The 200 meter breast stroke event in the olympics...all I have to say is that it's WAY LESS INTERESTING than the name implies

Nvidia questions...apparently there are rumblings about MASSIVE FAILURE RATES of nvidia's 8000/9000 series product lines.  I should probably update the computer parts suggestions to reflect that ...ie, just not recommend nvidia until this is settled.  On the other hand, nvidia just enabled physics acceleration on most (all?) of their 8000/9000 series cards...so there's a lot of potential there.  On a third hand, once someone fully ports nvidia's CUDA to ATI (and I hear individuals are close to having it done), PhysX acceleration will be available for them as well.  Oh well, in the mean time I'm thinking I should pick up a super-cheap (but workable) card to do a cascading downgrade (my older card back to my machine, that card to my wife's machine, etc) just in case my 9600GT fails.

And speaking of video cards, in almost entirely unrelated news the new Team Fortress 2 update for the heavy is due out next week. That'll be interesting, massive waves of massive characters lumbering slowly onto the battlefield and firing chainguns at each other at point blank range. Heh, hopefully one of the new "weapons" will be part of a kit that includes a damn helmet that'll withstand one headshot at least.  Heavies are almost totally useless if there's a sniper about because of their slow speed.

Internet...I've been having problems with it.  Damn cable line OBVIOUSLY has an exposed area somewhere that's affected by moisture.  It basically goes out every morning (thankfully it's while I'm at work or cooking breakfast for the wife) and then finally comes back up after it warms up.  Of course, it rained yesterday *sigh*...so no internet.  I called them to fix it.  It was particularly annoying because it ALSO took out the cable.  Of course, I'd already decided that I was going to switch to DSL.  They'd called just the day before to point out that I could get 6mbps DSL (roughly what cable claims and yes I know it won't hit that speed) for a bit over $30/month plus $100 cash back for ordering high speed and an additional $125 for having left cable. Yeah, $20 cheaper per month AND $225 cash, sign me the hell up!

Monitor stuff...at this point all my monitors are from dumpsters.  Last one died recently.  John's got another for me...YAY!  Now I'll have a monitor for the spare computer (and I also need that monitor when I'm doing computer work)