yorkfield

I am tired of waiting and waiting for Intel to get its act together about the new processors, so I went to Newegg and bought everything else I need. It's some fairly serious firepower, with the exception of the $85 stand-in CPU.

metox

I bought a radar detector this weekend. This is not so much out of expectation of immediate benefits so much as learning the capabilities and idiosyncracies of the device for my next car, which will surely be a much better target for those who may not appreciate my exuberant driving style.

The CPU I want for my new PC is allegedly released, although I still don't see it anywhere. It also seems the case I was looking at is going out of production. I will probably have to throw out all my research and look at the newest parts and that sounds like way more of a pain than I want to get into right now.

My automotive dark horse has surfaced again - it is apparently being officially revealed in New York this week.

the walls suffocate

I've overslept my alarm the past two days. Fortunately nobody at work notices if I am ten minutes late. However, the time has come to resolve this annoyance. The problem is not that I forgot to set my alarm clock forward, but that it has picked preciously this time to have the snooze malfunction. This may be due to a low battery, but since I can't be sure I need to set an emergency backup clock. The emergency backup clock is atomic, or rather 'atomic'. One would imagine using an 'atomic' clock would be simple:

Step 1 - IT SETS ITSELF.

Unfortunately the reality is more annoying. My 'atomic' clock had apparently most recently decided daylight savings does not exist, and since "it sets itself" I have no manual override to set it ahead one hour. Instead, I have to remove the batteries and put them back in to trigger the autoset. This autoset receives information via radio waves, and as I've covered in previous rants EM waves are unable to penetrate Lake Oswego. In the meantime it thinks it is midnight on January 1st. I have been successful in the past by putting it in the window, but tonight I have it fully outside and it receives absolutely nothing.

in the sodium light

The weather perked up a little this weekend. Today it was 63 and sunny. I've perked up as well, as my cold has faded away. I went in to Portland today to find the OSU bookstore. It was in the one chunk of town I can barely navigate. Unfortunately the store didn't have a heck of a lot, so I went down to the riverfront and explored a bit there.

the runway lights are the deepest blue

Everybody at work is getting sick. There was something going around and then my boss brought something back from his trip to Oklahoma. I have managed to avoid it so far as I do a lot by email and I'm wearing a mask half the time anyway. It may have finally caught up to me though, as I have a bit of a sore throat. I don't want the Oklahoma Flu.

I recently bought Command & Conquer: The First Decade. I already own almost all of the compilation except for the expansion pack to Tiberian Sun, which I have just finished playing. I thought the compilation would just be 10 CDs, but they've actually packaged everything from the original to Zero Hour on one DVD, which is extremely convenient.

Buying that game was interesting. It cost $24.99, but the first time it came up on the debit card reader it said $24,990,000,000,000.00. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a picture on my new cell phone. I told the cashier I wasn't feeling generous enough to pay off the national debt. The second attempt was $0.02, but I didn't get to keep that.

I've pretty much sorted out the artwork in my music collection, but I haven't really sorted the collection itself. I did just get the Ace Combat 6 soundtrack, which some blog had packaged with the Halo 3 soundtrack for some reason. As far as the new iPod goes, I got an acrylic case so the stupid edge that kind of annoys me is covered up altogether. The menus are still a bit laggy at times though.

it's just not enough when i'm awake

IPod Mk. II has given me a great new game to play. The cover flow feature has revealed an entirely new layer in which my music is not sorted, as my odd taste in music means a lot of albums don't have artwork. Now I have to chase down every album and make sure something is uploaded to the iPod. It is tedious and yet I find a fun aspect in it.

The other new game is called convert videos. That game is not so fun because it sucks up all my CPU runtime for extended periods of time. I am starting with Top Gear Series 10.

i was sitting in the highest tree

I've made a fair amount of noise ranting about the new iPod but this weekend the weather was nice and the sun was out and I went out and bought one, the 160GB Classic. I figured I should get it broken in before it's the night before I'm on a plane to Germany. Actually I figured a lot of things, I'm good at rationalizing. I creatively named it iPod Mk. II.

I finished watching all of Futurama. Including the first movie, which is so full of in-jokes you have to watch the entire series ahead of time to understand it.

so never known before

I finally reinstalled C&C3 on my computer, and it doesn't bluescreen this time. I was able to finish the third campaign, and on reflection it is not a particularly good game. I was waiting for the expansion but it actually doesn't sound that good either. Thanks, EA, for flushing another awesome franchise down the toilet.

I was in an Apple store this weekend and I played around with the iPods some more, and it seems like Apple has finally gotten their act together and fixed the terrible software bugs in the iPod Classic. They still need to take a belt sander to the edge before I will buy one though. Either that or work will stick me on a plane to Israel and I will buy something fast to not go crazy.

am i still asleep

Bad things are afoot. Leftlane is talking of rumors about GM making a hybrid Camaro. What the hell. It might mean a hair more mileage and instant torque, but it will add weight, they will strip down the rest of the car to compensate and it will still be way more expensive. As if the V-8 weren't already far enough out of reach.

two points never separate

I had a decent weekend. It was Superbowl Sunday, so I made an impromptu purchase of a USB TV tuner...then remembered I get almost no TV reception at my place...and then I got bored with the Superbowl after the kickoff and did more interesting things. Like fixing the toilet. I also started working on my taxes but this is the first time I've done them myself so I have no idea what I'm doing. I bought some DVDs as well, so I watched the first disc of Futurama.

More work tomorrow. I have to remember my iPod - I forgot it on Friday and if I don't have it I can't focus on computer work. Right now I've got five songs on loop I could listen to forever. I'm also going to bring in my Master's diploma that finally showed up so I can make a copy for my cube. I was maybe supposed to show up for work on Saturday, but that was a vague assertion by people who aren't my bosses and the MRB team made a pact to not go in. We couldn't have made a substantial dent in our work anyway.