24. November 2009 by Terry.

So its been a couple months since I last wrote on here, a lot of thats been because I haven’t had my comp.   I was using my aspire one for my net needs for a while until I could afford to build my new tower.   But since I got my promotion at work I was able to afford it a lot sooner than what I originally thought I was going too, AND I’m gonna be able to afford dual monitors on this one, AND I won’t have to pay for them really as I’m planning on getting 2 of the 20inch acer lcd’s that best buy is gonna have on sale for black friday.   At 80 bucks a pop  I couldn’t resist, and since I’m getting my sprint rebate for 150, its really like I’m getting them for free.   I did get the tower built though, and had a fairly decent setup for the money I spent I think.   Quad core amd @ 2.9ghz, 4gb ddr2, decent board and a mid range ati that overclocks fairly well.   The thing flies in multitasking apps, running rhapsody while transferring a file, while writing a paper on google docs is nothing to this thing.   It was running a virus scan and a spyware scan at the same time the other day and I didn’t even notice because the cpu percentage never went about 8…..damn.Speaking of google Docs….I had never really given much thought to the suite until I used it the other day.   While I don’t think it can be a serious contender against office, for someone like me its perfectly capable of most if not all of my needs.   For basic tasks that your able to access anywhere, its awesome.   For now at least, I’m gonna go without installing office and see if I ever need something that docs cant give me, but right now I don’t see anything right out I’d be missing that much.    Plus win7 is pretty quick at the moment and stable as all hell on the new rig, so why bloat it with older MS software?

I did get a chance to watch a couple of movies this weekend that were both entertaining and thought provoking at the same time, although not directly in the way they were meaning to be.   The first was I love you beth cooper……ya know your basic geek goes after girl type……while it wasn’t that entertaining in the wow I have to go out and buy that right now way, it was interesting in the way that I personally related to it.   In middle school and high school for the most part I was that guy in the movie, the geek who couldn’t even get the girl he was infatuated with to even remember his name let alone talk to him.   While its hard to believe I was ever as bad as him, as most movie geeks are over exaggerated  enough as it is, I felt for the guy.

The second was a movie called away we go.   Its a movie about an unmarried couple who end up getting pregnant, and then travel across the country in looking for the right place to live and raise their daughter.   The cast of the movie was your basic mid level tv actors but what was really good about it was the story’s that their friends and family had along the way.   They were at times funny and at others they were heart wrenching, but they were always just as equally interesting.   I think the most relevant point in the film was when the lead female role turns to her male counterpart and asks him a question in these words, “are we fuck up’s?”.

It wasn’t the question that got me, it was the feelings and general doubt that resonated from her voice as she said it.   They were 34, and she talked about how all of there friends were married with nice houses and beautiful kids already and they didn’t have any of that yet, as if they got left behind when everyone else decided to move on with there lives.   I can relate to the sentiment of feeling abandoned when you watch all of your friends leave on their own journey’s on different paths than your own, watching them get married and start families when you haven’t done anything like that yet.   So in that respect the movie very much hit home.

In another way it made me think about the direction that many of the movies I find myself drawn too anymore are heading too.   There’s no doubt that screenplays are being written by younger crowds now and I can’t help but think that it shows just how disenfranchised my generation is that there’s no longer the classic love story, or the classic super hero story……only shades of gray.   Watchmen for all intensive purposes was a super hero movie……but it was nothing like the classic good vs evil story’s from growing up.   You never see the good guy get the girl he’s always wanted anymore, he almost always realizes what he’s always had in his best friend.   And you see movies like away we go……or Elizabethtown  that tell a story, but in the same respect get you to look at your own life and examine it over and over to see if you can relate to the characters on the screen.   Does this mean that were trying to live through our favorite characters?    I think not, more so that its just my generation of film makers coming into there own.

Don’t get me wrong, just because the guy doesn’t get the girl in the most overly written love story doesn’t mean they aren’t showing the romance in our modern day.   Were a much more emotional and free spirited population now, much more than I would say we ever were.   Its okay to question things now, to wonder if the family with the white picket fence is really whats best for you in the end.   Its okay to question your decisions in your life, and the films today are the epitome of that movement.   The film makers are simply going through the same thing, writing it down similar to what I’m doing right now, and putting it to a much more emotional and thought provoking visual.   One thats not so direct to say “Hey, Look at Me! I’m Trying TO make you reconsider Your Life!”, but leave the option open if your own psyche allows your mind to wander that way.

Warhol once made a movie in the same arena.   He kept a single camera on a building for 18 straight hours, nothing happened in the entire film until the last 10 minutes when the sun had finely set and all of a sudden all the lights in this tall giant building came on.   Reviews of the movie ranged from pointless, to poetic, to genius….all different paths based on our own psyche……….are all of our movies made by Warhol these days?…..one can only wish.

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11. August 2009 by Terry.

As some of you know, after my roommates (j and technically shelby) moved out last year I’ve been pretty screwed money wise.   Well, J decided to move back in to save us a little money so thats definitely helping right now.   I’m still broke but not nearly as broke, which is always a good thing.

I met a girl on match last week that I get along with fairly well.   She’s very much her own person but very much dedicated to her son.   And before anyone starts giving me crap, I know that I said I’d never date anyone again that already has a kid, but for some reason she makes me want to.   I have to look at the reality of the situation right now.   I’m 25, and I’m really ready to settle down and start my family but I’m picky to the point where its detrimental to my love life.   This girl…is cute, and funny, and unique like I am.   She’s intelligent and has those lisa lobe glasses that drive me crazy…lol   I thought about it today that If she ever asked me what my first impression of her was, that I’d say she looked like a real life version of Velma from scooby doo, because she was a hip hip lady…lol   Velma to me always seemed to get the shaft.   I mean she did all the actual detective work, but fred and that skank daphne got all the credit.   Scooby and shaggie just got high (scoobie snacks anyone?) and went looking for munchies all the time…and I’m pretty sure that scrappy was the illegitimate love child of scooby and some random bitch.    I mean think about, they throw scrappy off a train in a box?   Who the fuck does that?…lol   So I vote Velma…….at least they made her hot in the movie….lol

I’m just kind of rambling right now because I’m too tired to focus on my book anymore and I’m waiting to see if Kat will e-mail me.   And I very much like her name……Kat……short for Katarina……..very cool.

Peace.

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9. May 2009 by Terry.

So….the RC of Win 7 came out a few days ago…and aside from having some really annoying wireless issues (fuck MS for not letting me use Unsigned drivers in the X64 edition) I’m thoroughly enjoying the software.   The interface is pretty wicked, almost good enough for me to not install objectdock, but we’ll see after a couple weeks if i change my mind or not.   I really don’t have many issues at all with the OS, its pretty rock solid so far, not to mention faster on my new tower than Vista is/was.  

While I’ve never really been a fan of MS Media Center, I have to say that it is pretty slick and fluid in Win 7.   Not enough to replace Media Portal in the HTPC but still, maybe enough for me to install new setups with for customers.   I’ll add more later.

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3. April 2009 by Terry.

So, Built the new rig about a month ago, its running sweetly, as is the MAME cabinet with the now donated P4 that I was using to test the Win 7 beta.   On a side note I have to say that the whole process of actually setting up the cabinet for MAME was amazingly simple, in fact the hardest part of the whole ordeal was gutting the bad arcade crt and the wiring.   Granted the 17 inch wide screen thats in there now is very ghetto’ly (is that a word?) mounted, it works.   Still haven’t wired up the marquee or the power for the coin door lights, but its miniscule stuff that I’ll do one lazy sunday probably.

Anyways, me and my good buddy Matt came up with an awesome Idea a couple years back when we were both working at the east store.   Matt does custom airbrushing, ya know the realistic flame, hot rod flame, skulls, etc.   I thought it would be a cool idea if I could get him to do a realistic flame case for me, because for one it’d look sweet as all hell, and 2, because I might be able to sell them.    So, exhibit A is the pic of the case before Paint.

and exhibit b, after paint….

Pretty wicked huh?

And thats BEFORE wet sand and buff, thats this weekend.

Only a few problems considering this was our first attempt at doing a case.   First off, I taped the case up.   I taped OVER the drive bay covers so they wouldn’t get covered with paint, problem is that by doing that the paint didn’t lay exactly the way I wanted it to on the edges of the drives.   This isn’t really a big problem as I can just lightly sand the clear a little smoother around them, but next time I’ll just remove the covers entirely and tape behind the panel.    The power led, as well as the hd led and reset button were a PAIN IN THE ASS to tape up, so next time I think i’ll remove those too, I didn’t wanna take the time on the trial run considering they were hot glued in.   Its hard to tell, but the front vents on the bottom of the panel, the dial to open and close them was painted, but since its cheap plastic the paint rubbed off the first time I opened the vents, no biggie, just get all the paint off and touch it up with some 99 black.   One thing I didn’t think about is how much dust would accumulate inside the front panel when it was sprayed, it came right off but jesus christ it was dusty.   And the biggest problem I have is that the temperature last weekend when matt sprayed it wasn’t exactly warm outside, therefore some of the pearl ran a little.   Now I’m gonna try to wet sand it out, however I’m very weary about going through the clear and into the base, but say la ve……If I do go through, I Might just have to wet sand the whole thing a little more, and re-clear the panel with nasons aresol clear and start the process over again.   But for the amount of stuff that went wrong, I’m very happy with the results.

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28. February 2009 by Terry.

So……..its tax return time…and to many that means that bills get paid, money gets saved, etc……….not so much with me.   Lets see over the last 3 years because of my tax returns I’ve bought my 46 inch wide-screen LCD Sanyo….my PS3……and some odds and ends.   However this year I decided that I would build myself a new tower, considering I had to use my P4 for my MAME Cabinet.   So I was faced with a decision to make.   I had a budget of about a thousand bucks to work with.   One thing I really wanted was a bigger monitor, so with that in mind I decided on a 22″ Wide-screen Acer.   Suckers huge compared to my old 17 inch Standard res.   Another thing I wanted was a system that I wouldn’t have to overhaul again in a year.   I’m not a DIE HARD PC gamer, so the option of SLI was there, but I decided against it for now.   Storage was also kind of second fiddle on this build as well.   Case wise I wanted to go with Cooler Master Cosmos case, but just couldn’t bring myself to spend the extra 200 bucks on it when I still had my perfectly good Cheiftec full size windowed just laying there.   So, taking that into consideration, here are my new specs.

Cheiftec Full Size tower case

AMD 7750X2 Black Edition (I decided to stay dual core because honestly, triple cores are useless and I don’t multitask or game enough to warrent a quad core of the same clock speed).

4gb ddr2 1066 OCZ 5-5-5-15

320gb Sata HD

Dual Layer SATA DVD Burner

Biostar TF8200 A2+ Motherboard (heat pipes on north and south bridge chips, as well as some pretty decent reviews, decent onboard video and optical audio with onboard HDMI, future board for the HTPC should I later upgrade to AM3)

Cooler Master v8 CPU Cooler (good lord this thing is fucking massive…lol)

OCZ Fatal1ty Modular 550watt SLI Rated Power Supply

XFX 9800GT 512mb ddr3 Video Card (I could of gone with a Gtx240 or so, but for a hundred bucks more it just didn’t seem worth it to me.)

Vista 32bit (Student copy, plus I don’t see myself using more than 4gb’s of ram for anything in the immediate future.)

Asus Wireless Card

Rosewill Media Card Reader

Logitech 5.1 speakers (Same speakers I’ve had for the last 5 and half years…………just cant killem…still work great.)

All in all I spent around 600 on the system itself, and then another 150 on just odd and end stuff I needed for around here.   Personally I think I came out on the right side of it.   I didn’t need anything extreme, and going AM3 was just too iffy, there’s only 3 or 4 boards on newegg that even fully support it and ddr3, and I refuse to buy intel.    Upgrade options later on are a faster quad core (when software is actually WRITTEN for quads), and more ram should the need arise which wont be anytime soon.   Build time took around an hour as I had to figure out how the v8 mounted onto the board, and it was a bit akward mounting the board with that hunk of stuff on there.   Overall though I’m very happy.   vista installed in about 10 minutes.   Didn’t have to install any drivers really, downloaded latest vid drivers, and installed the board drivers and I was pretty much good to go.    And might I say, I installed the demo version of DeskScapes from Stardock………that is some cool software, not sure if I wanna drop the 20 bucks on it, but its still really cool.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that it has the coolest red ambient glow from the PS and the Cooler……….looks devlish in a way….lol

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