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By Keith, March 9, 2010 4:30 pm

With my income tax return, I decided to build a new computer system.  This would be my second home-built machine.  My current PC, Tsunami, was thrown together way back in 2005, so I’m really a little over-due for a new machine.

A few weeks ago I began putting together a spreadsheet of all of the components I wanted.  It took me a day and a half just to decide upon a case.  After long deliberation (and talking to my system-building-genius friend Josh), I settled on the Cooler Master HAF 932.  I put a lot of blue LED’s into my last build, and came to regret it on nights I left it running.  The damn thing lights up half of my room.  This new HAF case will only have one red LED in the front, and I don’t plan on modding it at all.  Due to the size of the case (full ATX), I’m giving this system the name “Godzilla.”

For the motherboard, I put in the ASUS P6X58D Premium mobo because it supports CrossfireX (a multiple graphics card standard) and supports Intel’s Core i7 (LGA 1366) CPU.  Another selling point was that it does USB 3.0.  I don’t yet have any toys that do USB 3.0, but I appreciate the future compatibility.

The CPU I’m putting into Godzilla is a quad core i7 920, 2.66GHz.  It’s still in a box on my desk, because I’m waiting for my CPU cooler to arrive (hopefully tomorrow).

UPDATE:  GODZILLA IS BORN!

I know how much the internet likes pictures, so here are a few for your enjoyment.

Godzilla

Empty Case

With PSU No CPU yet

Missing Graphics Card(s)

CrossfireX Bridge

Fully Loaded

Through the Window

Through the Roof

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By Keith, March 6, 2010 1:18 am

I don’t do different things to be different.  I do different things because different is often far more interesting.  That’s why I joined a new social networking site that couldn’t be more different than Facebook.    You could say it’s a lot like Twitter, but it’s definitely NOT Twitter.  I joined t.sina.com.cn, a Chinese social network.

Why would I do this?  Why does it seem that I have forsaken Facebook and Twitter for a social site in a foreign language?  For me, there is great appeal in talking to people quite unlike myself and unlike most of the people I see and communicate with every day.  I feel the need to be exposed to a different culture, and if I can’t afford to travel right now (because of Godzilla), I might as well put the web to good use.

I’m not on Sina to collect friends.  I’m unlikely to ever rise above 20 due to the language gap.  I was surprised to have any reciprocal ”fans” (what followers or friends are called on this site) at all when I logged on this afternoon.  After all, I had just created my account Thursday night, becoming a fan of only a few handfuls of promising people.  Some who have become reciprocal fans have noted how few Americans are on Sina.

There are no virtual farms or other games to play or spam messages.  It’s basic communication, something I have missed in American social networks, and now I am enjoying something different.

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By Keith, March 4, 2010 11:33 pm

I took tonight off from work, but I have nothing planned.  Big mistake.  Now I’m a little bored so I’m re-watching the latest episode of Lost.  Not one of my better ideas considering I’ve nearly lost all interest in this show this season.  It’s not because they are simultaneously showing what is going on with the parallel universes.  Its ludicrousiosity has greatly exceeded a level I can stand, and this vexes me.  Characters in the island universe just run around not telling each other what is really going on while people in the off-island world run around ruining their lives and the lives of those they care about, but have no real purpose.  It’s a bland and flaky formula of throwing together gratuitous action with some mysterious secrets that amounts to a bunch of ambiguous nonsense.  Throw in some terrible child-actors and a lot of meaningless extras, and you have a most unsatisfying final season.  I guess we’re supposed think “OMG! The show has gone all Apocalypse Now!  Cool!”  Meh.

Google Reader had new stories in some of my subscriptions so I read one from The Crescent (think “curved pastry with egg or sausage”) -News, the awful Defiance newspaper.  From the opening sentence, I thought the article was going to introduce some new merchants or restaurants coming to town, but then I made the mistake of reading the entire (poorly written) article.  Lots and lots of one sentence paragraphs, some of which articulating nothing new or specific at all.  I don’t know why I even bother reading anything from The Crescent-News.  Their writers are dreadful.  You would think English was their second language until you realize that most of them have probably never been out of the country.  Any way, the article turned out to be a bunch of disjointed sentences stating the obvious; times are tough, new businesses might be attracted to Defiance after the highway construction is done, and that Defiance has space available in case businesses do decide to locate here.  Duh.  My favorite part of the misleading article was the picture of the “reporter” standing in a snowy parking lot in front of the vacant Super K-Mart building in a cornflower blue sweater over a shirt with the collars sticking out as if he’s saying “Yep, this is where those new businesses I erroneously named (except he wouldn’t use that word.  He’d use several smaller words that mean the same thing as ‘erroneous’) we’re not getting isn’t going in.”  Ohio too is locked in an alternative universe of 20 years ago.

See what boredom does to me?  Makes me cranky!

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By Keith, March 4, 2010 2:17 pm

Democracy is a powerful force for good in the world.  I used a poll to determine what I would do with my Facebook account, and I intend to harness that force once again to decide which draft blog post to finish next.

There are 7 (not counting this one) unfinished draft posts sitting in a bin on my blog.  Some of them date back as far as September of aught-nine.  Most of them didn’t get finished, because I got sidetracked by other interests or just lost focus on where I was going with them.  You can help me with this!

Below, you should see a poll for you to vote on which drafts you would like to see me finish.  Because I sense a great deal of apathy in the air, I’ll let readers vote for 3.  That’s right, you get 3 votes for the price of 1!

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By Keith, February 28, 2010 12:46 am

It’s the middle of the night, and I’m looking for things to do so that I don’t sleep.  I don’t want to sleep, because I’m on 3rd shift, which means I’m working nights and sleeping mornings.  While I sit hear listening to a classical guitar stream from Shoutcast, I’m seriously considering going out on Facebook in a blaze of snarky brain-eating zombie comments Sunday.

I probably won’t do that.  Although very few people have voted in my poll regarding what I should do with my Facebook account, I’ll probably just go along with the response receiving the most (3) votes.  In the afternoon, I’ll check it again to see if there’s been any movement.  I suppose I could just leave my account active (if that’s what people want), posting only on special occasions like award ceremonies or zombie apocalypses and such.  It’s not as though Facebook will be missed by me all that much since most of my friends do have my email address and no how to reach me.  And I have this blog that I have been neglecting.  Oh look!  Actually, you can’t see it, but my notebook’s temperature is 49° F. </random>

The future is getting brighter.  Time I had spent elsewhere can and will be spent right here.  I’ve already removed my Facebook account from my TweetDeck client on both of my notebook’s primary operating systems.  That was a large step in the right direction in my separation from the book of faces.  After tomorrow, I’ll remove Facebook from my Speed Dial thereby adding another small hurdle to my accessing the site.

As you can see on the right side of the page, I’ve added recent Google Buzzes for people to see the type of stuff I frequently link to.  I wish Buzz would catch on with more of my friends, but I doubt most of them have any interest in learning  and adapting to yet another social network (if you can really call it that).  Buzz isn’t exactly straight-forward in its use, and doesn’t have a lot of shiny applications/distractions.  Its simplicity is exactly why I like it.  With a browser extension, I can easily link to a news story or anything online really, and drop a comment on it.  People who follow me can see the link, see my comment, and reply.  But it won’t catch on, not with my friends.

On a completely different note, I was watching Paul Merton In Europe, a show on BBC 5 (at least I assume that’s what the big “5″ in the upper left corner indicates) earlier tonight.  What a fantastic show this is!  Why aren’t there shows like this here in the United States?  Paul is traveling through Europe, talking to extremely interesting people doing extremely different things, and he does it with such flair and a sense of humor that I never get tired of watching his adventures.  Okay, enough chatter.  I’ll watch episode 1×5 now.  I believe he was heading to France next.

Have a good day light dwellers.