Archived News starting from 09-10-2008 and earlier
BlogMy desperate rush to upgrade and reload my home server before the LHC ended the world was a great success. I now have
three terabytes of goodness, double the memory and cpu speed, for ever faster backups
and media serving. Since Joseph has frequently commented about how excited he is reading about my upgrades, I decided to post
a full system rundown to show off my x86-64 diversity:
I just realized (and had to share) the fact that there is no threat of a black hole from the
LHC. Since the LHC spans both Switzerland and France, the particle
will have to stop at customs each half-rotation and therefore never get up to full speed. I'm shocked nobody discovered this yet.
As the
Morlock was going about his day, tending to his machines and smokestacks, his communicator (made from human skin and bone of course) flashed
this alert about the
Large Hadron Collider in Europe coming online Wednesday (
photo of me on site courtesy Stavos). With access to a time machine, he quickly acertained the world would not end, and as a potential food source, he shared this discovery with me in an attempt to lure me into a false sense of security. Relieved I still have time to reload my Windows Home Server, but concerned about the Morlocks mind games, I decided to plan for the end of the world anyways since divulging the information may have created a space-time paradox that would invalidate his time travel discovery. So if the world does end, you can now blame the Morlock.
The flatlanders
finally got married, and they made the mistake of
inviting
Mary Todd and I to the ceremony.
Our gift of a
refurb Xbox 360 got them all hot and bothered, strangely enough
Jaird more so than Melanie, and we promptly began setting up his
Xbox LIVE account for a night of RockBand. The wedding was by far
the most laid back I've attended, with such a low stress level my forgotten deodorant was never discovered! After the wedding, we
continued the reception at a piano bar where I was introduced to a 64oz beer bottle which I somehow managed to consume in an hour
(minus a few ounces donated to onlookers). My reduced motor function and cognitive processing was entertainment for all, and there was much rejoicing. Congratulations flatlanders!
Google launched their
Chrome Browser today, including a
comic explaining why they bothered to build it.
After using it for a few hours it's noticeably faster than both IE and FireFox, but doesn't render as pretty as Safari which it supposedly shares front end rendering with via
Web Kit. The cool icon alone warrants a download, and the simple interface will keep you coming back for more.
Apparently the ride in Mary Todd's Lincoln to see
Tropic Thunder was enough to excite
Excelcier into a
state of pure energy. The
Gnome Cam caught him just before the transformation was complete. Now you have someone to blame if your computer randomly starts playing Rush. I just hope this means he can fix my Wii sensor bar faster.
After my
initial upgrade yielded extra hardware, the
motherboard hand-me-down upgrades were eventually applied to my
media center and now my
main server. The obvious reason for the round of upgrades is because I'm obsessive
compulsive and love torturing myself with multiple operating system reloads. While that was the primary reason,
the slow photo thumbnail generation on
Cougarfest.com was another one that seems to
have been solved (it just happened to be the same reason for my
last upgrade
as well). While I would have been tickled pink with a 64-bit server, I'm stuck with a 32-bit flavor until a 64-bit ODBC driver for
Microsoft Access becomes available, or I join 1996 and upgrayyed all my Access DBs to SQL.
| Old System |
|
New System |
| Processor: | Athlon XP 3200+ (2.19Ghz) |
|
Processor: | Opteron 180 X2 (2.41Ghz) |
| Memory: | 1024 MB |
|
Memory: | 3072 MB |
| Mainboard: | nForce2 Ultra 400 |
|
Mainboard: | nForce4 MCP |
A conquest lease deal ending this month that pays for 2 months of your existing lease prompted Lisa to strike on a new
2009 Lincoln MKZ. I repeated many times what you're already thinking, but she was determined to get the MKZ instead of the more practical (and almost half-price)
Fusion, which is essentially the same car. I even broke the payments down into happy faced Lisas and frowney faced Lisas, but she chose the frowney faced higher payment every time. Defeated by the princess complex yet again, I accepted her fate and promptly delved into her
Sync system. After pairing her phone and programming her garage door opener, I allowed her to leave the dealer lot under the condition that I could connect her iPod once I got home. The transitive property now allows me to say I own a Lincoln, without the hassle of having to pay for it.
The one major complaint I have about the Wii is it's short 11' sensor bar wire. It works great for people using their Wiis next to their TV, but not when the Wii is 40' away from where you're projecting it. There are plenty of wireless bars available, but they require batteries and a button push every time you want to use it. I also found a 6' extension cable but wasn't in the mood to buy 5 of them. That left modifying it, and after reading
this thread I was pretty confident I could do it. Reality soon kicked in when the comment about the thin wires turned out to be an understatement. I would have no reservations about calling these wires thinner than human hairs. Why this cable had to be so cheaply made I'll never know, but my attempts at connecting it to a length of speaker wire was a horrendous failure. A
wireless solution was quickly implemented, with the original sensor bar now trash unless I can sucker
Excelcier into attempting the connections. The wireless one also beeps like a microwave once the timer is about to run out, so I plan on trashing it next during my attempt to cut the speaker wire.
To celebrate the de-bachelorizing of Jaird, it was decided a Rock Band playoff would be held in my basement, which turned into a mix of Rock Band, "Meet the Spartans," Wii Sports and Wii Fit. The Wii Fit told Jaird and I that we were overweight, but fortunately Keith and Chase, who were "normal" were able to convince us we were actually just "solidly built" and kept us from breaking into tears. We're both
joining the lawsuit any ways, and plan to complain loudly in public places about it while denying we're at all overweight. A drive to Grand Rapids rewarded us with a rainy car cruise, followed by an intoxication party and more sleep depravation. While no strippers were involved, there were plenty of drunk chicks to scare with abnormally large slugs that made up for it.
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