If you have ever had a computer die on you, you know it REALLY sucks. Sometimes it is something minor that you can fix, other times even the most seasoned computer folks among us scratch our heads and wonder wtf happened.
Unfortunately, I got to experience first hand a significant hardware failure on my Windows XP machine, Megatron (yes, all of my computers on our home LAN are named after fictional characters from TV, movies, mythology, etc.) I have had machines fail before and usually I have been able to salvage them, but this one was different as it seems it completely “fried” itself – the connector from the power supply to the motherboard had actually melted, and the connector from power supply to the nVidia GeForce 7900 was melted as well. Turning on the machine, the fans would spin up, but the board would not do any of the POST beeps, and the hard drive would spin up, but the operating system would not boot, and my monitor showed it was getting no signal.
Not wanting to be bothered I figured I would just forget about it. But after a few short weeks I kept finding times where I needed to have a Windows machine. One night a bunch of the guys were playing Counter Strike: Source but running it on OS X is kind of pain so I did not bother. Another night I needed to test out this database GUI app but it only ran on Windows.
Yes, I am still a proud Mac user, but as a software/web developer and gaming geek I would be remiss not to have multiple platforms available to me. Any given day working in the information technology field I may spend time in Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or Solaris.
It goes without saying that my Windows XP box was a part of my workflow and entertainment more than I had realized so I decided to rebuild it.
Megatron was a good, reliable machine for a few years. It had a nice Asus motherboard with an Intel Core2 Duo CPU, good hard drives, 4GB RAM, etc. Most of the components were premium.
Sadly though, the cost for replacing a lot of the Intel components is not cheap and I was reluctant to buy previous generation items or end of life items that may not be supported in the coming years.
So I opted to build a new rig – Gigantor – built based on the AMD platform this time. AMD has really come a long way over the years. Their performance is comparable to Intel’s offerings, but at a much better price point. I wanted a high-performance machine but on a budget and the economics of the AMD platform worked out well.
Once I decided on the platform, the rest was easy to fill in based on research and word of mouth.
Here is the rundown of the components (pictured at top of post):
MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard (solid socket AM3 board, DDR3 RAM support, loads of goodies)
AMD Phenom 2 955 black edition (AMD’s current top-of-the-line quad core CPU)
Corsair 750 watt power supply (great reviews – my only complaint is that the cables are a pain in the ass)
OCZ Platinum AMD Edition 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM (really nice, fast RAM – currently running at a conservative 1333 6-6-6-24 timing)
HIS Radeon 4890 1GB graphic card (all I can say is this thing is a BEAST)
Creative X-Fi Titanium PCI-E sound card (for some reason most onboard sound cards still suck after all these years)
Pair of Western Digital Caviar 1TB drives (RAID 1 mirror at the moment – eventually moving boot drive to SSD)
Lian Li black aluminum case (great cases but the documentation is BRUTAL – all written in Engrish lol)
Thermalright TRUE heat sink (due to ordering issues I subbed in a Zalman until the TRUE arrived)
All of these components probably retail for $1,500 or so but with rebates, sales, coupons, and some leftover credit on PayPal I think it was all under $900 bucks, which of course I will write off on my taxes next year.
One thing I did not order (completely forgot) was an OEM Windows license. My previous XP license had been activated many times, and I did not want to mess around with XP on bleeding edge hardware, and I hate Vista so I went an alternate route and installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate (I will write up more on this experience later) and it has worked well.
So here is the machine is all built:
The inside of the case has good airflow, and the fans are pretty quiet. At idle my CPU cores are measuring at 28 degrees celcius and under 100% load about 55 degrees celcius which is not bad for air cooling.
Only a couple of annoyances in this process – one was all the extra cables from the Corsair power supply that as you can see in the picture above I stashed in the unused optical drive bays, and the other would be the tiny connectors from the motherboard to the case. They never label them well, and sometimes the pins are not an even match, ie connector might have four pins, but cable only needs three.
Other than that, it has been a smooth experience.
–Jon
A couple of years ago I met a guy online who was working on a book (he is still working on as far as I know) about the rise and fall of the New Jersey shore communities throughout the twentieth century. Through our conversation I mentioned how I grew up in one of the small shore towns, Cliffwood Beach, and we got into talking about the resort destination it apparently once was.
The thought of Cliffwood Beach as a resort community was always beyond me. Through my childhood years there it always seemed to me like just your typical middle-class blue-collar family town. Sure, we had beaches but not many would go swimming in the bay being that it was so polluted. And there really was not much to do down at the beach other than look across at New York or set off illegal fireworks.
But the fact is that throughout the 1950’s Cliffwood Beach was a popular resort community on the NJ shore. It featured a board walk, a saltwater swimming pool, a restaurant, and some amusements. Every summer people throughout the area would gather to enjoy their beautiful summer days at this Raritan Bay community.
This came to an abrupt end in September 1960 when Hurricane Donna came ripping through and pretty much erased the resort area off the map.
I remember hearing stories from family members about the pool and the boardwalk, and the restaurant etc but there was pretty much no trace it ever existed other the stories that were passed down. I had been all over the town as a kid and up and down the length of the beach. Yet still nothing.
Last summer (2008) I decided to go back to my childhood stomping grounds to see if I could find anything that would give me clues to the town’s history as a resort. I really did not see anything other than some old wood from piers (pictured on left) which may or may not have been part of the boardwalk. Still working on determining that.
Despite my best efforts though, I could not determine where the pool was. People I had spoke to told me the general location of where to find it but no dice. A few teens I talked to down at the beach were not much help either.
On a whim I decided to look at some aerial views via Google Earth and almost immediately something jumped out at me – a wooded rectangular area right near the beach. (Highlighted in image to the left – click to enlarge.)
What made this location fitting was it’s proximity to the Green Acres park which apparently was built in the aftermath of the hurricane.
Unfortunately due to being too busy, it has been almost a year, but I FINALLY managed to make a return trip to Cliffwood. I set out right for the rectangular area in the Google Earth aerial and the image to the left is what greeted me. For being so close to the beach it was actually quite grown in with mature growth – trees, plants, etc.
Once I walked up the sandy path a little more to get closer to the overgrown area I immediately saw this aqua-colored outline of what was probably the top edge of the concrete outer wall of the pool. The paint was peeling, but surprisingly intact considering it has been almost 50 years since this pool last saw any use.
Here is a closer view of the top of the wall. As you can see, the color is quite bright and hard not to notice. Once I looked in the right area, the remains of this swimming pool were actually quite easy to find, though I think if you walked by this area regularly you probably would not have any idea unless you were specifically looking for it. The pool itself seems to be completely filled in with soil or sand, and is completely overgrown with vegetation. I am not sure if this was just a natural occurrence or if done by the town to avoid having to deal with it. Either way, it is quite hidden and it was pretty cool to find it.
–Jon
I am sure you have no doubt noticed I have not been updating my blog very much as of late. I think a large part of it is because when I write something these days I tend to focus too much on political stuff, and quite frankly writing about politics these days is not fun or interesting anymore. Far too often I find myself getting headaches out of anger since the more research I do for a piece, the more shit I find that really infuriates the hell out of me.
So going forward I am going to completely avoid politics as a subject around here. People who know me know where I stand, and if I do get the itch to write about politics I will likely post on a more appropriate site such as OpenLeft.
I am also going to remove all of my previous politically-oriented posts from this site. No, I am not hiding nor am I ashamed of what I have said, but I am doing so because I want this site to be a place to share and discuss fun stuff that I enjoy in life. Stuff like geeky tech gadgets, toys, cars, home projects, food, music, life, etc.
If someone is really interested in my previous political postings I have made here and since deleted, they can always use the WayBack Machine. Once you say something on the web these days you best be ready to stand by it because when it is out there, it is out there for good 🙂
Cheers,
–Jon
So tonight I went to do my usual monthly routine of skimming through my spam folders to make sure that there was nothing legit accidentally placed in there. This is far from an enjoyable task, especially on my Yahoo mail account which averages 8,000-12,000 spam emails per month – a drawback no doubt from having the email publicly out there for over 11 years and used for pretty much all correspondence where I suspect I will be spammed.
I can safely say I pretty much fucking hate spammers. If I did not sign up to be on a mailing list for XYZ, DON’T FUCKING TELL ME ABOUT IT.
It is kind of interesting the shit you see in your spam box. And surprisingly it is lacking in diversity as when going through it there are some themes that seem really common.
This got me to thinking, if somehow all email was archived in a cave somewhere, and the Earth got fucked up by a meteor or something, and email was the only way visitors from space got to learn about our society, what would they learn about us if they read the spam?
1. Apparently folks in our society do not need to go to college to get an education – all you have to do is pay some site and you will receive a degree. Obviously this makes you highly qualified.
2. All Canadian pharmacies sell only viagra, cialas, and oxycontin. And everyone needs this stuff.
3. College girls love to masturbate, but only on camera. And only if you visit their site because they have a crush on you. And you pay them money. Maybe they would not need the money if they went to item #1 above.
4. Everyone needs more credit cards. Especially ones from no-name banks with 30% interest rates. But it’s ok, everyone that applies gets one!
5. I am pretty certain if the spam is to be believed I am the only person in the US without a time share! I guess I am not a good member of society.
6. Everyone on Earth seems to have some serious fecal problems. All we need is colon cleanse. Colon cleanse should obviously be a part of your daily consumption as if it were another food group.
7. You should never pay for software, music, movies. You can always get it cheap from China. Everyone in the software and entertainment biz works for free!
8. There is a lot of money waiting for me. In an African bank. Just provide pertinent bank info and await the deposit!
9. No one drives to work anymore. We all work from home making $7,500-$10,000 dollars a month with our own franchises.
10. And last but not least, there must have been a major outbreak of small penis syndrome since obviously EVERYONE needs penis enlargement.
–Jon
I have been an avid fan of real-time strategy games ever since the first time I played Dune II on my old Pentium 90 back in 1993 up through the now-legendary StarCraft. Building up a base, gathering resources, building and mobilizing armies and the rapid pace at which you have to make decisions in a tough, competitive match can be a real adrenaline rush.
I remember back in 1998 when StarCraft first came out that we would play it on the LAN in our office every evening when work was done for the day. Some of the games went late into the night and would be pretty heated. The best times were our 4 vs 4 games. These were the real battles. The rivalries and competitive drive would rival that of cross-town baseball teams. There would be shit-talking, name-calling, teasing, gloating etc. And we loved every bit of it.
Well, that is almost ten years ago, and while some may disagree with me, I have to say the genre has become stagnant over the last 6-7 years with most of the new titles being released either being a) shitty or b) minor upgrade/re-skin of an older title. Then you had good franchises that had a good title, but the factions were poorly balanced like in Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge. No one can tell me with a straight face that Yuri’s faction was balanced.
Enter Command & Conquer 3. C&C3 was released this past spring, but due to my ill-conceived assumptions that it would suck I did not get around to buying it until recently. In fact, if not for a trip to the Apple store and seeing it on the shelf I might not have tried it. But being that I am a happy Mac user who is experimenting with Mac gaming (improving but still has a long way to go) I decided to buy it for the hell of it.
Needless to say I was pleased. The game is fun. The artificial intelligence seems to be a HUGE improvement over previous titles in the franchise. And as far as graphics go this one is probably the biggest leap forward in an RTS game to date. In fact even on my Macbook Pro with it’s substantial specs, setting all the graphics options to full slowed the game down enough to be noticeable.
First thing I did was fire up some skirmish games to get a feel for it. Set up some games with me and three computer teammates versus four computer opponents. A cocky decision – I set the AI for my opponents to “brutal” – in Red Alert 2 I could man-handle brutal computer opponents even out-numbered. In Command & Conquer 3 I got curb-stomped pretty hard.
I had a base in the corner of the map with a substantial defensive setup and the AI was smart enough the find the one hole I had and exploit the hell out of it. I quickly learned that the artificial intelligence is not the same inept AI as in the past. No longer would they repeatedly zerg my most fortified points. At one point they even somehow managed to sneak this massive artillery unit into the thin strip of land behind my base on the border of the map to bombard the hell out of my power plants which brought my defensive systems down and enabled them to hit me from the front of my base as well. I pretty much got my ass handed to me.
Another cool option when setting up a skirmish game is that not only can you set the level of the AI for the computer opponents, but now you can set their style – ie. they can focus on all-out offensive rush, turtle-like defense, or balanced. Combine these factors with the difficulty, and the new handicap modifier the game has a substantial amount of room to customize the battle. Whether you want a near-impossible scenario, or a game where you fire it up and just romp all over the computer you can pretty much do it all.
As with other real-time strategy games, there are many web sites where you can download custom player-created maps to try out. Some are designed to give you unlimited resources so you can really give it to your opponent while others are designed to make it hard to attack the opposing bases by using landscape to create some natural defenses and choke points.
After a couple of weeks doing skirmishes and playing some online games I have started playing the single-player campaigns. So far so good. This is one of those areas where the Command & Conquer franchise has always done well. The storylines are fun and well-written and make the game feel much more alive. Seeing Michael Ironside and Billy Dee Williams among the actors in the game is kind of like an 80’s flashback, but cool although I must admit that I am somewhat biased since I am a fan of their work.
Between C&C3 and the announced StarCraft 2 it looks like the genre may be experiencing a bit of a renaissance.
–Jon
