I just got my brand spakin’ new Creative Audigy 2 ZS today. It’s HELLA amazing. Full, crisp 7.1 surround sound from movies and mp3s. It’s heaven. I blasted some Miss Kittin and Jamiroquai as soon as I got home. I’m setting up the voice-recognition, it should be a world of difference in recognition.
Categories: Tech lust
I spent the last few hours surfing for my new system, and I found out that the chipset (Intel 955X) and processor (Pentium D 830) I want are incompatible. That’s fun. So now I would have to get the same processor I have now, but 400MHz faster, for like $300. Lame. Well, sorta. I really want one of those PCI x16 video cards (because of their incredible bandwidth), and the only boards that support PCI-x16 are the ones with the brand new 955X chipset. I’m a bit exasperated, but I guess I should channel my frustration into fervor for selling my current PC. I put probably $1300 into it last year, and I’ll be lucky if I can get $800. Well, once my new drive arrives I will get to parade it on eBay. Fuck. I have to get up at like six tomorrow. But the cool thing is, I can go right back home and go to sleep! W00t.
I don’t know how I’ll be able to get up tomorrow. I’d better go to sleep.
And Thomas is totally on my shit list if I don’t talk to him tomorrow.
Categories: Melancholy,Tech lust
> Daft Punk – Technologic (Vitalic remix)
> Fannypack – System Boomin’
> The Hacker – Radiation
> Propellerheads – Take California
It makes me so sad. One of my favorite people ever has had to stop blogging. I just hate it when people can’t express their feelings and ideas with the rest of the world.
I’m sure that someday my blog will get me into a lot of trouble, but I just have to take the bad things with the good things. I don’t know how I would get by if I wasn’t able to share my thoughts and feelings that the rest of the world or even just to write them down. My blog is my immortality. I would feel like my life was slipping away if I didn’t record everything that happened. I went back to read entries from a year or two ago and my was reading about the last time I went to Manhattan and all of the memories came back. It was a very beautiful experience and that would all be lost if I hadn’t written it down.
And it’s really funny to see yourself as an unreliable narrator. I never knew how different I was until I read some of my entries from 2003. I was so immature!
But enough with the melancholy, there is this really cool person I met online named Thomas. We were supposed to hang out today, but one of his coworkers quit or something and he had to stay late at work. And then I had to work at 8 p.m. So we’re supposed to do something tomorrow. I guess we’re going to go to the beach or something. I wonder if it’s a metaphor that I have to work on Labor Day. I’d better get overtime. Actually, the real irony is the death of the labor movement in America. How long has it been since the AFL-CIO disbanded?
Me and that Thomas guy talked on the phone for an hour or so, exchanging funny anecdotes and such. It was a great first phone call. He kinda knows I might be looking for something more than a friendship, and didn’t say “NO that will not happen,” or anything to that effect, so we might hit it off. I must say he was extremely affable. I hope he’s as cool in person. I’m used to hanging out with such taciturn, tactless people like Royce and Ripley. Actually, I’m not used to hang out with people at all. It’s been so long since the Josh/Misty/Selena/Ben/Joe milieu died. My social skills have died. Well not really.
Oh my God. Thomas was telling me this story in which Jordan kept calling him, wanting Thomas to come over to his house and Thomas being all “eww.” it just shows the obvious: that I’m a social butterfly. And Jordan is two steps up on the evolutionary ladder from a flatworm. Eww.
I don’t know why, but I really miss Joe. I sent him an e-mail a few days ago but he didn’t respond. On the bright side, my drive might arrive tomorrow and cheer me up. I couldn’t get the RAID hack to work, so I’ll have to old-school it with this old copy of Norton Ghost.
I spent the entire day today cooking up a new computer based on Intel’s Pentium D (dual core, two processors in one) line. The processor itself is $340, and the motherboard that supports the advanced features I want is like $200, and that doesn’t include a video card or RAM. The system ended up being about $950, a significant amount more than I think that I would be able to sell my current computer for. But you never know. Once I get my new drive I’m going to start listing my computer on eBay with high reserves to see if I can get someone to buy it. And Thomas wants a new Mac. I told him that the new Mac Minis were only $500, and he wants to buy one. Delicious!
The main cost associated with the new computer that breaks my budget is a new case. I love my computers to look sexy, and sexy cases cost a lot of money. I found this one that I absolutely love that has this like armor plate thing on the front of it and a multi-function LCD on the top. But it’s $100, without the power supply. :(
Well, I guess if I’m not moving away I might as well buy myself a new computer. I think those dual core Pentium Ds might handle voice-recognition and web design a bit better than my current 3.0GHz P4 with hyperthreading. I should get that case. It would get me inspired to build a new system. However, I can’t bring myself to squander my savings. I’ll buy the components piece by piece while I try to sell my current system.
Categories: Gossip,Melancholy,Tech lust
I couldn’t get that RAID hack to work. It still only allows me to stripe the drives instead of mirror them. Evil Windows XP. I will triumph over you somehow. It’s three clicks to set it up on Mac OS. Fucking windows. The money in my savings account is burning a hole in my pocket. I’m trying to resist. But I’ll probably break down and get either the new version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (my voice-recognition software) or a new sound card (the indomitable Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS). The problem is, getting one without the other is lame and pointless. Hmm. Must get a second job.
Categories: Tech lust
I’ve decided to modify my old website and put it on this domain, as I didn’t have enough server space at my last host to do so. It will be available at:
http://archive.retroviral.net.
UPDATE: 12:54 a.m. : most of the old site is online. Check it out!
Parts not working: aboutme-books and video (but not music!)…and the peeps section. Most of the work is the painstaking task of changing links from
dariusofthedarkness.tripod.com to archive.retroviral.net and the downloading of the million and one fonts I used on the site.
Categories: Tech lust
I was looking for inexpensive ways to trick out my PC, and came across this mofo:
http://www.aerocool.us/p-peripheral/gatewatch/gatewatch.htm
I always wanted a fan controller, because my computer runs really really loudly. I am loving those two new fans, the system is running at least 10° cooler now…or in my installation of the fans I moved the temp. sensor to somewhere cooler. I installed the two fans in the front of the computer to suck air in the front and blow out towards the back, creating actual air flow through the case, instead of just the two fans at the back blowing air out. I also moved my hard drive down into the path of the two new fans, so they are both cooling the hard drive and increasing airflow through the case. Oh yeah.
But on the con side, my computer is running even more loudly… I can even hear it with my headphones on. so I’m thinking that the fan controller might be a really good idea, when the computer isn’t very hot, it would turn down the fan speeds. And that one I linked to above is totally cool, with a HUGE LCD display. and it would monitor the temperature of not just my case temperature, but I could stick gauges on my hard drive and processor heat sink. I just need to see if the four channels of 1.7 amps can take all of my seven fans. I need to ask my dad with the difference between voltage and amperage is. He always tells me, and I never remember. Actually, a better question would be what the voltages or amperages of my fans actually are. Puzzling. Well, if it doesn’t work I could just send it back. I think I will buy that for myself next month.
Crap, it’s so late. I’m going to be SO tired when me and Amanda hang out tomorrow night. I have to get up at nine to take my cat Sukiaki Tsunami to the vet.
I just voyaged into my digital photo collection to find a pic of Suki, and inadvertently found a bunch of cool photos I want to tone up in Photoshop. I really shouldn’t do that, because I need to go to sleep. I told one of my coworkers about finding the Insipid Coworker of Doom’s blog. He said that he saw her writing in it at work. What a loser. If I don’t get to blog at work, nobody does. GRR. What a fucking slacker. Anyway, I need to sleep. I’m going to e-mail him her URL tomorrow with the title “for your amusement/horror.”
What I really want to do is say that I sorta have a crush on him, but that would be totally unprofessional. And how do you work that into an email anyway? Questions for the ages. Fuck the ages. I need sleep.
Categories: Tech lust
I just bought two new fans for my case, once I realized yesterday that there were room for two 80mm intake fans. I’m going to install them now. I hope they will improve airflow in my case and cool the mofo down. Wish me luck!
Categories: Tech lust
Bored. Waiting for the clothest to come out of the dryer so I can go play some Dance Revolution. I think that I have just decided on getting a USB 2.0 ATA drive enclosure and an ATA drive. Parallel ATA is such old technology and I hate suborning oldness, but it will have to suffice. There is not a single external enclosure that has an internal serial ATA interface and an external USB 2.0 interface. There was one, but it was hideously expensive.
I would get a second serial ATA drive and set up RAID 1, but I would have to get a new hard drive controller card (a fat $40, at the least) and then probably fuck with it for a few weeks, risking losing all my files (my motherboard is sentient and hates me).
And when I got the thing to work, I would still have nothing to take with me in a situation that there was a tsunami or if I went on a trip or something and wanted to take my music with me. I’m going with the $40 Rosewill external HD enclosure, and probably a 200GB WD Caviar drive. Or Maxtor…I am loyal to one brand but can never remember which one it is. I will have to look in my case window again and check the logo. Ah. Maxtor. Ever since my first Packard Bell in like 1998, I had a Maxtor drive in that baby. Okay. My clothes are done. Off to have fun.
I called Joe, but he is in Portland. Maybe Selena will be getting off work soon. Hmm.