Well, a friend of mine FINALLY managed to get their movie up on Youtube.  You should check it out, it's a really funny (dare I say, hilarious) sci-fi short.

And, totally unrelated, I've got these two pictures I was just fiddling with for no reason.  I prefer the roses (arranged by beth, colorized by me ;)

Nothing much going on today (so far as I know) other than the winter weather passing thru.  Supposed to be over by tonight but *shrug* who knows.   Maybe I'll even get lucky and not have to go to work.

Intel's new E4300 is out:  and I have to be honest, I never thought it'd launch at a price SO CLOSE to the price of the higher end CPUs.  It's supposed to be a bargain dual core and it's the better part of $200 (well, $189 to start on newegg, but it's dropped now to $179, this is a retail box with heatsink).  In fact for a while it was actually MORE expensive than the faster part.  I know...people think "but overclockers..." but overclockers are a minority.  Most people still think deadly rays will shoot out of the computer and mutate anyone nearby into slimy monsters if you run the CPU 1mhz beyond the arbitrary figure they list on most CPUs.

AMDs new X2 3600 is also out:  and the price is right if you're looking to get in at the bottom with a dual core setup..$115 (again, at newegg...although that's the OEM version, no heatsink).

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

New Motherboard:  A friend got me a new motherboard...WOOT!  It's not the best overclocker but it's not so much for the overclocking as it is for...getting me over the technology hump painlessly.  Right now I've got all this hardware...an AGP graphics card, DDR2 memory and, if I wanted to go with a Core2Duo, I'd need a new board anyway (old board doesn't support it even though it's a socket 775 board).  This has DDR/DDR2 slots, AGP/PCI express and supports conroe.  Anyway, as I said, it's not the best overclocker (hoping it's just a setting I haven't found that needs to be tweaked) so I was going to try to get a bit more out of it by raising the core voltage of my processor.  This board doesn't have VCORE (remember, it's not to help me overclock, it's to help me upgrade later) so...I had to manually set the VCORE with modifications on the CPU pads...which brings me to...

Well, I was digging around last night and realized that my GPU was one of the ones that could have the extra pipes unlocked after all.  WOOT!  SO...the card went from 12 pipes, to 16 pipes.  33% more umph...so basically my card's been turned from an X800GTO into an X800XL.  Was a little freaked out there for a bit on the first attempt.  The card wouldn't work after I flashed the BIOS that time.  Luckily I have PCI graphics cards laying around.  Switched to that, set it to use the PCI card first and presto...I was able to flash the card back to a workable state.  I think it had something to do with the checksum.  Now I kind of wonder if it's worth doing a voltage mod.  That would most likely only get me another 25-50mhz...but it'd still be nice.  As it is my card's running a touch under 50% faster than it was supposed to.  With a volt mod that would be more like 60-70% higher.  Oh well.  For now I think I'll just enjoy the boost as-is.

*sigh* looks like I'm going to have to buy another nibbler.  The old one just isn't anywhere to be found...DRAT.  Probably just mixed up in all our junk that's been jammed into every available bit of closet space and such.  Pity...I've wanted to modify a few metal cases and as always, I've wanted to do it in the middle of the night : \    Heh, you can't cut up sheet metal in the middle of the night with a dremel!

WOAH!  Man, just a little while ago I caught an almost lethal whiff of one of the smelliest humans...well, the worst I've ever smelled.   I used to work with a crack head that we used to joke about needing to take two showers...one with his clothes on, one with them off.  Relative to this guy, however...that crackhead smelled like a bar of ivory.  Even now, an hour after they've left, the section of the building they were in smells terrible...the hallway leading to the room they were in smells worse than that crackhead.  I dare not check the condition of the room *shudder*.  If any human needs someone to follow them around drawing stink lines where they stand...this one is it.  WOW!  I was so obliterated by his olfactory assault I didn't

Finally got in my new heatsink.  Drops the max temps to what used to be the idle temps on my CPU at it's old overclock.  Now, however my dual core P4 will work at 3.8ghz (lol, and out the window go those better cooling numbers).  Unfortunately the power supply starts to squeal at that load.  the 12 volt rail (which at lower overclocks hangs at 12.2 volts or more) drops to 11.6 volts under load...and that's without the GPU doing anything to suck up even more.  So...for the time being I dropped it back to 3.6ghz.  I guess I really will need to stick a second PSU in the case.

Of course, after waiting for a UPS shipment most of the day it turns out that...I had to go to work.  Fan-motherfucking-tastic.  God that pisses me off.  Anyway I've changed my customer type on newegg to small business in hopes that they'll stop shipping me shit WHEN I'M NOT HOME!  *sigh* oh well...at least I had to wait on another package tomorrow anyway.  Main thing of course is that I was PLANNING on taking a nap afterward and now I'm going to be dragging all night.

BTW, finally found a script to convert to chinese dates so I added the Chinese Moon festival to the logo lineup.  Might also add one for the chinese newyear.

Also added one for international talk like a pirate day...an amusing, unofficial holiday :)

So...I was at the grocery store today.  As I pulled into the parking lot, someone was pulling out...slowly.  I mean REALLY slowly...about a minute to pull out of the space.  Kind of freaked me out.  So I go inside and immediately come across an obstacle, a moron without direction going in a complete circle at the entrance...creepy.  I notice everyone's walking unusually slow, lots of couples shopping, walking side by side, some elderly folks.  I zip thru a closed checkout line to avoid the amazingly slow people entering the normal way. 

Heading down the front aisle I notice a woman strolling at about 1 step per second straight across, I head down the baking supply aisle to avoid her...as I do two people walking (once again, slowly) side by side notice that they can't fit past some oblivious shopper.  I wait.  I sip passed, getting annoyed with all the people paying no attention to anything around them and walking like they're in a "last one there gets a million dollars" race.  I turn down the main, center aisle and YET ANOTHER person sloooooooowly pulls out, never looks in my direction.  I she looks around like an idiot for a couple seconds before moving.  I head down the soft drink aisle...morons AGAIN walking side by side, oblivious.  I get my soft drinks and head out.  It just keeps happening, idiots walking side by side at rates that...quite frankly I CAN'T WALK COMFORTABLY.  I either move or I don't...WTF?  People on crutches usually move WAY faster than all these people.