Voiding my Warranty

I dedicate this rare blog post to my father, who taught me everything I know about sawing the useless bits off of expansion cards so that they'll actually fit in the goddamn motherboard. Thanks, Dad!! :)

I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC

For the past couple of years, I haven't been a PC; I've been a Mac. I got a MacBook Pro some time ago, and gave my PC to my dad. And, so we're clear, it's been great; I love the Mac platform, the Mac hardware, everything.

But, I recently decided I missed something about the PC. The games, the modularity, the upgrading and reading about new tech...there's something there that I'm not getting with the Mac. So, while I haven't switched (and have no plans to do so), I did go ahead and buy the parts for a new gaming PC.

I think I'd sort of forgotten how much there is to such a project: learning about, and then selecting and buying, a case, motherboard, CPU, hard drive, optical drive, graphics card, power supply, and some good ol' RAM...plus, if you're serious (and boy, was I serious), an aftermarket CPU heatsink and fan. Ah, and, of course, an operating system (man, I love Linux, but the sad reality is that you need Windows for gaming), and we might as well throw in a KVM switch so I can have both my MacBook and my PC plugged into my big-ass Apple Cinema display. I mean...just look at all that stuff!

So, anyway, the last of it arrived on Monday, and I set to putting it all together. It had been years since I'd done anything like this, and so I was a little rusty. I sat for a minute with parts strewn all around me, wondering where I should start. In the end, I recalled the words of the immortal Captain Ron: "If anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen out there." I grabbed the motherboard, half at random, and set to installing it in the case.

The only problem that arose there is with the fact that I'm not entirely sure Lian-Li wasn't telling a bald-faced lie when they claimed that the motherboard tray in their otherwise very spiffy case was removable. I still have no idea how that thing would detach from the case. Oh well. I got the board installed anyway.

Next went the CPU, an Intel Core i7 920, which I chose over the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition only because I live not far from a Micro Center, and (at the time of this blogging) they have an outrageous discount on the i7 920: $150 off, for a total price of $200, just $10 or so above that of the AMD processor. Nice. No problems getting that in, either. It was a bit crazy, though, thinking about the whole quad-core processor thing. Last time I did this, we had one core (in fact, I don't think we even really used the word "core"), and we were happy in those days!

Then, the heat sink and fan. You see, the stock cooling apparatus that comes with the i7 920 CPU, being roughly the size of a Volkswagen Golf, is clearly inadequate for the task of keeping any serious system from overheating. Thus, we turn to the Cooler Master Hyper 212+.

The whole thing astounds me. Tiny little CPU, stonking great big heat sink and fan. I remember when the heat sink was barely bigger than the processor itself. Anyway, so, yes, this thing is huge. Thermal grease (helpfully included with the Hyper 212+ kit) goes on the CPU to help conduct heat. Then we screw the heat sink into the motherboard so it presses down on the CPU a bit, and then we attach the fan to the heat sink via some rather arcane wires. Oh yeah, and we swear loudly at whoever thought it was a good idea to have the Hyper 212+ installation instructions be composed of virtually nothing but overly detailed (but very small) line drawings. Very helpful, with the lines, and the other lines, and the near complete lack of depth. Thanks.

Anyway, I eventually figure out how to get the fan going. Keen. Now it's RAM time, and I easily install the OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Gold Low-Voltage Triple Channel kit. 6 GB of memory (the very thought still dazes me a bit), done and done. Time to stick in the power supply, and start hooking things up!

Dear God. When I opened the box to the power supply unit, I swear to you, power cables sprang out at me like tentacles at a Japanese cartoon schoolgirl. Yet another thing I don't remember from my earlier days of computer construction. Talk about a snarl. Fortunately, my case came with a little cable organizer thing near the PSU that I could push the unused cables into to keep them out of the way. Applause, Lian-Li.

Graphics card time! I went with the Diamond Radeon HD 5850. The 5850 seems like a great balance of performance and price, and it seems the rest of the world agrees, seeing as how it's one of the only ATI-based cards that retailers can't seem to keep in stock. I have no particular brand loyalty to Diamond, though they do nice enough work; it was just the first brand of 5850 I found that I was actually physically capable of purchasing.

Anyway, that's not half so interesting as the expansion card slot management system Lian-Li's case has going on. Normally, the blanks for the slots in a case are held in by screws, and you have to unscrew it, remove the blank, add the card, and then screw it in. In this case, you just pull up the lever, remove the blank, add the card, and push the lever back in to clamp the card into place. Very clever! Applause again, Lian-Li.

Now, the main OS and programs disk drive (an OCZ Vertex 120 GB solid-state drive) and the data storage drive (a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB drive). It's my first time installing SATA drives, but I figure it out easily enough. Then the DVD drive; it's an IDE/ATAPI drive, and old hat. No worries.

I start connecting the case switches, fan power lines, and LED lines to the motherboard. Just one little snag: the motherboard expects the power LED line to use two pins (PLED- and PLED+), but the case demands three (PLED-, N/C, and PLED+). Ugh. Quickly, Robin - to the Internets!

I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but Someone Else had a similar problem, and they just poked the PLED+ wire out of the line with a pin, and stuck it the N/C (no connection, i.e. unused) hole in the plug, and then everything fit all right. Works for me! I still don't know why there was this inconsistency -- isn't the ATX standard supposed to prevent stuff like this, or something? But, whatever. I have better things to do, like finish this installation!

I'm just about done. All I need to do now is install the I/O port panel shield, and I'm ready to go!

You should have heard how I swore when I realized the shield needed to go on the inside of the case, before I installed the motherboard. Mom would have been proud. ;)

Well, nothing for it. I unscrewed the motherboard and moved it just enough to be able to put the shield in, fought with the alignment for a while, and finally managed to get everything to fit right. Screw screw screw, all good!

Anyway, from there, it was more or less all gravy. The KVM switch I got works pretty well, although I need an audio cable extender or something so I can fit it 'round the side of my MacBook. Windows 7 RC installation went smoothly, and it's pretty quick. Getting the graphics card drivers to work right was a bit of a bear, but I eventually managed that too. A couple of not-exactly-bleeding-edge games (Orange Box and Painkiller) run perfectly at the highest available settings, which is nice! Also ran a memtest to prove that all six gigs of RAM are fully functional. Stick a fork in this big black 2001-reminiscent obelisk: it's done.

More pics! Enjoy!

Final system configuration:

• LIAN LI PC-A70F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad Black Power Supply
• Intel Core i7 920
• ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX
• DIAMOND 5850PE51G Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
• OCZ DDR3 6GB PC3-12800 Gold Low-Voltage Triple Channel
• OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 120GB SATA II Solid State Drive
• Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB SATA 3Gb/s 3.5in Internal Hard Drive, 32MB Cache, 7200RPM, OEM
• Pioneer DVR-1910 Black DVD/CD Writer
• Cooler Master Hyper 212+ Universal CPU Cooler supports Socket LGA1366/1156/775/AM3/AM2/940/939
• IOGEAR Mini View Micro DVI-D KVM with Audio
• Windows Vista Business 64-bit (w/ free Windows 7 upgrade coupon)
• Windows 7 RC (free gift w/ Windows Vista)
  

I am the Walrus

Since I am insane and think I have more money than I really do, I bit the bullet today and drove down to Best Buy and bought a Playstation 3, along with The Beatles: Rock Band.

It's crazy. I've played Rock Band before, at a friend's place, and so I knew it was a good time. But this game brings it to a whole new level. Not only is it all Beatles music (thus making it consistently and unfailingly awesome), but there's harmonizing -- you can hook up three microphones and sing it like the Beatles really did. I don't have the mics to do it, but I could. Crazy.

It's also kind of fun because I know the songs well enough that I can do both guitar and vocals on Easy mode at the same time. Which I did. Because I want to be everybody except Ringo. (Sorry, Ringo. I still love you.)

I also picked up Assassin's Creed, because it was relatively cheap and I'd heard good things. I'll have to try that now, since my throat hurts too much from Rock Band to keep playing that. Anyway, for the Rock Band Beatles game, two thumbs up.

New and Interesting Things

I am surprised to find that, after having owned my MacBook Pro for almost two years now, I'm still learning new things about it. Like, for instance, this:

If you place two fingers on the touch pad while you click, you'll make the context menu pop up - just as if you'd command-clicked or right-clicked on a two+ button mouse.

Found that out by accident the other day. I wish I'd known a lot earlier - that's useful!

iPhone, weeeeeeee!

After finally hauling my butt to the gym, I took advantage of the lovely Spring-like weather and took a nice, relaxing drive, with windows down and sunroof open, to the Apple store to buy an iPhone, from which I am blogging this very post.
Hence: weeeeee! :)

This just in

I have rosacea. Weeeeeeee!

On the bright side, this means I'm just like Bill Clinton and Mariah Carey. Bet you didn't think that was even possible.

Moving on

So, the company I work for is in the process of moving its offices, and last Friday was the last day I would work in the area in which I've spent most of my waking time for the past seven years. I knew it was coming, but it was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. I really had to take a moment to say good-bye.

The new office space is very nice, and I'm sure I just need to get used to it...but the old place was home. I'm going to miss it.

MCS: Break-in complete!

Finally hit 1,200 miles the other day, which completes my new MINI Cooper S's break-in period. Now I can rev it up past 4,500 rpms. I mean, without feeling a little bad about it. Which is nice. It's just so much fun.

I've had the car for about three months now, and I still totally love it. I sometimes wish I'd bitten the bullet and bought one with a manual transmission instead, and just taught myself to drive it...but, to be honest, the automatic transmission is pretty awesome. I love using the flappy paddles, and when I don't feel like shifting, I can just throw it in automatic mode and not worry about it.

Now all I have to do is get the driver's side butt-warmer fixed and figure out how to take it to a track so I can drive absurdly fast. You know, without breaking the law and endangering innocent people.

What a dream I had

It has come to my attention that many MINI owners are so obsessive about keeping their cars in pristine condition that they put them in a garage during the winter months, and drive an old beater car instead, thus protecting their Coopers from the salted roads and such.

While I have no intention of doing this, I had a dream the other night in which I decided I needed to similarly go out and buy an old beater to drive. And my choice? This:



A new BMW 3-series. That's right -- my "beater" was a beautiful sports car that costs, base, about $4,000 more than the (heavily-optioned) car it was meant to protect. I think I need to be really rich. Or to stop eating pizza before bedtime. One or the other.

Speaking of my car, though, I've got nearly 300 miles on it, and it's been an absolute dream. Gave myself quite a fright driving down Lakeshore Drive a few nights ago, when I hit two potholes right in a row -- I've read about people ruining their run-flat tires and even their rims doing that. Fortunately, all seems well. The little guy's tougher than I thought! It must be the stripes.

MINI Commercials

Kossan.se













Heh heh. :)

2008 MINI Cooper S, Yo

Wow - it has been a long time since I've blogged! Since last I posted, the 2008 Olympics have come and gone, I took a couple of weeks off work to slack off, and I bought a new car.

Here, gentle readers, is my 2008 MINI Cooper S. Some say these cars are gay; I say they are freaking awesome.






I've never had so much fun driving a car in my life. These things are crazy. Nimble, fast, and no slouches when it comes to fuel economy and gadgets! A brother could do worse.

iPod, uPod, we all pod for iPod

So the other day, my iPod, a 4th generation 20 GB model from a few years back, started flaking out on me. It froze up, which didn't worry me, since it had done that before, and all it took was a quick reboot¹ to bring it back to life. This time, however, that procedure sent the poor device into an endless cycle of rebooting - a cycle I could do nothing to break.

Fearing the worst, I ran a few diagnostics² to reveal the problem: hard drive failure. Excellent.

Well, I'd been thinking about getting an iPhone for quite some time, because they're so damn cool and stuff. If this wasn't an excuse to go out and nab one, I don't know what was...except that, according to the rumor mill, a new version of the iPhone, one supporting 3G network connectivity, is due out sometime this year - possibly within the next few months - and I truly hate buying expensive equipment only to have it become second-rate immediately afterwards.

Anyway, I needed an iPod to tide me over until I was ready to take the plunge into iPhone-land. I could have gotten an iPod classic for about $250, but then I'd have felt like a chump if the next iPhone model came out a month later. The Shuffle was another option, since I mostly only use my iPod to listen to a single playlist in shuffle mode while working out anyway - and at about $50, the price was certainly right. On the other hand, I knew I'd get frustrated with it if the new iPhone took more than a few months to come out.

So, for about one-fifty, I went and bought myself a nano.

Dear, sweet Lord, is this thing tiny. I put it in my jacket pocket for a little while, and I had to keep touching it to make sure it hadn't fallen out. It doesn't come with a clip, so I bought a nice little incase sleeve/belt clip for it, so that I don't have to hold it in my mouth while I work out, which I could easily do, by the way.

The model I bought was the cheaper, 4 GB model, which is fine; not enough to hold everything in my iTunes library, but certainly enough to hold what I generally feel like listening to in this phase of my life. The screen is gorgeous, bright, and colorful - it's my first color iPod, so I'm still not used to that.

I was skeptical of the whole "watching videos on a two inch screen" thing, so I spent a couple bucks on a TV episode at the iTunes Store. I'd have expected my eyes to be hurting after forty minutes of staring at that tiny little thing, but I was perfectly comfortable the whole time. I'll chalk that up to the nano's sharp, vibrant image. Seriously, I'm impressed.

Oh, yeah, and it plays music good, too.

So, in case you can't tell, I like it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a music player in that particular specific price and feature space. I think it will tide me over until the iPhone 2.0 comes around beautifully. :)


¹ To reboot a 4th-gen iPod, simply hold both the center button and the Menu position on the clickwheel simultaneously for several seconds.

² To enter diagnostics mode, reboot the iPod so that the Apple logo is visible on the screen. Then, hold both the center button and the Rewind position on the clickwheel simultaneously for several seconds.

Now THAT'S a Fortune

How to Celebrate St. Patty's Day Whilst Coding

AWWWWWWW YEAHHHHHH

AAA, beeyatch

Ahem. Sorry. Never done that before!

Tattered Curtains No More

So the curtains that once hung in my living room were in pretty awful shape. I guess it was the afternoon sun beating up on them day after day. They were virtually translucent in parts, and outright torn in others. That sort of thing might have been appropriate in October, but Halloween's over, and it was time for a change.

Mmmm....Fluxy.

Hey, kids! It's time for my semiannual blog post! Be prepared for the sheer, uncompromising nerdity that is to follow. If you have children, you might want them to leave the room.

Some of you may be aware that, a while back, I got totally hooked on the video game Dance Dance Revolution -- or, as I like to call it, Crack for Twelve-Year-Old Asian Girls. I thought the game was ridiculous until I actually played it at my parents' house some time ago. Next thing I knew, I had my own copy of Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova for the Playstation 2, and was spazzing the night away myself.

Until my dance pad, the flimsy one that came bundled with the game, crapped out on me a couple of months ago. The down arrow just stopped working. So I headed out to Best Buy and bought the only dance pad they had, the React Universal Dance Pad. It was one of those soft pads with the foam inserts. It was all right, but not as sensitive as it could have been, and it was hard to keep it from sliding all over my floor.

I did a little research, and found that there is, in fact, one dance pad that everyone seems to agree is the best there is: the Cobalt Flux. It's a metal pad, not unlike what you'd play on in an arcade, and while it cost a hefty chunk of change -- three hundred big ones -- everyone says it's worth every penny. So, I decided I liked playing this game enough to invest in one.

It took them a solid month to get the pad to me. Why? Because they carefully build each one by hand, and then test the ever-loving crap out of it. And they're sturdy, too. Don't believe it? Watch what this crazy son of a bitch did to his. This thing will be the only thing left intact if the terrorists strike.

So, today, it finally arrived. I unpacked it, and, like all things packed in styrofoam, it was covered in the stuff. A little vacuuming helped that. About the first thing I noticed about the pad is that the sumbitch is heavy. I mean, I knew it was going to be -- the box says it's 45 pounds -- but I didn't really understand until I hefted the pad out of its packaging. Cleaned it up, slapped the four pieces of 3M Safety-Walk grip tape it came with on the bottom, plugged it in, and I was ready to rock and roll. And, by "rock and roll," I mean spaz out like an epileptic coke addict.

It's going to take time for me to get used to it -- it's way more sensitive than the soft pads were, and I'm not used to playing with my shoes on. But already, I can tell that this pad is really, really good. I never understood how people could play some of the harder songs and difficulty levels; it just seemed like you'd have to move your feet impossibly fast. After playing a few songs with the Cobalt Flux, it doesn't seem nearly so impossible. Once I grow accustomed to the pad, I get the feeling my game is going to improve like crazy.

Also, it doesn't slip, even just laying on top of my rug! I'm shocked and delighted. I assume the bugger's just too heavy to slip.

So, anyway, if you couldn't tell, the Cobalt Flux rates an AAA for me so far. If you're a DDR nerd like me, you won't go wrong with this guy.

Some pictures for you:


See if you can identify all the various pieces of evidence of my ridiculous geekdom in this photo.



Styrofoamy.




The control box...uh...box.



The pad comes with this thin white film protecting all the buttons. Kind of a pain to peel off, but the buttons sure are purty underneath.



The control box, which houses all the electronics that translate arrow presses on the pad into controller button presses. It's separate so that if it fails, you can just replace the control box instead of the whole damn pad.



And, finally, the Cobalt Flux in its unpacked, gleaming glory.

Just blow out the candles, and have a piece of cake!

So last night my sister took me out to the Genesee Theater in Waukegan to see "Weird Al" Yankovic in concert. And damn, can that guy put on a show.

He did a lot of songs from his newest album, Straight Outta Lynwood, which I expected, but he also kicked it old-school, with such past hits as Fat and Amish Paradise, and he included a medley of many of his songs, past and present.

The coolest thing, I thought, was that he was in-costume for virtually every song. While he sang Amish Paradise, he was decked out in black, hat, beard, and all. He dressed like Kurt Cobain did in the Smells Like Teen Spirit music video when he performed the classic Smells Like Nirvana, like Obi-Wan Kenobi for The Saga Begins, and like Luke Skywalker for Yoda. He even put on the old Michael Jackson fat suit (minus the make-up) for Fat. Crotch-grabbingly good. In between costumed numbers, video interviews were aired -- doctored interviews, in which Al pretends to interview celebrities, using clips of previously-recorded interviews done by others, to hilarious ends. He really tore K-Fed a new one, which was, obviously, awesome. You can see most (all?) of the interviews on YouTube.

For an encore, he busted out the ludicrous stream-of-consciousness Albuquerque, which was awesome. I was impressed with how Al sang for pretty much two hours straight, without missing a beat, only breaking for costume changes, and then used possibly his longest song as an encore. Plus, he made it even longer still, by padding the infamous doughnut scene ("You got any guacamole doughnuts??" "Nah, we're out of guacamole doughnuts!!!").

Words really can't express how awesome a concert this was. If you're an Al fan, and you get the chance to see him live, YOU DO IT. You won't be disappointed.

Here's a photo I took with my cell phone, to prove how awesome it was.



Pretty great, huh? Oh well. Just trust me. It was great. Thanks, sis, for the fantastic birthday present!

Earth's Mightiest Linux Distros

Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated, hasn't it? Since my last post, I've started my sabbatical, bought a sweet new Apple computer set-up (which I'll blog about soon), learned that an ibuprofen-vicodin-melatonin-nap cocktail works great for killing migraines, and came across this in the latest issue of Marvel's The Mighty Avengers (#4):



Wait a minute. Is that...? Look a bit closer...



That's right, nerds! Lithuania's Plokstine Missile Base uses Ubuntu Linux. On the one hand, this is awesome publicity and just plain fun to see. On the other hand, with the speech balloon "Someone's hacked right into the system," maybe it's not such great publicity after all. ;)

Fortified With Eleven Essential Vitamins And Nutrients

I have certain friends who keep bitching about the fact that I never update my blog.

Now, were I a lesser man, I'd leave this post at that, and chuckle to myself at how funny I am. Instead, I'll tell you that my nose is healing nicely, I got a lovely 10% raise at work, and they now make Diet Coke that is good for you.





For those wondering, it tastes to me very much like normal Diet Coke. A little different, texture-wise; my friend Ed called it "smoother." It's as good a word as any.