recycle...

i don't like just recycling posts from slashdot, it seems kind of lame but when something good is written and I don't have time to respond on my blog, then i feel inclined to bust out the recycle bin.

the article: Supreme Court Rules against Grokster
the comment (by Frymaster (171343))
"so, let's get this straight:

in the united states, it's legal to sell armour-piercing ammuniction -- bullets whose sole purpose of design is to go through bullet proof vests; obviously a device designed to kill or maim human beings. the manufacturers to do not even make the pretense of proposing other uses for said ammunition. this activity is all fine and legal.

by comparision, a device that may or may not be designed for, but is certainly capable of, infringing copyright is deemed illegal. the manufacturers at least attempt the pretense of proposing legal uses for the technology and make a somewhat-better-than-marginal case for its legit use. this is not fine or legal.

question for the supreme court: do you really believe the the copyright of the bay city rollers first album is more deserving of legal protection than a human life?"


now that is a good question and it makes me wonder, if you keep driving a broken car will it someday fix itself or will it simply break down? so where is this country headed? i know i've said this before, millions of people have. the person who said it the best was definately Zack de la Rocha screaming the words of MLK, "How long? Not long. Because what you reap is what you sew."

man, i still miss rage against the machine.

6,520,942 - the idiot's number

so you might be asking yourself, what's this idiot number thing all about? well i'm glad you ask.

first let me disclaim this by giving credit to slashdot because without the insight of their lovely readers I would never have become aware of the idiot's number. With the props out of the way, let's get down to the explanation.

6,520,942 is the patent number for a process called "Method to improve peri-anal hygiene after a bowel movement." Just when you thought this country could never get any dumber, you look back and realize we've always been a nation of idiots tuned into game shows, yelling at the moron on TV and telling anyone who would listen how much better we could do it. But it is still disappointing.

i could keep going on but i would rather you go and read the patent and figure it out for yourself.

in the dark

the blog has been silent, or dark, for a few days now. these have been the days where i've been sitting half-under my computer desk, encircled by thumb screws and computer components with an anti-static strap attempted to slowly strangle my right hand. i've done just about everything i can think of to try and fix my pci problem without success. so right now things look a little bleak. my options are A) live with the problem or B) RMA the board to Abit and get a new, hopefully working, one. (This is the reason for the picture. I'll write a review of Abit's RMA service if i ever have to use it.)

Usually I wouldn't worry about an RMA but doing so involves removing my processor and therefore having to apply a new layer of thermal material. The setup i'm running now came with the thermal material already applied, basicallyidiot proof. I guess idiots don't get broken boards where they have to remount the heatsink and processor. In theory this should be a doable process. Thousands of 12-year-olds do it every day without a problem, so why can't I? My answer is, because i'm chicken shit.
Today's processors run at such a crazy speed that if you turn one on without a heatsink and thermal interface they will burn up in about 10 seconds. So if i screw this up, i no longer have a working computer. Here's a link to a good walkthrough on how to reapply thermal material.


looks easy enough right? Let's hope it never gets to that. i have another hard drive in transit right now (paid for with the RMA money from my sound card [because it didn't work because of the pci problem {and i would rather have another hard drive than a better sound card than what came on the board}]) so i can do a fresh install of the os without disrupting my current install - because once the wife starts using windows and customizing everything again she's not happy when all her pretty changes go away. With a second hard drive with a clean install of XP available i'll be able to run a gambit of tests and reformat at will. Eventually i even want to have a seperate gaming OS installed with none of the useless junk i usually install running in the background. this is probably overkill, but i like overkill.

let the healing begin

I’ve been kind of heavy on computer posts lately and I apologize. The problem is that the computer has found a way into my brain. When I don’t have it apart on the floor of my living room I’m taking it apart on the floor of my brain. My thumbs are all worn out from thumb screws and my eyes are blurry from lack of sleep and red LED’s.

At least I got back into the gym today after missing two other days this week. Unlike the damn PCI ports on my motherboard, the body always responds in an expected manner. Maybe I shouldn’t say always, I do have a piece of Mexican chicken wire in my belly. That’s not meant as a slander against the fine country of Mexico. That’s just where the FDA said the counterfeit piece of surgical mesh implanted within the wall of my abdomen came from. I guess calling it chicken wire is probably a slant. But during my brief visit to Mexico I think I remember seeing chickens running around. Hence the chicken wire.

Back on topic. What started out as a post that was supposed to be something other than a computer post is slowly creeping towards being a computer post. I just can’t help it. I’m sitting at the computer. I’m listening to its tiny little fans spin and spin. I’m trying to figure out ways to fix the only problem left. I won’t go into detail because there is too much detail, too many hours spent troubleshooting to track down the point where everything started.

We’re almost fixed, that will have to be good enough. We being me and the computer. The computer not being able to see its PCI slots and me not being able to pull away from the hypnotic smell of new circuitry. Let the healing begin.

very little sleep...

i wanted to wait a day to write the full update on the computer build because day one was mostly installing hardware. here's the day by day breakdown. this is recycled from a gmail so i appologize for the repeat to one of my readers.

at 4:15 p.m wednesday i started building the machine. At 6:38 i had a pounding headache from playing with jumpers and cables but the construction was complete. i took an hour break for some food and strategizing then jumped right back into it.

at 7:45 i started checking connections and cables while preparing for the boot. around 8:15 the first boot occurred. at this point everything was going as expected. once i began installing windows i noticed a problem. when the computer attempted to reboot it would hang before posting again. the power button and reset button was non-responsive so the only way i could get the computer to restart was to kill the power at the power supply. this is problem one. after killing the power the computer booted as normal and continued to load windows. besides this boot problem windows loaded without a hitch. please note that i only took about 5 seconds to boot up once windows was loaded without any drivers or software installed. compared to my previous p3 500, the speed is amazing.

--jump ahead to day two at 5 p.m.--

i updated windows to sp2 and installed the nforce4 chipset drivers and other motherboard drivers. everything seemed to be working. checking the device manager revealed that windows could not find anything i had plugged into my pci slots. this included my soundblaster audigy zs2 and us robotics modem. this is problem two. i hope this is just an irq problem caused by the fact that i have both the abit included sound card and the soundblaster card installed. i tried to pull out the abit sound card but this created some weird problems so i just put it back for now to make sure everything else is ok before the 7 day return time for the cpu expires.

ignoring the pci problem for now, i moved on to installing the VGA drivers so i could test its performance with a game. when installing the VGA driver my computer crashed half way through the install. i attempted the install about five more times with a crash at the exact same time. this is problem three. having read about other random crashes in windows with this same board on the abit forums, i pulled out one of my ram chips to prevent them from running in dual channel mode and attempted to install the drivers again. this time the drivers installed without a problem. i turned off the computer and installed the second ram chip and everything booted normally. i installed far cry and ran around for a bit just to make sure everything worked and was not disappointed.

at this point it's 11:30 p.m. on day two. i load up the bios and after some testing discover a pci/pcix VGA boot order setting. i change the setting to pcix and the system now seems to reboot as expected. i'm not 100% convinced that this is what fixed the rebooting problem but at least it is fixed now.

at about midnight i start running a memory test and allow it to run all night. this morning i looked over the 8 tests that completed upon the gig of memory and no errors were reported. i loaded a benchmarking tool into windows and ran it a few times. i encountered a direct x error but i think this is a software problem.

finally as i tried to save some of my benchmarks to my flash drive i noticed that my usb ports on the front of the case are not working. this is problem four. i haven't tried to fix this because i found it late in the morning and had to get to work but the front usb ports are hooked up to the 3rd usb header when 1 & 2 are open. hopefully changing the header will fix the problem but i'm not too worried about it right now.

i only have until sunday to decide if i want to keep the build (the cpu has a 7 day return deadline). i have confidence that most of the problems can be fixed with troubleshooting. the dual channel ram problem will only be fixed with a bios update but people on the abit forums say abit is already working on an update. bios updates usually take a while with abit but at least i can use my computer right now. sure i can't use my modem, my creative sound card or my front panel usb ports but at least the computer restarts as expected. right now i'm leaning towards keeping the build and riding out the storm.

my plan of attack for the weekend, before the deadline is as follows:

• adjust the order of the usb headers. if adjusting the header order does not work, test these headers with the included usb add-on card to make sure they work.
• pull out the creative sound card and boot the machine to see if this will allow windows to find the modem.
• pull out the abit sound card and keep in the creative sound card and us robotics modem. when i did this before the windows startup would crash. a fresh installation would also crash so i'm also going to set the memory into single channel mode and attempt a reinstall.
• remove the auto memory timings setup and set them to the factory recommended speeds.

it's going to be a long weekend.

If the blog goes dark for a few days, you'll know why. I think I would be jumping up and down now if I had not just sat through three consecutive meetings of hour or longer duration. But when you're in higher ed, this is getting something done.

Resolution - crisis part 3

My newegg shopping cart is empty. Not because I hit the save button or the add to wishlist button. Not this time. No, the contents of my shopping cart are now lovingly loaded onto two FedEx trucks. One truck is making its way from New Jersey and the other is saying goodbye to sunny California.

I imagine both boxes, along with my carefully selected part, also have a little bit of fear in them. Maybe even a bit of trepidation about taking such a long journey to the sight of a previous disaster. Sure the stakes are high but don’t fear little computer parts. Michigan is nice during the summer, especially my town. The air is clean, the beaches are not crowded and people are genuinely nice. I am genuinely nice. Yes there will be some work involved but there will also be a hell of a lot of fun... (WOW)

Now that I’m done talking to my computer, let me show you what is going into this build and why.

Motherboard: Abit AN8-SLI

First of all I want to address the question, why Abit? I asked myself this question many times when trying to determine the best motherboard to go with. When I took my first crack at this build a year ago I went with ASUS because their name is everywhere when it comes to motherboards. But regardless of the ubiquitousness of their name I still ended up with a broken computer. What I should have done was google “K8V-SE Deluxe problems”. Go ahead, give it a try. Regardless what the excellent reviewers say at [H]ard|OCP had to say the board just didn’t work for me. It would have if I was willing to spend more money to get a replacement bios chip and hope that was the only problem. But this was my hard earned money and I was so frustrated at that point that it was more relieving to just send everything back.

Enough about my failure. I have to keep my morale high for tomorrow (hopefully). Learning from this experience I started my motherboard search by googling “Abit AN8-SLI problems”. When i’m writing this the first thing i see is a link to the [H]ard|OCP forums where a poster is talking about how great the board is and how he has not found any problems. There are two more forum links with people reporting problems but these involve an SLI setup and a overclocker. I know ASUS is a larger name when it comes to motherboards, but I consider just three hits on google a huge success.

Still not sold on Abit? Remember how I said I would have to spend more money to replace the bios chip on my old ASUS? I think this would have cost me $25-$30. Sure that might not be much to someone who just spend $900 on a cpu. But if you send a board out with a broken chip, replace it for free. Apparently Abit thinks the same way I do. From Abit’s parts Web site: “ABIT parts come at no charge to you - all you pay is shipping and handling!” I was sold at this point but I’ll continue.

Check out the board :

This board has passive northbridge cooling on the nForce 4 SLI chipset. This means no annoying northbridge fan and in my opinion the quieter a computer is the better. Also note that after Abit introduced this concept ASUS was soon to follow.

I know Abit has some critics. They were involved in the leaky capacitor problem a few years back and they have had some corporate problems. But what company does not have problems? From what I see, I like Abit. I like their commitment to quality with the buletproof technology and their user forums are great. Hopefully I’ll be singing their praises even louder after the next few days.

Video card: MSI NX6600GT

This was a tough decision. I don’t have the resources or the desire to plunk down $300+ on a video card (VGA) that will be $150 in three months. Prices on video cards, as opposed to most other components in the box, are fueled by hype. A few extra frames per second, a massive amount of memory that no game or app could ever use, and an extra billion pixels that show little cigars of goose shit on the ground in whatever online role playing game your playing somehow makes people line up like pods.

I’m not a pod person. Well maybe I am I’m writing a blog after all and referencing second season Seinfeld. So let me restate that. I’m a pod person without a lot of money and some concept of individually. Anyway, the graphics debate was between an ATI X700 and an nVidia Gforce 6600GT. Both of these cards are main stream cards and, based on benchmarks provided by [H]ard|OCP, both will perform at the same level.

My deciding factors came down to three things. First only the nVidia card is capable of running in SLI mode on my motherboard. SLI mode means that I can run two exact same cards, if I choose to, for twice the speed. This means that in a couple of months I can upgrade my computer without spending much money. The reason only nVidia cards work in SLI mode is because nVidia makes the SLI chipset that sits on the motherboard. ATI has their answer to SLI coming out but at the time of purchase nVidia was the only dual VGA option available.

Second I looked at the amount of noise the video card produces. All video cards, and most motherboards, come with crappy fans that usually end up making a significant amount of noise after dust has built up to a significant level. My video card is filling the room right now with its gentle whirring. The ATI cards had an advantage in this category because several of them come with an aftermarket-available cooling solution. (PIC of VGA cooler). However, if the cooler is aftermarket-available then if I am unhappy with the sound level of my VGA cooler, I can just go out and buy one. Right?

Finally I thought about something I never saw mentioned in forums or product marketing. If nVidia makes the motherboard chipset and nVidia make the VGA chip then won’t the odds of them working together correctly be increased? Sure ATI can figure out how to get their cards to perform properly but won’t they always be a step behind nVidia? This was my thinking when I decided to go with MSI GForce 6600 GT. [H]ard|OCP has a review of the card here.

Hard drive: Samsung SpinPoint P Series

Compared to the rest of the computer decisions, choosing a hard drive was easy. I have always used Western Digital hard drives and of the 6 drives I’ve had 2 failed. One failed after 4 years and the other failed after 1. I didn’t loose any data when the drives failed and WD was good about replacing the under warranty drive. However, one of my current WD drives is very noisy. I never would have thought that the sound of a hard drive could drown out the whirring of case fans but it did. This drive got so loud that I no longer use it in my system because it’s such a high pitch that it drives me crazy. So 3 drives out of 6 that I consider unusable. This is not an acceptable ratio.

Since I can’t do much about the drives failing, this is like rolling the dice with any drive, I went looking for the quietest drive I could find. This led me to silentpcreview.com forum which picked Samsung as the quietest SATA drive. Since SATA’s blazing fast transfer rate is the way I want to go with a mammoth 160 gig drive this is the drive I chose. I know, I know this is not SATA II and in a week or so 160 gig will look like I’m trying to fit a family of circus monkeys into the back seat of a Chevy Caviler. No I did not get the best but I’m on a budget and hard drives can be upgraded without having to stop using the ones you have. Besides I spent my extra money on RAM ans something had to be cut.

RAM: Mushkin XP3200 (2 X 512MB)

This was my toughest decision. I knew I wanted to go with Abit for the motherboard. I knew i wanted an Amd64 and a graphics card is something I will probably replace in a year anyway. RAM however is the backbone to a computer and if i want to add additional ram down the road it would be best to get the same kind of ram for the upgrade in order for everything to work correctly. I envy the simple choice between ATI and nVidia for graphics cards when it comes to the plethora of choices available for ram.

Once you actually figure out what ram your board takes (for the Abit it is 184 pin SDRAM) then what speed the ram has to be (again for the Abit it is DDR 400 pc3200) then the approved modules for your type of board (check the board’s Web site not) and then figure out what latency you want (I’m still very hazy on what this means except smaller is better, I think). Once you have this list assembled and start checking forums you will see that most of the high-end ram companies have a fierce following of people who swear by their product. Maybe this means everything is good. Maybe the RAM companies are playing people to do this. Who knows.

The system I’m using now uses Corsair ram. I’ve never had a problem with this ram, it’s done exactly what I wanted it to and the Corsair brand is well regarded in the overclocker and enthusiast communities. But I decided to go with Mushkin instead. Sounds crazy I know but there is currently a buzz about a type of RAM chip made by samsung called the TCCD chip. Mushkin uses this chip on the brand of RAM I decided on and a slew of reviews loved the RAM. Yes I could have saved money by buying a value ram and probably would never have noticed much of a difference, especially since I bought what is considered overclocker’s RAM. But the price difference was only about $50 with a last minute sale and I always find comfort in knowing that I spent a lot of money to buy something I’ll probably never need or use.

Wow this post is turning out to be a lot longer than I thought it would be. Somehow what started out as me wanting to document how my build has progressed has turned into a million-word epic. Hopefully someone uses this to build an exact replica of my computer, which would be cool because I think my computer is going to rock and is built on some extensive research and good analysis. But who am I kidding; I just hope someone read the whole damn thing. Be assured that updates on the build will show up real soon.

The last part of my order, because this entire build is well over $1000 is an anti-static writs strap. I've never used one of these before but it's probably a good idea and it's only $5. What's $5 when a little static shock could make all of this effort useless?

maybe we should have a national 'talk like a software pirate' day too!

I hate to just pass along a story that slashdot is already covering, but it's a damn good story. The story is apple related but it's full of interesting ideas for pc people.

The story talks about software piracy as almost a right of passage. As kids, we went out and downloaded $1000 programs and got to explore the wonders of tech through the coolness of photoshop and other apps. As adults we have the resources to buy the programs when we're too lazy to go through all the effort to download and crack them. So, in a sense, piracy is like a beta preview of software. Sure it might work but it'll probably be buggy and take a lot of effort. So, as adults, if we like it we'll keep using it and that usually means shelling over the cash. Nice ideas, even though this is probably too sketchy for large bloated corporations. They don't realize that without the accessibility of software provided by piracy the computer industry would probably not resemble what it is today.

Here's the article.
If the article is still /.ed you can view a cached version here.

In case you're wondering what the title of this post or the image is about... Check out National Talk Like a Pirate day.

why the weather channel is for suckers

think the weather channel is going for some type of record. it's been almost two straight weeks of incorrect forecasts for my town. every day i tune in to see another forecast of rain and thunderstorms. then i go about my day waiting for the impending gloom to set in. only it never does. day after day i watch the sky from my office and it stays a nice clear, cloudless blue.

even google this afternoon had pictures of thunder bolts and rain for today. can't any of these idiots look out a window? or am i in too remote of a region for anyone to give a shit?

Anyway, here's the point. I think the weather channel is trying to break us down 1984 style. Every day they tell us rain and every day we believe. Forget the fact that the sun is shining and kids are outside playing. We think... stupid kids, they don't know better. We watched the weather channel. sure the sun is out now but any second all hell is going to bust loose and if anyone outside survives, i'll be surprised. they rule us with fear these "meteorologist" with thier weather maps and Doppler radar and the rest of their voodoo-like mumbo-jumbo. just look at this picture all sterile and washed in pink. why would you not believe everything they are trying to sell you? yes, they are tying to sell you something. because if it's raining outside then your ass is sitting inside watching a countless number of plugs for thier crappy shows, waiting for them to give you the all-clear.

I say come on, just pull out the crystal ball and stop beating around the bush. we'll still tune in on the 8's every single day while we slurp down another bowl of total (because it's like eating a million bowls of lucky charms and we're afraid what would happen to us if we didn't get our million-bowls worth). we'll still do exactly what we're told because that's how we were raised, that's how we move forward in life. if the two boobs behind the anchor desk say rain then fuck the sun, it's raining. now what's on tonight?

5 a.m. – Crisis part 3

Just the day before I thought I knew every component that was going in to my new computer. However, as I lay awake something about the pre-dawn air and the heat it carried in the open window brought me back to last summer when I would climb out of bed in the early morning and struggle with putting together what is now my failed build. My mind wandered out of the bedroom to my computer desk and questioned the soon-to-be heart of my computer. My body quickly followed and as soon as firefox could load I was looking at intel chips. This brings me to the age old question... intel or amd?

AMD has an obvious appeal for me because it's a chip designed for gaming. The chip I’m considering is also a 64 bit chip and everything i've read about it shows it to be a more technologically advanced component. So with these factors in mind, why would I consider intel? The reason is simple, intel just always seems to work. Let me break that last statement down. Intel makes chipsets, that drive intel processor-based motherboards. Intel also makes their own line of motherboards housing their chipset, designed for their processor. So when you have three essential parts all designed by the same company, then your likelihood of everything working as intended is pretty good.

This argument is the crux of my computer crisis. AMD is fast, good for gaming and just has that underdog edge to it. Intel is safe, stable and every computer I've had up until now has run just fine using an Intel chipset and processor. However, Intel has a weakness; several weaknesses actually. Their Prescott line of chips (the current line) is notorious for operating at high temperatures making the inside of your computer hotter and possibly leading to stability problems. The newest Intel motherboards also require a new type of ram, DDR2. This ram is more expensive because it is new and its speeds are similar to regular DDR. Finally, the Intel processor itself is expensive and the only version that would fit into my computer budget is not 64 bit compatible.

Considering these factors the first part of my crisis is over, I'm going to throw caution into my cooler master case fans and walk down the AMD path again.

Here is the processor sitting in my newegg shopping cart. This is the AMD 64 3000 with a venice core. This is one of the newest cores and it is supposed to run fairly cool.

who the ... is eric von zipper?

taking a break from my computer build posts i decided it was time to explain my blogger address is ericvon.blogspot.com. it starts back when i was just wee lad and my dad, who had an affinity for nick names, dubbed me eric von zipper. because this nick name was unusual it stuck. even to this day i will willingly refer to myself as eric von happily. i should say up until this day. i thought this was just a made up name pulled from the creative recesses of my dad's mind but i was mistaken. this odyssey through my childhood begins with a man named Harvey Lembeck, the cool cat on the motorcycle pictured below.

Harvey played a character called eric von zipper in a collection of b-movies from the 60's. These movies include Beach Party, Binki Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, Pajama Party, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. All classics of their time, I'm sure.

Apparently my dad must have been a fan of this genre of films. Maybe he still is. Maybe he has a huge collection of eric von films and maybe i'm finally old enough to sit down with him and enjoy the talents of my namesake. that would probably be disturbing but hey, it would be something to blog about.

"sweet new machine" - crisis part 2

Let's start part two by providing an overview of the parts I already have, parts that were purchased for the failed AMD/ASUS build of '04. All of these parts have proven themselves by working for me for the past year and should fit nicely into the upcoming build.

foundation:
case- this is the skin of the computer. While many people look at the case as something that is not very important in a build, I consider the case to be the foundation to a well designed computer. An aluminum case with an array of fans is essential for keeping the temperatures low inside of a computer. With cooling in mind as well as looks and a removable motherboard tray, I decided on the cooler master PAC-T01-EK.

power supply- sticking with the human metaphor, the power supply is the heart of the computer. if your power supply does not work or cannot provide enough juice your computer will not perform. it may turn on but it won't work at optimal levels. i could go into a lot of technical detail about how many volts each rail has but I won't bother. if someone eventually uses this guide to build their own system, remember the total wattage rating of a power supply does not always mean it will work with your system. with that in mind, i chose the Antec NeoPower 480.

drives:

Pioneer Black IDE DVD burner -dual layer compatible and reasonably fast.
Lite-On IDE Combo Drive (CR-R/RW & DVD Rom) - this was painted black because it was for my old p3 system.
Sony black internal floppy drive - because boot disks are always nice to have.

sound:
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS - i wish there was an alternative to creative, but sadly they make the only decent sound card. most motherboards these days come with onboard sound by this puts more stress on your cpu because it is responsible for onboard sound. to avoid this problem i am going to opt for a sound card and disable the onboard sound in the motherboard's bios.

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 Speaker- these speakers have been amazing so far. the sub shakes the house and music is perfectly clear. i would have went for the 5.1 but for twice the price i'll live with 2.1 for now.

mouse/keyboard: (hopefully you understand by now that i don't take anything lightly when it comes to building.)

mouse pad- fUnc SU-BK-BK. yes $20 is a bit to spend on a mouse pad but it looks cool and my mouse just slides over it with the lightest touch.


mouse- logitech MX500. i don't like putting batteries in anything, especially a mouse. so no wireless stuff for me. i'm also kind of a mouse junkie, this is the 4th optical mouse i've owned and i'm already thinking about getting another one. To be specific, this mouse.


keyboard- Logitech Elite Black. The itouch software is kind of bloated but most of the special keys work without installing the software.




Networking:
US Robotics modem - this thing is a few years old but works like a champ. I might be linking to a newer model, but it has the same features. Like one newegg review said, don't install the software, it will just screw up the modem.

Linksys Wireless Adaptor, USB - a lot of people seem to have problems with pci wireless adaptors and with the declining number of pci slots on most motherboards i decided that a usb option would be the way to go. i was right. i connect easily and have not lost signal yet.

that sums up the components i currently have. it's a fine base to any computer. at this point i could go AMD or Intel's direction without a problem. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with AMD but that's something I'll discuss further in part 3.

a computer crisis

let me start by clarifying the title. this is not your normal computer crisis. so for those of you looking for a way to get windows/word/outlook/excel/etc. do something it should be able to do, look somewhere else. this is a crisis of a hardware nature.

i'm currently in the process of building a "sweet new machine" using components ordered from the greatest computer store on the planet, newegg.

in order to talk about this build, you need to understand the history of the build. so i'll start at the beginning. a year ago i began to assemble my resources to build my third computer from components ordered online. i decided it was time to move away from intel processors and give AMD 64's a try. i teamed up the AMD 64 with an ASUS motherboard, corsair ram and my old nvidia video card. since i'm writing a post about finishing my build a year later it's safe to assume things did not go well. it turns out the bios on the asus board did not support my AMD 64 chip and when i tried to flash the bios to fix this problem i rendered the motherboard useless. extremely pissed, i sent the motherboard, cpu and ram back to newegg and took some time to lick my wounds. i was out about $50 in restocking fees and my confidence in my computer building ability was shot. because i had some parts that would work with my old computer i decided that i would try again but this would not occur until the next summer, that would be right now.

so as i ready to attempt to build another AMD64 I'm going to document my thoughts and progress on this blog. maybe it can help someone build there own "sweet new machine." this is going to be a multi-parter and this is the end of part 1.

the deliverator

fans of neil stephenson's Snow Crash will appreciate this story found on yahoo and relayed to me by Drew & Mike's morning show.

-From Yahoo!
A robbery attempt by a masked man and a gunshot wound to the leg didn't stop a pizza delivery man from making his rounds, pies in hand.

Thomas Stefanelli, 37, said dedication to his job at Hungry Howie's Pizza kept him on the job after a struggle with a robber Saturday night left him bleeding from a bullet wound in his left thigh.

read the rest of the story

the art of downloading free fonts

i've just finished downloading (let me check to make sure the count is right) 82 free fonts linked from the very cool blog called fontleach. I'm a sucker for fonts. I have about 1200 on my computer. side note: here's a fun thing to do. open up your font folder in windows, select all of your fonts, right click on the screen and hit 'properties' then enjoy all of the individual windows that pop up.

anyway, now that i've got my mouse clicks in for the day, it's back to photoshop and designing a new banner for my.nmu.edu. and no, i did not design the current one.

another side note (this one to the fine folks at fontleach): if you're going to try and hide your images behind blank .gif's at least protect your images directory. or use a more challenging name, please. http://fontleech.com/images/

template changes

i'm working on deconstructing the blog template so it has some originality. getting all of the css right will take awhile so please pardon the odd spacing.

anyone can feel free to rip off the graphics i make for this site. i know i made them. you'll know i made them. i can always make something cooler.

Update: I will probably never get the CSS right but who wants a polished, complete blog anyway? That just makes people feel bad about their blog and their life. Nothing should be complete, it should always be evolving. So deal with the messed up banner and mostly sock graphics of this blog. It represents me quite nicely.

Update 2: In no way am i giving you permission to steal my images. just wanted to make that clear.

later in the morning

yesterday i revealed that most of my mornings start with ESPN and sportscenter. i did this in a roundabout kind of way, but it was revealed nonetheless. so to continue my efforts to create a thriving population of eric-like replicas we go to the next highlight of my morning, the drew and mike show.

broadcast on the WRIF in the detroit area, these two guys have been keeping tabs on the motor city for some time now. oddly enough, i only started listening to drew and mike after i left the detroit metro area. they broadcast for free over the net so when you live in the radio equivalent of the middle of nowhere it's hard to find something engaging to listen to in the mornings especially when "the best mix of 80's and 90's rock" makes you want to take the car's cigarette lighter to your ears.

so if you're at a computer between 6-10 a.m. (they usually stay on until 11) or driving through the detroit area tune them in and move another step closer down the designed life path.

mornings before ESPN

what was sports before ESPN? something you read about in the paper. something you endured the evening news for, waiting for a highlight squeezed between weather and shootings. something you mortgaged your house for just to sit forty stories above the field and hope to catch a glimpse of something while drinking the most expensive water on the planet. but damn, it was worth it.

now, every hour on the hour (except for monday where you have to factor in an extra half of an hour) we get sports served up in ADD-sized increments. only with this type of buffet menu could you get a gem like this.

"I figured, I'm an athlete, I can walk up the stairs, it's not that big a deal," Barmes said in an interview Monday, his left arm hanging in a sling. "Obviously, if I had to go back, I would have waited, or at least been a bit more careful going up."

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2077547

...classic.

that's fishing

the title of the piece on cnn was lost fishermen found after 57 days. but when you read the article you realize that they weren't really lost.

"They sighted more than 10 other fishing vessels during their plight, but none came to their aid."

People knew where they were the entire time. so what's the big deal? growing up we would have called this an adventure. hell, throw in a case of corona and you have a commercial.

perhaps this is just a ploy to take some much needed time off from the fields (being a stupid american, i'm assuming everyone works in the field from whatever country these fellas were from) and get some good 'ol fishin in.

forget the corona commercial. this sounds like a bit that could be narrated by the high life dude...

--The scene opens with an overweight, untanned white guy sitting in a multi-colored lawn chair on the front porch of his house in Anytown USA. He has a fly swatter in one hand and a miller in the other.

Narrator (in the classic miller accent): the jibber jabber of the radio rattles on about two men stranded at sea for 57 days. they call it a fishing trip turned into a tale of survival. (pause)
fishing, friends, a few cold ones and an extra couple of days away from the office. (pause)
sounds like, the high life.

--the man in the lawn chair swats a fly then the scene cuts to a close up of a bottle of miller with beads of condensation gathering. end scene.

and i thought i was decent at flash

apparently not...


too bad the program used to create this app costs $15,000 otherwise it might be something fun to experiment with. i'm tempted to go on about software patents/copyrights and how they have evolved into anti-creative agents. but anyone can just read slashdot for that. besides without copyrights and the **AA we would be without wonderful tools like bittorrent and emule, and wonderful people who will always ensure that the playing field is somewhat level.

industrial accident

could this be the same guy who use to lead the industrial music movement? the guy who discovered marilyn manson? a guy wearing a white blouse and smiling like he just found a bottle of viagra behind a toilet in the ladies bathroom.

Update: Even though trent looks like a tool in this picture his new cd still rocks. I got the cd as a birthday present and it's been in steady rotation on my 5 min commute to work. I figure if a CD is good it should be good enough to grab you in 5 min, it should have you waiting for the ride home at the end of the day just so you can sing along and imagine how cool it would be if you wrote this song. Maybe that's just me, but NIN usually has that effect.



reznor story that this picture came from