"More Posting"

So my plan was to go back the post right before this one and continue it. I was going to do that some time later on the 22nd or the 23rd. Well it's now the 30th and I never went back to finish it. So I'll write more in this post instead.

So where was I? Ah, the new PC. Yes it's pretty sweet. It's a 7600 NVidia video card. Any higher and I'd be paying way to much (think $500+). For the CPU I think I should have saved some money and got an AMD 3700+; a mere single core. But also much less expensive then what I got: a dual core 3800+. Again any higher and it'd be in the preposterous mad-money range. I want a decent PC sure but lets not go over-board! I also bought a new case/chasis/whatever you call it which didn't come with a PSU. That I bought separately. About $100 500 watt edition. That's so I can eventually add a second video card to do some mad SLI gaming. Every time I build a PC I have the eventual goal of, you know, just upgrading the components instead of the entire PC (like I did this time).

Oh and in case you didn't know this AMD 3800+ is a 64-bit chip. So when the Vista Beta was released to the public that's the one I got. Vista I'm not so impressed with. Vista I don't really feel like going into.

I also tried the "Windows XP x64". I didn't like it so much. There are no drivers the wifi card I was using and both my favorite software firewall and my favorite anti-virus (AVGFree) don't work on it. Are there really any advantages to it? I doubt it.

One thing I've noticed these last couple months is how I've started to lean back towards buying more and more PC games. I thought once I bought oblivion there'd be no need to buy any more PC games for quite a while. But instead I've purchased Civilization 4, Dragonshard, Titan Quest, Space Rangers 2 and probably more. And I've hardly made any progress in Oblivion. Civilization I played for a couple weeks but couldn't figure out how to get the high scores. I'd to be a better leader then Nero! Dragonshard I also played but didn't get too far. Space Rangers I should really go back and give a fair chance. And after all that I just bought "Titan Quest", an action RPG I had never heard of, yesterday. I've played it about 15 minutes so far. Why did I buy it? Why don't I just Play the other 20 or 30 games I could play? I don't know. Just can't help myself I guess.

I've also been buying a lot of HDDs lately. Mostly because Fry's is selling so many 300 gig HDDs for only $80 or $90. I mean, how can you beat that?? One I added to my new PC for all my programs, apps, etc. Then I bought another one along with a USB enclosure for further storage. And just yesterday I bought yet another HDD mostly because it was only $80. This one was slightly different: my first SATA drive. This I did because the cables are so much thinner then even the rounded IDE cables. So I swapped the IDE 300 gig with the SATA 300 gig. The IDE 300 gig I moved to my old desktop I'm planning to make into another PVR box for TV recording etc.

The OS for that box I put onto a 40 gig HDD, leaving the entire 300 gig to store recordings. Eventually I would actually like to put the motherboard and other components into a different casing (like an old stereo).  ¶ 6:32 PM 0 Comments

 

"Wow, a long time"

So this time I've really waited too long to write again. I can go through phases of heavy and light writing, right? I'm aloud!

As mentioned in the last post the contract is "supposed" to last until late July. Well it's late June and I have no idea when the contract is ending. I'm assuming I'll make into July if not to the end of July. There just isn't anything to do for the lease roll agents such as myself.

Speaking of which we started with four lease roll agents. Then one left for any number of official or unofficial reasons I won't go into. So there was the three of us. Then just two days ago a second guy was let go. Again official and unofficial reasons. This second one was my buddy. I'd been shadowing him for a while when I was learning and going to lunch with him. I even contributed a couple entries to a join blog he had started (haven't done that for a long while either).

Then he and the security guard at my building realized they both loved the tabletop Dungeons and Dragons game so they started playing together. And since I didn't seem to object they invited me. Well I was always tired or ill or whatever and not that good at role-playing. I have a feeling I was annoying everyone else. Not everybody can adlib lines in-character on-queue. So sue me.

All these DnD sessions were at the security guard's house. We'd playing every Thursday night. Then for no explained reason said security guard simply stopped accepting calls from either myself or my buddy from work. Seemed a little strange. I mean I had trouble role playing sure but he and my buddy seemed really good friends. But ya so whatever then. I don't play DnD no more.

Since then we've had a lot of down time with a few full weeks sprinkled in. But mostly down time. But lots of over time on Saturdays when everyone was gone.

So here I am a theoretical month before the contract is out and I get a chance to interview for another firm (you'd definitely recognize the name) which would be a guaranteed year contract full time albeit for a dollar less then my current job. So it's either stick with ATT for unspecified amount of time and get lots of free over time or move to another firm, which probably won't have over time, be a dollar less an hour but be guaranteed another year. Ok maybe it sounds obvious. But my boss seems to really like me and I really like my job and everyone I work with. Also this second as-of-yet-unnamed-firm is about 20 miles closer to my house. So possibly the gas money would make up for the dollar less an hour. Also the traffic wouldn't drive me nearly as insane.

On non-work related fronts of information this new game, you may have heard of it, called Oblivion. I bought it the first day it was available for sale. Knowing full well my PC probably couldn't run it. So I thought "ok, I'm not going to bother installing it on account of I know my PC won't run it". So then that night I installed it and tried to play it. Didn't do so well in so far as one frame every two or three seconds seems a little on the low side, FPS-wise.

So it was decided then: build a new desktop computer. And for once make a decent one! A couple months and $1,000 later I had my new PC.  ¶ 6:22 PM 0 Comments