After a comment I realize I didn’t give the stats from the new PC, so here they are:

• nVidia nForce4 SLI Chipset
• AMD® Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+ 2.2GHz
• 64KB Instruction Cache + 64KB Data Cache
• 512KB Level 2 Cache + 512KB Level 2 Cache
• 2000MHz HyperTransport System Speed
• 2.0GB Dual Channel DDR-3200 RAM (Expandable to 4.0GB)
• (4) 512MB DIMM Memory Modules
• 500GB (Dual 250GB RAID 0 Array) 7,200RPM Serial ATA Hard Drives
• 16x DVD-ROM Drive
• 5x Double Layer DVD+R; 16x8x16 DVD±RW; 48x24x48 CD-RW Drive
• Asus 19” DVI LCD
• PCI-Express x16 nVidia GeForce 6600 Video Card
• 256MB DDR SDRAM Video Memory
• AC97 8 Channel Stereo Audio Chipset
• PCI 56K V.92 Fax/Modem Card
• 56Kbps Data / 14.4Kbps Fax
• Built-In 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter
• 7-in-1 Media Card Reader
• Compact Flash I/II, IBM MicroDrive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital Card
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition (Service Pack 2)
• 535 Watt ATX 12V SLI Power Supply

I have had my computer, in its current incarnation for about 4-5 years now. Through those years I have done little spot upgrades here and there. Maybe a new video card, perhaps a new CPU. For the most part it’s stayed pretty much the same through all of this. I even still have a bunch of the old files I used for shout-casting back when I was with TSN. Well, I am sad to report that the beast has finally died. This really didn’t come as much of a surprise. It had been acting up quite a lot recently. The HDD would sometimes decide it didn’t want to register with the BIOS. The graphics card would decide that it wanted to reset itself at the most in-opportune moments. Overall things were just starting to run slow.

Friday evening was the clincher though. When I came home from work and went to turn on my PC, it came up to the Bios and would go no further. I tried swapping out memory, pulling the CPU, disconnecting the drives. Nothing worked. Ironically enough, just that morning a friend of mine dropped of a Microcenter ad on my desk and I saw a very nice PC that fell into my price range (I had been plotting to buy a new PC for a while now). After my tests I finally gave up and headed out to the store.

Within an hour I had spec’ed out a full system, including monitor, that fell in the price range I had planned on. I even got the full 3 year warrantee on it (covers in home repair). Now I know what some of you might be thinking. Why buy a system like that when you can build it yourself for so much cheaper! Your right, I could have found out what the best motherboard was (from the 8000 current manufacturers) and Checked into the best memory, type and speed, for that motherboard. Then start looking at the 150 different video cards that I could choose from…etc etc etc. And then after all of that I could spend a full weekend Installing and configuring and praying that I don’t run into some sort of compatibility issues. Or, I could spend an hour at Microcenter and get something all ready done and Covered by warrantee so that if a part DOES fry somewhere down the road, I get it replaced. I Build and maintain machines all day at work, Why would I want to do that at home too.

So I now have an awesome computer at home that will last me for the next 3 years at least. I can run all of the latest cool stuff and it looks amazing! And best of all, No quirks (yet)!

Wow, I don’t think I have ever had a daylights savings time hit me as hard as this last one did. I was dead yesterday! Who would have thought that loosing an hour would do that. I figured I would just go to bed like normal. I don’t even think I had issues sleeping. I just didn’t want to get up and dragged ass all day long. (it’s MY blog, I can say ass if I want to). This was a pretty busy weekend as well. Did some gaming, some sight seeing, and some cleaning!

Friday and Saturday can probably get lumped together because all we really did is just relax. I played some DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) (I should be writing a review of that one soon eh?) and Andrew and I watched some TV. Amy worked on her homework and even got out with some of her friends. Andrew actually caught the cleaning bug and went to town on the house. I was very impressed (apparently so was he.) While Amy and I made a run up to the mall to get the oil done on her car, Andrew grabbed the vacuum and went over everything, and got his room in spit spot shape. Now if only it would last.

Sunday was our day out. We packed up the truck and headed for the wilds of DC! Yup, it’s cherry blossom time in DC and EVERYONE ON EARTH is there! Seriously, I don’t remember seeing it that busy out in the parks there. Of course it was a beautiful day to get out and see things. We parked at the International trade center and walked over to the American History Museum. We must have walked around in there for about 3 hours and I think only saw about ¼ of what was in there! Notable sightings were the Information Age exhibit with one of the first Apple computers. They also had an old IBM that is identical to one I still have in my closet. (I should pull that out and power it up.) Amy really enjoyed the First Lady exhibit. And the America on the move side was a lot of fun as well.

After the Museum we headed out to the area around the Washington Monument. The blossoms were full bloom out there and really a sight to see. Andrew got to run around the Monument and Amy and I finally got to sit and rest for a while. Around this time we figured it was time to head home. We still had some time in the day and still had some things to take care of. Everyone was pretty worn out so we even called it an early night and I remember sleeping like a rock. So why was I so dead on Monday?!?!

Anything I put on here isn’t going to be read until Monday anyways, and by then April fools will be over. I had some great ideas for this one too but it’s just not gonna work on a weekend!

This sucks. Here’s a cat

I noticed that the last 3 titles all started with the word good. I guess I should pay a little more attention to that eh? Well, welcome back from a rather un-eventful weekend. This is mostly due to me getting sick on Friday. I am not sure what it was but it felt like a nasty head cold. This really threw the monkey wrench into everything planned. I had wanted to go out Saturday night with Doc but that got canxed because I just couldn’t make it. With a few minor exceptions, Saturday was a total wash for me. I managed to get up long enough to help re-arrange the living room, but that pretty much did it for me.

Sunday was a special day because it marked the 2 years that Amy and I had officially been dating. We didn’t do much that was all that special though. We went out and did some shopping. I got a few things I needed for a special project (Same one and I am still not telling yet). I also spent most of the rest of Sunday working on said project. So far it looks awesome! Outside of that, there isn’t much to make comment about. It should be a pretty slow week as well. I am slowing getting back into working out so I will try and post results from that.

Main topic of the day: Mission accomplished!! I will explain. The weekend started pretty slow. I was planning on going out to the Irish pub Friday evening, because it was St. patties day of course, but after some extra thought, I figured that it would be packed with college kids getting drunk and I would hate to be crowded in by a bunch of slobbering drunk sorority girls getting rowdy and tearing their clothes off while shouting “Kiss me I’m Irish.”

Wait a sec, why didn’t I go?

Oh yeah! I remember, because I have a very wonderful red head at home and she loves me whole bunches. So we did the usual, stayed home, ordered pizza, and watched some TV. I think I might have played a little on the PC but it wasn’t much. Saturday I woke up around normal time and formulated a plan. I got Andrew up and we headed out to Home Depot. I needed some parts. We are working on a special project for one of Amy’s costumes. I would tell you, but she wants it to be a surprise. After that I stopped by a few other stores to pick up some DVD’s and comics. More research of course. Amy had been out with her friend Melissa. When we all finally got back home, Amy started in going through listings to find a car. Around 3:30-4pm she came in saying she found one she likes and it hadn’t bee sold yet. I talked to the guy and he seemed really nice, but he lived in Richmond.

Richmond is about 1 hour and 45min away from Fairfax VA.

I asked the guy if he would hold onto it until we arrive and convinced Amy to just drop everything and head down there. I made it in an hour and a half. The car was in very good condition considering it’s age. We gave it a good twice over and took it for a spin around the block. The guy said he had another woman come by but he was holding the car for us. Amy said she loved the car so we made him on offer while we were still out on the drive. The downside is that he wanted cash. Living in the modern age, I had almost forgotten about cash. Everywhere we go things are handled by electronic means so naturally we wouldn’t be carrying around that much cash.

Thus begins our next adventure. We tell the guy that we are going to hit an ATM and that we will be back. Now see here’s the thing. We have the money. We actually had more then what he was asking. But Amy had stocked it away in her savings account. Some of you may remember that banks only allow you to pull out so much per day. We tested that theory. She had already pulled out some money earlier so we tapped out on her card first. I managed to have a good amount available so we hit my card next. I was able to pull out a little more. All totaled we managed to get almost all of it between the two of us. (That’s a lot of 20’s)

We called the guy back and thankfully he said he would accept a check for the remainder of the amount. To make things worse, we got lost on the way back to his house. We finally made the sale and Amy got to drive her new baby home. The guy was even nice enough to give us a call after we got home to make sure we made it okay. She went into overdrive to make sure she got the Insurance and registration done. So now she is fully able to drive it. Amy has her own car now! From what she said, this is the first time she has owned a car by herself since she was 16 years old. She is super excited about it. It’s a 95 Dodge Neon. As you can tell from the picture is a dark reddish maroon. It runs very well. So a huge congrats to Amy!!!

Well, I finally get around to commenting on this last weekend. There was some good and some bad of course. Overall it was a pretty laid back weekend. The timeshare thing was cool. It was absolutely beautiful out this last weekend so it was great to get outside and do things. On I went with Amy to help out with her new room. She recently got a promotion and now is a Lead Teacher for the First Steps room at her school. This means she runs her own room and is an awesome step in her career path. We went over to work on cleaning up the mess of a state that the old teacher had left the room in. It’s going to be super organized when Amy gets done with it. Andrew even got out to a local school fair. We rounded out Saturday night with a good game of pool. Andrew even won one of the games.

Sunday was the big travel day. We needed to be down in Fredericksburg by 10am so we left really early. Every other time we went down to the burg it has taken about 2 hours because of traffic. Lesson learned: Not much traffic at 8am. We got down there way too early, but that’s ok! There is a HUGE civil war battleground right next to this resort so we drove around and stopped to read the plaques, even got out and adventured around some of the cannons. I got a few pictures but haven’t ported them off the phone yet. It was really fun to get out and see some of our nation’s history first hand.

The timeshare thing was at this place called Wilderness / Presidential Resort. I have to say, it was really really nice. It reminded me a lot of those family style resorts like in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” We got there and met our tour guide girl, (I think her name was Stephanie or something) and she took us around the lake for our 90 minute tour. Along the way we chatted about everything (and I do mean everything, she loved to talk). 4 hours later we head back to the clubhouse to discuss prices.

She explains that there are two packages for the resort and that the “Gold” package is only available to us that very day. Original price of the package was $14k. This of course was a $3k down payment and the rest financed. I was very quick to explain that there was no way in A-ch Ee double hockey sticks that we are able to put that much down. Guess what happened, magically the price dropped to $11k and $2500 down. Still a no go for us so she headed over to a manager to wrap things up for us. Mister suave comes over and pulls out a timeshare machete to hack down that price yet again, Now it’s $7k total with $1200 down. Amazing what those machete’s can do.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t have that much money in the bank right now (and if I did it would be paying off other things). We declined again and Captain suave said he had to go talk to someone, so he gets up and we chat more with Steph. When he comes back he wheels up the Timeshare guillotine and WHACK!!! Amazingly we could get the whole package (minus a few extras that we didn’t really care about anyways) for ONLY $4500 total and $750 down. Did I mention that we started at $14k? We sadly declined and managed to make it out of there with the following lovely parting gifts:

2 sets of Accommodations for a number of places
Ski package for 4
Golf package for 4
A Check for $20 for gas
A Hat
A water bottle
A Canvas sack

Not a bad haul and we got to spend a super nice day walking around a lake resort. After the resort we headed down to see about a Car for Amy. Sadly we didn’t get one at this time but we have some good prospects. I don’t want to get into specifics on this trip, but the dealer was Awesome and he took good care of us. Under different circumstances I would go back there anytime (Hendrick Honda in Woodbridge, in case they want to send us any free stuff (: )

That should pretty much catch you up on the currents. I am still doing the super busy thing at work and if I actually get some time at home I might be in EVE or NeverWinter Nights. More on that last bit next time.

You know, I really miss writing in my blog. There was a time when I could get away for 15-20min or so and type out what was going on. Now I get so busy I have to force myself to go down the hall to the restroom! Things at work have stepped up at work a ton! I am now the lead on building an entirely new network with all member servers. Right now, active directory is kicking my ass. I’d like to be able to deploy all my required software using group policy, but for some reason I can’t get my MSI’s configured to run correctly on each users account. Of course I also need to copy over the group policy from our existing network so that the security settings match. That means going over the current GP with a fine tooth comb and matching it to the new one.

See why I haven’t posted? And that’s just 2 small things I am working on. I have a board of like 30. I need more time in my day.

I do have some exciting news though. We are making a road trip this weekend down to Fredericksburg. It turns out that Amy won some contest and we may be getting a pretty cool prize! Of course we have to go down and listen to some 90min speech on how a timeshare would make our lives easier. But hey, I can sit for 90 min and then say no just as easy as the next guy! I am sure they will probably come back with some off of like $500 or the Mystery Box. Because you know, $500 is just $500 but the Mystery box could be anything! Even $500!! And you know I could use that!

After the wonderful time we are no doubt going to have at the speech, we are heading to Woodbridge to a car dealership there to hopefully get Amy a new car! Well, not a new new car but a “new to her” car. We haven’t had the best luck getting her a car of her own lately. Sadly her credit got extremely screwed over by a former party and she has had very little luck getting it rebuilt (Yeah, it got screwed over THAT bad, Thanks former party!) We tried going to Eastern motors “Where your job is your credit!” and they were absolutely horrible! They overpriced their cars beyond belief, they openly admitted that they sell personal information to anyone they want. They actually wouldn’t let her proceed without signing a waiver that stated she was ok with them giving away her personal information. And we wonder why there are so many telemarketer calls and spam in the world. These people endorse it! Want some free blog advice? (and who doesn’t) STAY AWAY FROM EASTERNS!

Anyways, we found a good little Honda dealership that specializes in second chance credit with no BS about how your Job is your credit. With any luck, we may win enough from this timeshare speech to pay for a good chunk of the car! We’ll see. I will do my best to report next week on how this all went. In the mean time, it’s nice outside! You should go out and enjoy it!

Wouldn’t you know that some new profound information would drag me for my hole to post something about it. An important gaming announcement was made recently:

“SOE will be developing and publishing a game based on the DC Comics universe for next generation gaming platforms and the PC. It is expected that Lee will serve as Executive Creative Director on the game, bringing his artistic flair and talents to the world of online gaming for the first time … said Jim Lee; ‘The truth is that I love gaming as much as I love drawing and telling stories and look forward to bringing the DC Universe to life for players and comic book fans all around the world.'”

How many things that I love will Sony be F&%$ing up? I love Star Wars. Star Wars Galaxies came out and SOE screwed it up. Planetside, a massively multiplayer type of tribes game, had such potential, and SOE screwed it up. Everquest…… Well, everquest was ok, but SOE still managed to make that crappy. Are they determined to make everything they touch turn to utter crap? Not to mention, with City of Hero’s already out and running good, what the heck are you going to do in a DC world? Are we going to have 200 Batman’s running around? If you could make a “Kryptonian on Earth” style of hero, You have all of superman in your pocket, what could you NOT do?

Ugh

Anyways, you are probably wondering where I have been lately. The honest answer: Super busy. Sadly I haven’t even sat down to game all that much. This last weekend I did a lot of driving around and work on a special project that will be named at a later day (I know how much you hate when I do that). Just when I finish one project at work, 3 more spring up. It’s pretty bad.

To sort of recap, Farpoint was a lot of fun. I managed to get a few pics. I took most of the convention as a chance to just relax and hang out with friends. I only got into costume for maybe an hour. It was just nice to get away from things and chill. Andrew had a lot of fun. He was a tad overwhelmed at the dealer’s room but found his niche in the game room (of course). The part I was most proud of is that he avoided the group of kids huddled around a lone PS2 in the corner and instead chose some of the board games and pen and paper games. He even managed his first game of D&D. This coming weekend will be the “Lets stay home and spring clean” weekend. We might get out to Fairfax, but when I do that I end up just spending money. I really will try and post more later.

Of course, by the time I finish writing this it will probably be mid afternoon. Not sure why but when I sit down to write a post while I am at work, these people keep coming up to me and ask me to do stuff. It’s so very annoying. Not too much been going on this last week. Just your typical running around and being busy with work. Tonight we leave for a “mini” vacation up to Baltimore to attend Farpoint. This is an annual convention that happens in mid-February. This is also Andrew’s first convention. I know he is really looking forward to going, but he has no idea how close he came to not being able to.

13 year olds have no brain. I am convinced of this. I would really like to know when they get this brain back. We have been scrambling to get some of the packing and cleaning done through out the week so when Friday came along, we could just get in the truck and take off after work. Part of the big chores is the laundry. I had thrown a load in Thursday morning and needed it put into the dryer, (they were jeans, those take a long time to dry). So when Andrew got home, I kindly asked him if he could take the clothes from the washer to the dryer. After that, I didn’t think anything of it. That is, until I got home and checked the dryer. The clothes were in there but still soaking wet.

“Andrew, did you do what I asked with the laundry?”

“Yup”

“Umm, Did it occur to you that when I asked you to put the clothes in the dryer, that I might like for you to START THE DRYER!!”

“Oh, ummm, no”

It’s not like I even asked him to put more clothes in the washer, so there shouldn’t have been much confusion.

1: Open washer
2: Open dryer
3: Take clothes out of washer
4: Put clothes taken from washer into dryer
5: Close Washer
6: Close Dryer
7: START DRYER!

Later that evening, I walk into his room to find him laughing at a video he downloaded. I ask him to clean up his room a bit because there is a pile of clothes lying on the ground and he knows he is not supposed to throw dirty clothes on the floor.

Wait a sec, Those are all jeans.

Those are the jeans I took out of the laundry Yesterday!

ON THE FLOOR!!

This would be the part where my head very nearly exploded. He couldn’t even explain why the clean jeans that I had put on his bed for him to fold were just thrown on the ground. Not but 2 months ago we had a discussion about this same topic because he had taken the clean clothes off his bed and put them in his chair. He got in trouble then too. I was an Inch away from saying that the convention was canceled.

So, when does he get is brain back?