My desktop is turning 6 years old this summer.  It is slow and old and crap.

My current setup is an Athlon 2100+ on an ASUS A7V333.  Running XP, used to dual-boot with Mandrake way back when.

For the new system I'm looking at this:

CPU:            Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
Cooler:        Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro   
RAM:            OCZ Platinum 2GB PC3-10666     
Mobo:          Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L LGA775 ATX
Video:          GeForce 8800GTS 256MB

Total price is around $600, which is very do-able in the next month or so.  I solemnly swear I will not try to water-cool this one.

Other recent toys: I got a Linksys Wireless G router a week ago to network my PC, Laura's PC, and my laptop.  The software install on those things are total crap; I ended up uninstalling the mess and just going straight to 192.168.1.1 and configuring the router directly like a normal human being.  Router password and key were made with PW generators, and for some mild security the router is SSID silent and MAC filtered.  I ordered a wireless print server online which will hopefully work; reviews are less than stellar but there aren't many other alternatives, and trying to share the printer with multiple computers throughout the apartment is such a pain in the ass that it's worth a shot.

I also got a Mandylion password token from Thinkgeek as a Christmas present to myself, which I use quite a lot.

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So I update this journal pretty much never.

Recent news:

Working in Japan again this fall; came here late September and I'll be here until Christmas.  So now about halfway through.  Working a little bit on the tourism thing.  Got two late Hojo castles done: the ruins at Takiyama in Western Tokyo, and the rebuilt castle of Odawara in Kanagawa.  I'll likely hit Hachioji and perhaps one or two more before I go.  Also considering the Imperial Castle tour.  Went to the Tokyo Motor Show on November 3.  Went to the pre-dreadnought battleship museum HIJMS Mikasa on November 11.  Planning to go to a major flea market in Tokyo this weekend.

Nothing terribly exciting regarding cultural hilarity.  An unfortunate aspect of having semi-decent Internet access in my room is that it's much easier to get in touch with people and tell them weird stuff as soon as it happens; thus I'm less inclined to write up a travel log.  Oh well.

I'm posting most of my pictures in photobucket: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v59/alchemy3083

Also: I'm getting married in September 2008 for those who didn't get the memo.

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http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

http://www.overspun.com/?p=1549

http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html

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http://gprime.net/video.php/nintendothemesacapella

-J

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LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

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http://www.fabuloustravel.com/globe/hachiko/hachiko.html

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If I post cool things to Livejournal, people will like me, won't they?

-J

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Pushing is the answer
We are the Cassahern robots
We are here to protect you
We are here to protect you
From the Terrible Secret of Kabuki

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Melancholy thought of the evening
I wanted you to know I kept all your letters. I just didn't want to tell you.

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The other day I was babysitting my four-year-old cousin.

In her explorations of the house, she came across my Super Nintendo carts. Looking through them, she picked out Super Mario All-Stars and demanded to play it.

I set up the console, plugged her in, and off she went.

She immediately selected Super Mario Bros. Never got through the first level, but hey, she got farther than I ever did the first time I ever played it, and I was at least twice her age then. Had a hell of a lot more patience as well.

After a while, I suggested she try Mario Paint and all was well - she kept herself entertained for another hour or so.

I think, with a bit of encouragement, she may turn out to be the first gamer chick in our family.

Very exciting times.

-J

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Okay, time to assess. Here are the current specs for my PC:

System
Asus A7V333 motherboard
Athlon XP 2100+
512 MB Kingston DDR333
Radeon AIW 7500
Soundblaster Audigy
3Com NIC
Linksys Wireless PCI adapter

Drives
Antec Sonata case
Matshita 2x DVD-R/RW (black)
Samsung 40x CD-R/RW (black)
Samsung FDD (black)
Quantum 20 GB HDD
Maxtor 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD

Accessories
ViewSonic VA520 15" LCD flat-panel display
Logitech cordless keyboard and cordless optical mouse
Logitech 40 watt 4.1 channel surround sound system

Well, it took a year, but I think I finally have my perfect PC. At least, for a little while.

-J

Current Mood: pleased

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Procionred's overhaul
Replaced old/busted case with l33t Antec Sonata.

It's an utterly fantastic case. Well-designed, fantastic finish, no sharp edges, beautiful drive mounting system with screw-on drive rails and rubber-dampened HDD trays, ultra-quiet 380W power source, dedicated variable-voltage Molex connectors for rubber-dampened case fans, sliding/locking side door, locking drive door, removable filter behind the front bezel, and pretty front lights.

It is astoundingly quiet - the only sound is the slight vibration from my 80mm CPU fan. But the most amazing part is the airflow is so much better, despite being so much more enclosed, that I'm getting CPU and motherboard temperatures about 20 degrees F below what I had in the other case. Given how stifling it can get in this room, that's quite a good deal.

I'm tempting fate in using my old Quantum Fireball 20gig drive as my C:, but I so hate leaving a (so far as I know) perfectly good piece of computer equipment lying around. I plan to throw in a third HDD to complement my other 80gig drive at some point, as well as putting back in my Zip drive and an old HP DVD-ROM, the latter to make it easier to copy DVDs should I ever want to. This would of course require three more spots on IDE chains than I have, so I'll need a card soon.

Admittedly, it's all a ploy to occupy every bay in this case.

I'm reinstalling programs at a decent rate. Luckily, I managed to get rid of a bunch of crap I never used but couldn't figure out how to install, so there's already a benefit there. Admittedly, there were easier ways to go about that, but the fact remains that my wireless PCI card is working a lot better today than any other day I've used it.

Incidentally, I crushed my only stick of 256 MB Corsair XMS DDR333 when putting it back in (I removed it to get some dust out), which made for some interesting behavior the other evening. I spent about two hours checking every mall between here and Boston (there are three, so far as I know) before finding a suitable replacement at the second Best Buy.

Can anyone tell me why Kingston is selling 512 MB DDR333 for $40 a pop with rebates? I thought the price was off, or the memory itself was exceptionally bad. If I can get my memory tests in Sandra to go well, I think I'll buy another one.

Yep. All's well in PC land here.

Also, not a single call-back on any one of the seven jobs I've applied for yet. So that sucks.

-J

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My sister and I seriously used to do this.

This is a hilarious comic.

-J

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Wireless network is up. w00t.

With the wireless PCI card, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, wireless ATI remote control, 40 watt surround-sound system, lasers from my Samsung CD-RW, Panasonic DVD-R,RAM and the PS2 wired into my video card, I have in effect a device of pure cancer sitting beside me.

I'm almost sure RF doesn't cause any serious medical problems. In any case, I'm amazed all these devices work together - you'd think one or two transmitter/receivers would be unhappy with another.

By the way, the Gemstar channel lineup, one-click programmable recording, and TV-on-demand function, all working together, have the potential to make me the laziest person alive.

Well, time to go paint the garage. Still raining, and about 50 degrees out, but I can at least do some preparations. Supposedly, it gets warm enough to wear short-sleeved shirts sometime during the year here in Massachusetts, but I think that's a myth coupled with false memory syndrome.

-J

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Cartoon Network
rocks my freaking socks off. I'm sorry, it's really gay to say so, but this new Adult Swim "fill" campaign - the ~10 second animations sandwiched between episodes - beats all their others, which were themselves the best of their kind on TV.

The "fills" consist of black screens with white text and a white matte of some easily recognizable anime - Zenigata running, Spike's spacecraft, Inuyasha drawing his sword, etc. The only sound is an instrumental part of some light jazzy emo song apparently by indie bands in Atlanta. The text appearing is as follows, to the best of my knowledge:

"It's Monday.
Time for Adult Swim.
Monday. Start of the working week.
. . .
I can't think of anything to say.
Seriously.
Alright.
'Welcome to the working week.
I know it don't thrill you, I hope it don't kill you
Welcome to the working week.
You gotta do it till you're through it so you better get to it.'
-Elvis Costello"

- - - - - - - -

"Why is it that Austin got the Bebop movie?
What about Atlanta?
I mean, nothing against Austin
But we put Bebop on the map.
Come on.
Where's the love?"

"Wow, I wonder how they'll get out of that situation?
Okay, we don't really know what just happened.
We write this stuff months before it airs.
But we still love you."

"Okay, that's the end of Adult Swim.
Something is up next.
Maybe Powerpuff Girls.
Or not. This stuff changes all the time.
They'll tell you what's coming up next anyway.
At least, they should. . ."

-J

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Finally got my DVD burner working. Backed up most of my music on 2 DVD-R's and 35 VCD quality (?) episodes of anime on another. I'll back up the rest of my anime later, but I want to keep this stuff on my computer, for a while, in case I want to do more playing around with Windows Movie Maker 2. I'm using TDK DVD-R's (burner didn't like the Maxwells) which seem to go for around $3 apiece and write completely in about 60 minutes. Hell of a lot better to leave the burner running and go do something else than to sit there and pop in and out 7 CD-R's.

Not too bad for a $130 Ebay purchase, even considering the pain in the ass it was to get it to work. It read/writes DVD-RAM as well, which I probably should have bought to back up my music, since I keep fixing filenames and ID3 tags all the time.

Now that the six-month Get The Goddamned DVD Burner Working project is finally finished, I'm looking at doing the following modifications on Procionred:

Two-channel ATA card and a second Maxtor 7200RPM 80GB liquid-dampened HDD. I'll install an older 20GB drive as my C drive and partition it into about 3 to 7 logical drives for the various parts of different operating systems: WinXP, Linux, and Win98 boot or root directories, Linux swap file, Win98 program files, WinXP program files, etc. Though, odds are, I'll only install WinXP. The two Maxtors will be on separate chains and partitioned for music (20 gigs), TV programs (60 gigs), movies (60 gigs) and whatever else I can think of. They will all be NTFS, which makes the whole Linux thing even less likely. I might consider using a RAID card instead, and I briefly considered USB and SCSI drives before deciding the price would not be worth it.

New case. My old one is badly built and thus loud. I'm thinking maybe an Antec Sonata, modified (perhaps by myself) in the manner of www.acousticase.com and using their sound-dampening materials.

More RAM. Corsair DDR333 XMS in 256 and 512 to bring me up to 1GB and make video editing all the more easier.

Better AGP card - one with a decent GPU, at least 64 megs of DDR, coax/Svideo in and Svideo/VGA out, remote control, and programmable capture ability ("Tivo," "Replay on Demand," etc.). The Radeon All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro is very, very tempting; however, I don't want to have to deal with a fan on a GPU (more noise) if the card itself is far more than my motherboard can use anyway - the slot's only AGP Pro, which (I think) will support only AGP 2X and 4X. I'm thinking more along the lines of the Radeon AIW VE/7500, which is about $130 to the 9700's $350, or thereabouts. Until I upgrade my motherboard, CPU, and monitor, I don't think I'll notice any difference between the two anyway. Better to wait a while, use the 9700 or much faster card in my next computer (at which time I should have a good enough job that a $350 purchase would not be as big a deal) and use the old computer as a home theater PC.

Now there's just a matter of getting a job so I can afford this stuff . . .

-J

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I'm trying to do this "culture" thing I keep telling other people about, but as I feared, there isn't much more I'd want to do in Boston than I would want to do in Greenville - I know none of the local bands or the local digs. I sort of wish I had a local Max to introduce me to college bands, or that the real Max weren't such a goddamn Luddite that I could get in touch with him and ask him about a lot of these names. He's a great guy and all, but you still need a freaking carrier pigeon to get a message to the guy.

Regardless, I plan very seriously on seeing Ben Harper in June and Elvis Costello in July when they play the Fleetboston Pavilion.

I plan to hit a few local clubs, but I'm not too excited about the big ones - I'm more comfortable in the hole-in-the-wall coffee-bar college dives filled with artsy folk, where I can drink just enough to enjoy cigarettes and discuss artsy ideas with girls wearing black berets, where everybody appreciates the musician for both his talent and his ability to play quietly so one can listen to his guitar or to the person beside them with equal ease.

In other words, I am looking for the goddamned Clemson Uptown Sushi Bar.

Damn. No matter where I go, I'm always looking for the things I left behind. Ah well. In a city of one million people and nearly a hundred colleges, there's sure to be something for me.

If not, hell, nothing ties me down - back to Greenville I go.

The search for part-time work has been ended - I care not for such wastes of time. The search for full-time engineering-related jobs is beginning, and will begin in earnest within two weeks, it looks.

If anyone in Greenville or elsewhere has even an inkling of an idea of vacation plans - road trip, European vacation, hitting the beach, Vegas, anything at all - please alert me. I am endlessly open for things regarded as "fun," though I find myself unable to come up with a plan sufficiently interesting or financially realistic.

-J

Current Mood: optimistic

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Well, I'm back in Boston again. Place is pretty much as I left it. I dreaded living with my family again so much that it far surpassed the actual difficulties, so I'm living comfortably. I'm doing some reading - finishing Chaos, started to breeze through The Dark Tower series again, and might pick up a few bushido books I have lying around.

I need to contact some professors - smooth things over with some, recheck the willingness of others to be used as references. Planned to do that today, but I slept until noon and have plans this evening, so I'll do it later.

Current plans include moving books into the sunroom, setting up my computer in my own room, setting up my video games and playing them excessively, and applying for a job within the month.

I'm always open for vacation plans. I haven't a single set obligation for the rest of the summer, and I would like to take advantage of that.

-J

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Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Well, that's it. The last hurrah. Graduation, that damned beast that's been looming over me like its big brother Death, has ensnared me in its claws. So many of my fellow classmates are going directly into jobs, or grad school, or medical school.

I have no such goals, immediate or eventual, pragmatic or fanciful. I don't care for engineering, nor do I care for research, nor do I care for wasting away for 40 years in a chemical plant.

With the balance on my credit card right now, the thought of *not* getting an engineering job is fundamentally absurd.

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-J

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