaks the record for being my smallest list ever. Usually, it isn't Christmas until my parents have to buy a ream of paper to print out my list on but this year, I am pretty content with what I have. I am trying to be more conservative in the way I view material goods, though you may not think so if you saw how much I am blowing on my computer. I am making an effort to fully utilize the stuff I have and appreciate it for what it is and not for what I could upgrade it with....except for the computer. :)
Not a lot else has been happening. I started a new book, "The Alienist" and it seems pretty cool so far and I have been playing a lot of X-Men Legends on the X-Box. That game is a hoot multiplayer. Well, I think I am going to go to bed early tonight, I am exhausted. Nite!
Okay, Santa is coming early for me this year! Day before yesterday he brought me my new motherboard. That was like Christmas #1 of the year and all of the parts and accessories that mobo came with that could be the stocking stuffers too. It isn't called the P5AD2 Premium for nothing...I have never seen a mobo with so much stuff included. Anywho.
This morning, Santa...err...the Fedex guy woke me up again with an even bigger package this time. WOOHOO!! Christmas #2 was here. This big present included my OCZ Powerstream 520 watt PSU, my Sony 16x DVD drive, the Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, and another free watch and a cool little 3d Christmas Tree in glass. Ok, that was a run-on sentence but I am very excited.
The next stage of the computer will be the hard one. I am going to have to come up with about $640 for the video card, $360 for the ram, and $300 for the hard drives. About $1300 in all. Beh...that seems like a lot of money...must figure out a way to get $1300 soon....I must build my computer of doom! So, if anyone knows how to get or wants to give me $1300, I will give you a Gmail invite...that sounds like a fair trade. :) Heck, I'll give ya six Gmail invites if ya want!
Now it is off to work for me again, the upside is that I have been working a ton lately so that will help with the computer fund. Later!
Right now, my mouth is burning with sweet curry goodness and I am being overcome by the Raja-sleep, despite the fact I haven't been up that long. Ahh....curry.
Along with the joys of curry, my Asus P5AD2 Premium motherboard was delivered this morning, making it the first critical piece of hardware to arrive. It is almost like Christmas. :)
Here is a pic of the board:
I have an itch. I think it is because I haven't tweaked a computer in so long that I am now feeling the need to rip something apart and rebuild it or mod it in some way. I have felt this way for a day or two now and I think I have just found the victim in which to vent my modding frustrations.
I have three external 3.5" drive enclosures, two are firewire and USB2 and one is just USB2. I hate having all of them just sitting around because I seldom turn them all on at the same time and I feel like they are just sitting there...wasting away. I think I am going to start a project to put them all in one enclosure and have them all run off one AC adapter instead of three.
The other thing that drives me nuts about these enclosures is their noise level and the amount of heat they generate. I think I will build a new enclosure to house all of them and draw heat and noise down more effectively. I think I will start the project tomorrow if I can find the time. I will try to post pics on my progress soon. I need to sign up to one of those websites that gives you free space to dump pics on so I can post them as I go.
Let the modding commence!
Ok maybe not...but I did play a little bit of poker last night...though I lost both tables I played in....so maybe "master" is a little strong of a word. :) My brother had a poker tourney at my parent's house last night, so Spyder and I went to take all of the little college peoples' money. Our plan was foiled; the same kid won both games and ended up going home with about $80....punk.
Last night was the first time I have ever played real poker with real people. I have done the whole Party Poker thing before but I had never played with real people actually sitting around me. I don't think I did too bad either, I made a good showing the first round and lasted quite a while but I sucked it up on the second round and lost pretty early on. Oh well, it was fun.
It cracks me up to see how much of a craze poker has become over the past couple of years. The game has been around for hundreds of years and people are just now catching on that it is a pretty nifty game. Fads work in wierd ways.
In other news, I ordered my motherboard and it should be here on Tuesday or Wednesday. I ended up picking up an Asus P5AD2 Premium. It should do nothing short of rock and I am looking forward to installing it once I amass the other parts. Soon...soon.
Every year something happens that to me, rings in the holiday season with all of its joy and giving and assholes that fill the stores and bother me. The thing happened last night, the United Way employee meeting.
Every year a couple of volunteers from the United Way charity organization come and try to convince everybody to donate a little out of each of their paychecks to them. I cannot stand these speeches. Usually, I hide in or sneak out of the building on the nights that I know these meetings are going to take place but last night I was trapped and had to sit through it. Beh.
The highlight of the evening for me was the lady that got up and talked about how her most memorable Christmas was the one in which two men came to her family's apartment door and donated a Christmas dinner to them. It was touching....really. The thing I don't tolerate very well is the pressure they put on you to donate...which I never do. If the United Way can't back Planned Parenthood, I am not backing the United Way. That and I am a stingy bastard when it comes to this sort of thing. :) Anywho, since I didn't donate, I full well expect to be approached by my boss in one ditch attempt to get me to sign up to which, I will turn him down as well and deny my department the chance at a prize or something. Most people in my department don't donate so I don't feel too bad about that.
Bottom Line: The holidays have begun so be merry and joyous and blow money on people some of which you don't like but you buy them a gift every year anyway because you don't have the spine to tell them that they suck. Merry Christmas! :)
After having five days off, I must again, go back to work. I actually don't mind it to much either. Every once in a while it is good to take a break. I have a big vacation coming in December, I just have to hold on a couple of months for that one.
On another note, my brother is having a poker tournament on Saturday so that should be fun. I think Spyder and I will go to it....and probably take all of the poor college kid's money. Too bad for them. :)
Well, off to the job.
Its election season again and you know what that means, more stupid slogans, more lame TV ads, more pointless debates. I think the electorial process is awesome but I hate the six months leading up to it. It all gets so old after a while. On that note, I think this year has been the worst for attack ads by one party or another and slogans. The slogan I loathe the most, that I have been seeing on cars and hearing from people is, "Anyone but Bush." Why do I hate that slogan? Here comes a rant.
"Anyone but Bush" has got to be the worst kind of utterance to hear during an election campaign. To me, it signifies that as long as President Bush is not in the White House, people do not care who is. This phrase demonstrates to me that the person saying it or displaying it on their vehicle, is copping out of their civic duty as Americans. People are fed up with Bush and I understand some of their complaints but, in their hatred against that one man, they are willing to elect someone else that may be less qualified to lead the country. "Anyone but Bush" tells me that that person is probably not going to do a whole lot of research when it comes to picking the candidate that best represents him or her and I find that most erksome. If a person believes that John Kerry is going to do a better job than Bush, I can totally except that, but I would like those people to be able to back up their reasoning with good solid explanations and facts, not the phrase, "Anyone but Bush."
By the "Anyone but Bush" logic, Mao Zedong would be a more qualified person to the lead the United States; a man that was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million Chinese during the 1960s. If I were John Kerry and I won the upcoming election, I would thank my lucky stars that so many people hated one person enough that I was the lesser of two evils. To me, that wouldn't be much of a vote of confidence from the populace I am charged to watch over and guide.
People have the right to vote whatever way they like, I just hope that when they go to vote, they do so in an educated fashion. It is our duty that we research all political candidates that we are responsible for electing before we cast our ballot. I shudder to think that my educated vote will be cancelled out by someone who watched Fahrenheit 911 and thinks that they know all there is to know about President Bush and John Kerry. If Michael Moore had his way, we would live in a socialist country that would spew a lot more propaganda than whats being generated now by both parties in the United States. That scares me as does his film making ability but that, is a rant for a different day.
Just please do me a favor people, educate yourself on the candidates, use more than two or three sources when doing so, and lastly, check the facts that you hear people saying. Lately, Howard Dean and Michael Moore have both been saying that if Bush is elected to another term, he will re-instate the military draft to gather more troops for the conflict in Iraq. Right now, there are two bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, asking for the draft to be re-instated. Do some research, it might interest you to see who it is that drafted and backed these bills. Here is a hint: they are not even Republicans.
I just got back from Best Buy and while there I picked up the Sony DRU-710A, dual layer DVD burner. I have been researching this drive for a while and Best Buy had it for about $10 cheaper than what I was going to buy it for at Newegg.com. The drive has received good reviews and it comes with a copy of Nero 6. Now I will have a legit copy of Nero...not that I didn't have one before...yeah...this one will just be little bit more legit than the one I have now. :)
The drive also comes with a black bezel that I can switch out instead of the white one. I am trying to get everything in the case to be black so this is a nice feature. Is it a stupid nit-picky feature, yes, but I like it.
Here is a pic of the box so you can get some of the specs:
The title says it all, hangovers really really suck. Mushi and I went out last night for one of her co-worker's birthdays and both of us had way too much to drink. If there is one piece of drinking wisdom I could impart to my readers it is this: Eat food before you drink. Drinking on an empty stomach...bad idea.
Oh oh...so last night at this one bar, Mushi's co-worker Steve Jack found a friend. These two women decided they were going to hang out with us and Steve thought that was cool. I think these two ladies liked to hang out with everyone. Anytime some thirty-something chick that looks like she probably slept with every single member of Motley Crue back in 1985, while in here prime, waves at almost every guy in the bar and says hi like she knows most of them; odds are, she is a slut. Just an older slut than she was back in 1985...and larger...and droopier if you get my drift.
Anywho, watching bar skanks and drinking is always a good time....at least until the following morning when you feel like you are going to yak every time you make the slightest move. The funny part about it is everyone gets nasty hangerovers at some point in time during their life but do they stop drinking, no. People like punishment.
Today is a good day. Today was payday, but unlike other paydays, this check included my bonus. The idea of a bonus has always cracked me up...people paying me for no reason whatsoever.
The fun part about this bonus was the fact that a good portion of it will be going to the new computer. The other slightly cool fact about this bonus is the fact that I got almost $600 more than I anticipated. YAY!!! I am guessing that I will start to order the vast majority of the system's parts at the end of the month. My shopping list is pretty much solidified now, I just need the money to make it all happen. I get the feeling November is going to be a fun month. :)
I know I haven't posted in a couple of days, my bad. I really just haven't felt like it. I am not saying that I am going to ditch my blog, quite the opposite. I love my blog and as far as I am concerned, it will be around for a long time to come. So whayt has happened in the past couple of days?
For starters, I kind of had a break down last night after I got in bed. All of the crap with my job and my lack of finding a job I am happy in, just kind of welled up. As a result of this, I am reasonably sure that I will not be employed at my current job for very much longer. I am saying this with some finality. I am at the point now where I am willing to take a pretty good pay cut to be happier in my life. The loss prevention job I applied for has turned out to be a seasonal only kind of thing and that sucks. All in all, this whole shift of thought...or culmination of thoughts could not have come at a better time. I get my bonus tommorow...err...today....and so I will not have another one of those coming up for six months. I need to make a change...take a jump...and now is as good of time as any. If I can work it right I may be able ot leave the current job as soon as the end of the month....we shall see.
There are some prospects for getting a job at Hewlett Packard that I am hopeful about. One job would be a call center job that I would be grossly over-qualified for and it would pay about 60% of what I make now. The upside to that, is that once I am A+ Certified I could move to a call center that pays more. The other opportunity which is probably a long shot so I am not holding my breath, would be a data entry position that would pay close to $40,000 a year. I am not so hopeful about this aspect but I may have a shot at it.
It is funny to see my transition through jobs. I have only had two since I was sixteen. I worked at Fred Meyer for a little more than two years and I have worked at my current job for almost 6.5 years. I thought my next job would be a teaching job. It is funny how stuff plays out...now I am not even sure if I want to teach. I had a good friend point out to me what he saw as my passions in life. One was a passion for gaming...obviously the job market there isn't that great. The other was for computers in general. I must say that the more I think about this the more he is right. I do love working on computers. I guess I have always just sidelined that field of work as a hobby rather than a profession but the more I think about it the better I feel that the IT industry would probably be a good choice for me to work in. Now I just need to spend some time getting certified and what not.
I have a wierd feeling that since yesterday my life has somehow taken a turn. Maybe I have come to a realization...maybe I am just worried about stuff. I don't like changing jobs and that may be the source of some of the anxiety that I am feeling but regardless, something is different. I am not sure that this something is a good different or a bad different but at this point in time it is a change regardless and that IS good. I think that if I follow through with all of this like I intend to, I am going to break out of the rut I have been in and that makes me excited. For the first time in a while, I have started seriously thinking about the future and have not dreaded it. The next few months will be very interesting I think, perhaps more so than any other time in my life. For the first time in a long time, I do not know what is going to happen to me and I am eager to see how this all unfolds.
