neat stuff!

The chassis didn't arrive till nearly 8PM yesterday, which means between the late arrival and my sick puppy I didn't get everything done that I would have liked to. Poor guy couldn't keep any food down and I was slated to take him to the vet this morning. Fortunitally he was doing much better when we all woke up so I went into work. We'll see if I can get him to eat a bit.

I did get the machine mostly built though, but ran into a few hiccups. The memory is speced for 800MHz, but I haven't been able to get the system to POST past 533MHz, not even 667MHz works yet. I'll need to tweak it a bit more tonight. The other thing is that with the SATA controller in RAID mode, the SATA optical drives don't work right during the Windows install, so I'm loading from an IDE drive instead. Microsoft is really going to need to get on that for Vista.

Yes, you heard me right. SATA optical drives. I've decided to use no IDE for this build. Unfortunitally SATA optical is hard to find. Plextor makes the only SATA DVD burner, and it's over $100. Lite-On makes a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive for only $30 though, so I picked up one of each. I'd like to have dual Plextor drives at some point, but that will have to come later.

The Lian-Li chassis is fantastic; better than I even imagined. Practically every screw holding the chassis and components together is a thumscrew; you can dismantle the entire case using practically no tools. The aluminium is very solid and thick, even the slot covers are unusually soild for what is generally a cheap, throwaway piece. While I would have liked to see rubber grommets on the hard drive carrier to lessen vibration, the cage did not scratch and rub against the drives like I thought it would. They even ship a bracket that allows you to mount three drives horizontally as opposed to 5 drives vertically. Why you'd want to do that, I dunno, but they give you the option. The entire chassis is very well crafted, and I mean the most well crafted chassis ever. Oh, and there's no plastic. Literally. Four plastic feet for the bottom of the chassis and a few sockets where the front bezel mounts, and that's it. This thing is solid. (Oh, and the front bezel is a joy to remove. It literally just pulls off, though it fits very snugly.) Did I mention I like this case?

So here's the final lineup for the parts:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz, 4MB L2)
Intel D975XBX Mainboard
4 GB OCZ DDR2-800 Memory
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Platnium
2x Western Digital SE16 250GB SATA Hard Drives
Plextor PX-755SA SATA 16X DVD-RW
Lite-On SHC-52S7K SATA DVD-ROM/CD-RW
Antec TruePower 550w Power Supply
Lian-Li PC-60B PlusII Chassis

I took pictures during the build last night that I'll put up later. Few things to add still, I'd like to replace the fans with blue LED models if I can find some decent ones. I have a pair of blue cold cathodes that I'd like to mount as well, but may not if it looks like it's going to screw up the wiring.

Onto the odds and ends:

Folding@Home is announcing a client for the PS3 and for ATI graphics cards. This will be a great boost to their computing power.

Wegner goes too far...

It's official. Pluto is no longer a planet.

That's it for me! =)

intelligence? haha

Ever since Jeff told me that he reads my site for its “intelligent” prose I’ve been wondering just what he means by that and how I might live up to it. I suppose that may mean I have to stay off of subjects like things I find at 4chan or somethingawful.com and instead comment on insightful articles at The Economist or something.

I’m looking through a box set of New Order that my friend Ava Ann has lent to me, which comes right on the heels of the Röyksopp CD I got just before that.. I still get the best music by referral.

I suddenly remembered that I never mentioned the goodness that is askaninja.com. There you have it. It is awesome.

I finally broke down and bought a webcam the other day, and it is pretty cool. Unfortunately the AIM clients do not seem to interact with each other properly, and I refuse to load anything AOL on my computer. Skype has video functionality in beta though, and my friend Erin and I have so far found it to work rather well.

New computer parts are on the way. This will be the first “from-the-ground-up” system I’ve built in nearly three years. The lineup so far:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Processor
Intel D975XBX Mainboard
OCZ DDR2 800 Memory (4GB!!!)
ATI X1900XT 512MB Graphics Card

Haven’t finalized the rest yet. I head down to GT in Woodbridge this weekend in order to grab a chassis and a few other things. The name has already been decided on; those of you who know anything about me may be able to guess. I might announce it when it’s built.

The weather has been wonderful here, and it’s really been pissing me off. Probably because I haven’t had the time or opportunity to enjoy any of it. I can feel fall around the corner; I’m not sure how I feel about that. It will be the first semester in college in which most of my friends have graduated. Granted, I didn’t even attend the same school as many of them, but it feels a little out of place.

Making some headway towards moving out though. Looked over some rental properties this afternoon, I think this place in Shirlington is going to be my best bet. Doesn’t look have bad either…I’ll probably check it out in person this weekend.

Back at it.

So some of you may have noticed that this page has been down a while. Turned out that my network card actually got loose and the connector nearly snapped off. I'm using the onboard NIC, which works fine, but the presence of a 10/100 device on my network really bugs me, so I'll have to get a new gigabit card to put in the server.

Aside from that classes has been keeping me busy this summer. Both have been really excellent though. The first, "IT and the Global Economy" discussed a lot about globalization and how information technology enables business to be conducted on scales previously unheard of. For an IT class we went over a lot of economics as well. It was a terrific class. There’s a video series we watched as part of the class called “The Commanding Heights” and I’m honestly considering ordering it on DVD. There’s a book it was spawned from, but the video is very good itself. You can actually watch it for free on the PBS website. (Click the “Storyline” link and then select “see the chapter menu” to watch the episodes.)

The professor proved to be quite popular and so about half of the class (myself included) signed up for “Information Warfare and Defense” the following month. Kinetic vs. non-kinetic attacks, network-centric warfare, precision-guided weapons, network and internet attacks, the works. I put together a small website on satellite technologies here that could be a little better, but it’s a good overview for what’s out there. A lot of work involved in this class though, today I have to give a plan to the class for our mock “cyberwar” and describe how our team (a cult of wired technologists who defend mosquitoes. Don’t ask, teacher picked it) will attack and defeat the rest of the world (U.S.A., Greenpeace, Al-Qaida, North Korea, and the NRA.) I was originally pretty gung-ho about it until I realize how much it sounds like a plan by Dr. Evil.

Did I mention that I pay more for this single class that my friend Erin pays for an entire year of schooling in France?

That last one was a cheap shot, the schools in France don’t really compare.

My friend Molly flew in from Germany yesterday, and since the news isn’t covering anything except Lebanon, I’m assuming she arrived safe and sound. Won’t get to see anyone till Saturday at best, however.

The Escapist has a neat article on race and gender in video games. I’m really starting to like that publication in it’s coverage of game culture in general. Intelligent reading, 4TW.

On that note, my friend Chris and I have realized that had we possessed drawing skills, we might actually be able to make a good Gabe and Tycho.

I’m done, that wraps this one up. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I’m still obsessed with EVE Online, and I’ll probably rant some about it next time. Expect a change in the theme of this site to reflect my favorite game’s dark nature.

Currently Listening to:

New Order - Republic

la Oreja de Van Gogh - en Directo

Cellador - Enter Deception