Archived News starting from 12-05-2005 and earlier
BlogAfter almost 3 weeks of waiting since my
last SATA RAID attempt, my replacement
WD Raptor 74GB drive finally arrived. I wasted no time in setting up the SATA RAID and quickly ran the benchmark in case another drive decided to die. As you can see from the
high tech animation my random read went from 14.9ms to 7.8ms and my average read went from 63MB/s to 114MB/s, both of which represent almost double performance. Not quite the 150MB/s I was hoping for, but definately a nice improvement. I then proceeded to do the fastest WinXP load of my life on the new RAID, requiring only 13 minutes from start to finish. Now even internet browsing seems faster and the drives are whisper quiet (I can only hear fans now). The true test of archive decompression comes soon, but so far the increase in speed is well worth the reduction from 240GB to 140GB. The extra 100GB was used for softcore porn anyways, and we all know hardcore is the only stuff worth keeping.
Tonight at 10:30 while playing "Trivial Pursuit 90's Edition" with the
Josephs I got a call from
Denay who was apprehensive after visiting my
Beta house to pickup some of her remaining things. She told me about a
large hole in my front bay window and that she had quickly vacated the premesis after seeing it. With TJ Hooker and wife in supporting roles, Missy and I went to investigate and found the
exit wound of the
rock that actually bounced
off the wall after breaking through a double-paned window and ripping through the solid blinds. Impressed with the required velocity I was convinced only a vehicle going 60mph down the road could have launched it into my window, however unlikely. After a 45 minute wait for Redfords finest the officer said he had 16 such cases in the last 2 weeks and that the rocks frequently did damage to the opposing wall. Apparently some bored kids were to blame. We promptly beat the crap out of the first
curb squirrel we found and called it a night.
Am I
metrosexual for liking
Depeche Mode? The name means "fast fashion" but do I like them because I'm fashionable
or because I strive to become fashionable? Only
Jesus
knows for sure, but I've been told my favorite songs by them are shallow and go nowhere so I suspect it's nothing quite as deep.
I have concert tickets to them courtesy my
super fiance
who insisted on taking me tonight, and for that I am in her debt. The last Depeche Mode concert I attended with
Lomar was a sound and light spectacular complete with emotional
highs and lows equalled by no other (not even Moby). Also, in case you missed it I'm making a subtle suggestion though hyperlinking that
Lomar is Jesus. Just in case you missed that subtle suggestion. In the hyperlinking.
Flipping through the
Gnome Cam captures for today I stopped at 4:30pm and saw what looks like a bird in mid swoop. The Morlocks aren't claiming any pranks so I have to assume it's a legitimate capture. What are the odds of snapping at that exact moment? Apparently not very high. I can only assume the bird was attempting to mate with my Gnome and probably got camera shy.
Today I drove out to
Leo's place to start
taking apart my transmission I took out of my
Cougar. After taking off the bell housing we noticed the
magnet was completely covered in metal shavings. Definitely a sign that something was wrong. Once we had the entire transmission apart the problem was obvious: my differential was in
very sad shape. I'm surprised it was still working at all after seeing the gear wear. 6 years of use, especially with 3 years of supercharged and autocross goodness can take it's toll. Fortunately the whole purpose of taking my tranny off was to put in a
beefed up limited slip differential so the replacement part is on hand and ready to go. This one is designed to handle 500+ HP which I never plan to reach, but still get a warm fuzzy feeling inside knowing it can handle that much. The stock was designed for 170HP and put up with the 250HP my supercharger throws at it fairly well, but I could no longer stand the one-wheel-wonder that was my car. Soon I'll have two wheels to put the power down with and actually use most of the power I produce.
After spotting a deal on NewEgg.com for $115 final price
WD Raptor 74GB hard drives I was unable to resist my need to consume and bought two of them. They are the fastest non-SCSI (affordable) drives on the market, and when I pair them both I'll have a very fast 150GB storage system. Unfortunately one of the drives ran for less than 15 minutes before a cycle of tick-and-spin killed it. My dream of ultra-fast storage is temporarily on hold until the replacement arrives. Why do I need the speed you ask? I'm impatient, and hard drive is the biggest bottleneck on my system right now. Had I known the drive was going to die I would have benchmarked it immediatly to see if it's even worth it, but I did get a
geek shot of my transfer from my old RAID to the new one (before it died).
As the first snow of winter falls, I find myself doing something I swore I never would: playing an
MMORPG. I've been tempted before watching
Brian play
World of Warcraft but I could never justify the time and money required. It was all going according to plan until the Morlocks both got deep into
Eve Online. Anytime I came downstairs they were both glued to their monitors uncommunicative. Given the choice of doing something productive or joining their obsession I quickly moved my computer downstairs after the promise of a free 15-day trial to get me good and hooked. In addition to us, 3 more people join via
VOIP for a total of 6 that are now in the "corporation" that the Morlocks created. Fortunately the game is designed to allow some freedom, I can sign off for a few hours while I learn a skill, walk away for a few minutes while my cargo bay fills up with mining ore, or make dinner while my ship warps and jumps across the gigantic universe the game resides in. Hopefully I'll get tired of it before my 15 days are up, otherwise I'll slowly abandon all personal hygiene and turn white from lack of exposure. Oh wait, it's winter in Michigan that's going to happen anyways.
I received this jewel of animation courtesy an X10 spam. I'm posting it here because it made me laugh, and also to see if they will try to sue me for copyright infringement. If they do, I plan to frame the subpoena along with a shot of him for future generations to enjoy. I'm sure somebody put alot of time into this but they could have turned the "stick up ass" knob down slightly. I think he would be perfect in a flash animation where he just floated around randomly to music, maybe with a forest background. Somebody get on that so I can start the next internet flash fad.
My
November LAN party was today with 15 people in attendance and up to 12 playing at one time. By far the largest one yet. The
Gnome Cam was directed inside @ 1:30pm to catch the action. We started off with some Quake IV which turned into a comedic bloodbath due to the small maps and high number of players. We then moved on to FarCry for a brief period followed by the classic Quake III CTF walking eyeball frenzy. A short game of StarCraft gave us a break from first person shooter which turned into a trip to the garage for more "stand in my engine bay" photo opportunities. We wrapped up with some serious FarCry CTF involving shouts of compass directions for incoming enemies and blatent camping by everyone except me (Everyone knows I'm not a camper). The sponsorship got us glow stuff, stickers and magazines which made for great mousepads and centercaps. The traditional blown circuit breaker happened early, and prompted a 4-breaker distribution
network of power cords that
held up well for the remainder of the event. I'm already looking forward to the upcoming Jan LAN where I can finally take out that @##$% sniper.
Tonight, after hearing what sounded like an elephant tripping over my lawn furniture, the morlocks checked the
weather station and found that a new high-wind record was set. I'm sure the ex-Floridian will point out that 33.8 MPH is just a gentle breeze in the great hurricane state but for us northern unfortunates it's significant. It also resulted in a touching interpretive dance number by the leaves trapped behind my barn.
| 33.8 MPH, 291° at 22:45 on 09 November |
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