timboerger.net Not afraid of a few strong opinions.

Canada Apologizes

Thank you, Canada.  We're working on the beer thing.

Absense Makes the Blog Go Dimmer

Or something like that anyway.

Yes, I've been away for awhile.  Yes, I know that I pretty much broke my resolution to blog nearly every day.  That doesn't change anything.  I've had friends ask or text to make sure that I was okay and I assured everything was fine.

Fact is the little break from the blog was entirely selfish on my part.  You see it was a matter of timing.

Yesterday, Melanie and I crossed the thirty seven week mark of the pregnancy.  At this point, if labor starts, they do not stop it and baby is on the way.  Coupled with that information and the fact that it's usual for first children to be born early, the timing of this got me thinking.  And my thinking made me selfish.  But I got it out of my system and I'm ready now.

The last couple of weeks, I thought that I would try to cram in as much of the little fun things I like to do on my own.  That included some reading, playing hockey and a fair amount of video games that I had not played for awhile.  Now why do this and not blog?  Good question, but I knew the blog would always be here and it's honestly a little easier on my time.

No big mystery really.  Just taking advantage of a bit of time before our baby is born and the time I do things completely changes.  To be perfectly frank, I'm nervous as hell about fatherhood as I know somewhere I am going to screw up...but I constantly strive to improve on this, to make things better.  I hope that's enough.

Anyway, I'm not going to dwell on that too much.  Mystery, such as it is, solved.  Over the next few days, I'll post some more thoughts on my impending fatherhood, I've got a Star Trek Online review that I want to post up for the benefit of my friends and some other thoughts about tidbits over the past week or so.

Thursday Quick Hits

I know, no post yesterday.  I have a reason for it, just not a good one.  I spent a good chunk of yesterday playing Bioshock for the first time.  Really nice game, intriguing story.  One complaint I have is the number of weapons you get.  I have a hard time just thinking about how a single person carries all of this stuff without pulling a wagon behind you.  Now trying out Mass Effect to see what the hubbub is about and to get a little preview on how Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to run.

Speaking of, Steam had an outrageous Holiday sale which absolutely forced me to pick up a bunch of games for a fraction of the cost.  Seriously, I got a number of titles I was looking at for some time for essentially the cost of a single game.

Tuesdays seem to be my favorite net days.  It means a rash of good comics that I look up including Sluggy Freelance, Darths and Droids and Wondermark.  Thursdays are close too, but not as good as Tuesdays.  Wondermark updates on Tuesday/Friday.

We're officially into the eighth month.  I'll post up some profile pictures soon.  We're excited, nervous, anxious...a rash of emotions.  Plus, we've got so much baby stuff now from other people.  Still in need of a thing or two, but looking good otherwise.  The essentials are pretty much there with the exception of diapers.  Getting closer on names as well.

More snow.  I still dig it, but I'm anxious for Spring to arrive so our dog can experience actual green grass.  She likes to eat anything that gets close to her mouth so outside, it's a lot of dead leaves and other tree  and plant detritus.  I'm guessing she'll go bonkers.

Something Fishy on the Horizon

As a rule, we try to buy organic when we can.  In fact, I wrote about this once and how difficult it was to adjust to conventional grocery stores that do not really carry much for organics.  We've definitely had to make some adjustments, sacrificing what we had to but going organic when we could.

Recently though, we were looking at the brands of milk we were buying.  I drink a lot of milk.  Between a latte or two, a glass of milk for dinner and maybe one before I go to bed, I burn through milk pretty quickly.  Problem is that most of the organic milk around here comes mostly in half gallon cartons.  That's fine, but we end up paying for two or three of them at a time and at a premium as well.  Back in Maryland, we at least had some choices and the prices, while still more than conventional milk, were more competitive overall.  It seems strange to me that in the heart of dairy land, it's difficult to find organic milk in the grocery store.

Last week, we had a bit of a dilemma.  We were shopping at one of the bigger groceries around here and I needed milk, but I really would have liked a gallon of the stuff rather than the half gallon cartons.  We bought a gallon of Horizon Organic milk.  Something tugged at my memories about that there was something wrong with Horizon.  I couldn't place it though and didn't really think about it much except when I poured a glass of milk.  Finally this morning, I decided to poke around a bit on the ol' Internet and see if I could prod my memory and settle this once and for all.  A simple search for Horizon Organic though turned up a number of articles, both pro and con.  At some point, it was difficult to sort who was telling the truth and who was lying as it seemed that every site had some sort of agenda.  Something didn't quite pass the sniff test for me and I was starting to regret my purchase of their milk.

I decided that maybe I should look into all of the brands that I buy.  To that end, I looked up Stonyfield Organic.  First thing to jump out at me was the lack of disparate articles turned up in the search.  There was no great protest to Stonyfield, no calling for a boycott or questioning their commitment to organic dairy.  It raised some more warning flags for me with Horizon.

The search on Stonyfield did lead me to an interesting article from BusinessWeek back in 2006 called The Organic Myth.  Set aside the belligerent tone towards organics that seems rife in the article, there's some good information available on the challenges that organic producers face.  The most valuable information I got from the article was a reference to the Cornucopia Institute.  On their website, they have an ongoing dairy brand report card which is continually updated and listed every organic brand I had purchased recently.

What I found out is that there are some very good options for local organic milk, yogurt, cheese and the like.  I also found out that for the most part, we bought our organic dairy well.  But not recently.  Horizon scored a zero in their survey, not just for not responding to their inquiries.  The BusinessWeek article revealed some serious problems in terms of the ethical treatment of their dairy herd.  One big issue is their huge dairy farm in the a part of Idaho known for it's constant drought.  Many people equate organic to not only be free from antibiotics, pesticides and other non-natural additives,  but also sustainable land management.  Raising milking herds on a desert is not a sustainable practice.  Add into this that they are owned by conventional food giant, Dean Foods and the organic claims seem to be following more the letter of the law rather than the spirit intended.

It's not easy buying organics.  You have to do your research.  You have to find some time to get to know the people who are doing the farm work.  You have to be comfortable spending twice as much as you could probably buy at a conventional grocery.  But because of that, we know more of what we're putting into our bodies and hopefully that will make us happier and healthier in the long run.  I feel better prepared now going into the grocery as far as dairy is concerned and I can make a better informed choice.  Which means that Horizon is out.  If given the choice between Horizon and "conventional" dairy, I'll save my money and buy conventional.  Horizon doesn't meet my standards and I feel no obligation to support them.

Starla’s Favorite Spot

That's one of the heating ducts at her feet and her head under the dishwasher.  She's really comfortable there for some reason.

Saturday Night’s Alright For Not Freezing

Corny title, I know.

Saturday was supposed to be a busy day.  We knew that.  Seeing that we live outside of the Cities, we try to squeeze as much into one day as physically possible and that takes a bit of effort and planning.  We need to account for time and what we can do with reasonable limits and plan for the dog as well.

For the most part, Saturday went fine with a couple of small hitches.  Melanie's breakfast/brunch thingy with her girlfriends ran a bit later than we expected, but was thoroughly enjoyed--so I hear.  I didn't go.  It was a girlfriend-thing after all.  Because of the impending arrival, each guest was invited to bring something for the baby.  Melanie's girlfriends brought a lot of it.  All of the baby stuff essentially filled what room remained in our car.  Between the gifts and my hockey bag, there was no room for much else.  That was okay because we hadn't planned on shopping and there was no need to have too much extra room.

After the brunch and visiting some friends, I got to finally do something I've wanted to do since I was about eight years old.  We went to Chuck E. Cheese.  It was not for me but for my nephew's fifth birthday.  I gotta say, that place does appeal to that age group really well.  And although there were a couple of games there which looked fun to play, I didn't want to be the almost forty year old guy who's hogging a game and making a bunch of kids wait.  It was fun to watch regardless.

After the trip to Chuck E. Cheese, it was time to drive up to New Hope for my hockey game.  It was a good game and fortune saw to it that we won.  A celebratory post-game drink and food was in order and after that, it was time to hit the road for home.

And that's when things started to get weird.

January 2nd was a pretty cold day, even by our standards.  The high that day for the Cities was a whopping one degree above zero where the lows settled in at about -24°F.  Earlier that day, Melanie had remarked that we should check the tire pressure along the way seeing that all of our tires seemed a bit low.  Of course, we didn't actually follow through on this and fate waved her magic "gotcha" wand and made us pay for that little bit of foreshadowing.  At around 11pm that night, our driver's side rear tire went flat while we were on I-35w north.

Fortunately the tire didn't blow out, but the fact it went flat was something we were kicking ourselves over because it seemed to be preventable.  We took a few minutes and made sure the hazards were blinking and that we were far enough off the road to do some work.  We needed to move many bags and items of baby stuff around just to get to the donut of a spare tire, the jack and tools.

At this point of tire changing, it's pretty much a one man job.  I told Melanie to sit in the car and keep warm...plus keep buckled up just in case.  It took a bit to find where the jack needed to sit under the frame of the car, but once I found it, I proceeded to change the tire.

For those of you who have never done this, changing a tire on the interstate can be pretty harrowing.  At 11pm, traffic was light, but there were still a number of cars on the road.  Most of them are courteous enough to move over to the other lane to give you some room.  Of those that didn't move over...that was uncomfortable.  Having cars zip past at 70+ MPH a few feet away was unnerving enough that I didn't really mind or think about the cold which at that time of night was hovering at around -19°F.  It kept me alert, watching the incoming cars and hoping that none of them were being stupid.  Twenty minutes later, I had the spare on, loaded up the car again to make our way to the exit and a gas station which lie just ahead.

We gassed up and sidled up to the air machine to top off all of the tires and re-inflate the spare which was extremely low.  Problem was that the air machine at the station was recently "fixed".  And by fixed, I mean neutered.  The station attendant had said that earlier that day, the air machine didn't work at all.  And now, it barely worked.  Pumping up the tires from 20 PSI to just 28 PSI took nearly eight minutes per tire.  After topping off the remaining good tires and getting the spare from 14 PSI to just under 30 PSI, we hobbled off to home, driving on the interstate at 55 MPH.  We accepted the fact that getting home at 1 AM was a given.

Finally off the interstate and just fifteen miles from home, we came across another car, hazards on and a guy checking under the hood.  We pulled over to see what we could do as this wasn't a heavily traveled road, it was after 1 AM and the temperature was still dropping.  Their car had just died without any indication of what was wrong and they were stuck.  They had asked for a ride.  We unfortunately didn't have any room with my hockey bag and the baby gifts taking up all of our room.  We offered to see if we could get someone to help them out and drove to the nearest open place which was a bar about a mile away.

Melanie went inside to see if something could be done while I tried my best to rearrange some of the space to allow for people to fit into the car.  The bar was no help as the young, drunk people who frequented the place actually were going to be driving home in the opposite direction.  After switching some stuff around, I was able to get room for one person, two if they sat on the lap of the first.  We drove back to the stranded car to see if this would help.  We managed to get one woman and a young child into the car and drove them back home.  Along the way, we got word there was someone going to get the other two people and their car.

The drive home had the effect of putting things in perspective for us.  After the flat tire, we were feeling like we were put out.  How cruel the world was to curse us with a flat tire on a cold night, we thought.  We realized that we had it pretty good after all when running into a car of four people on a lightly traveled road in the dead of night without being able to run the engine to keep warm and responsible for the welfare of a three year old.  Much like the flat tire itself, we stopped not out of charity, but it was what we had to do.  There was no question in it, no debate about it.

Saturday night really took it out on me the next day.  I was tired to begin with after playing hard at my hockey game, to add on changing a tire and fitting two people in the car as we took them home really chipped away at my rest and recovery time.  Yesterday was nearly a total loss as I was not myself.  I was listless and it took a toll on Melanie who was being amazing and understanding.

If you believe in karma, and I feel like it has some merits in it, maybe we got that flat because then we would have been in the right time and place to help someone else out.  If so, then I'm glad it happened as it did.  The only negative effects seem to be a bit tired the next day and sore muscles today--that's a fair trade-off.

Late Post

So you remember how I wrote yesterday about how blogging was going to work and there should be something nearly every day? This is a quick post to compensate for the fact that I didn't write something today and am trying to at least keep momentum going. The intent was there and even the story, but it was the story that was the cause of the problem for me writing today.

Am I not making sense? Probably not. Let's just say that Saturday night made me tired and there's a story in it. Because I was wiped out for today, blogging took a back seat. But that means that definitely there's something to go on about tomorrow.

See you then!

Resolved…

So...2010.  New year.  Nice round numbers.  Couple of things I'm going to try and accomplish over the next 364 days.  It will take dedication and determination, but it should be great.

1. Blog nearly every day.  I will make exceptions for holidays (see yesterday), impending births, emergencies, vacations and the like, but other than that, you should see a post.  If you don't, assume the above or look for where I mention that I was otherwise engaged.  Plus, with the WP app on my iPhone, I should be able to at least throw up a note.
2. Write  a book.  It may not be good, but it will get written.  And revised.  And shopped around.
3. Write at least a short story a month.  Again, don' expect perfection, but it's just to get it going, get it on paper and stretch those writing muscles.  If I like it, expect to see a page on the website with my writing and I'll post it up for your reading pleasure.
4. More Twitter updates.
5. Read more.
6. Everything else will be baby or dog related.

Having said that, I will welcome all inquires to above list.  In fact, just asking me "hey, how's that story coming" in the comments will be further motivation to get off my ass and work.

There's a couple of things that I left off the list, like touching up my German and relearning guitar, but I like to stay a bit realistic.

Hoping everyone has a wonderful 2010.  I know this is a big year for me and I'm really looking forward to it.

If Scotty From Star Trek Worked in Today’s IT

Interesting discussion going on over at Slashdot today with the link here.  In general, some IT analyst is claiming that IT failures are costing companies 6.2 trillion a year in GDP.  For those of you keeping score at home, that's just under ten percent of total world GDP.  As usual, most of the IT people on the site are calling bullshit much as I did when I saw the article.  If interested, the report can be found here (pdf) by Roger Sessions.

I'm amazed that Mr. Sessions has the stones to even suggest the numbers he does.  His belief is that there is a huge impact with what he calls "lost opportunity cost" which he calculates at a staggering 7.5 times the cost of the initial project.  This is a lot of assumption on his part, mostly fear mongering.  Most of the projects I've been involved in do not promise a return of what he suggests is between five and ten times the cost of the project.  Sadly, the rest of his paper about simplifying IT complexity is lost in his specious numbers and logical fallacies.

The whole thing did get me thinking though about what would happen if Scotty from Star Trek worked in today's IT where the most sinister enemies out there are not the Klingons or Romulans, but usually the Accounting department.  I think it would go something like this.

Scotty gets an order to upgrade the computer systems of the Enterprise.  Using Scotty's Maxim which stipulates that you over-estimate the time involved to enact a repair by three times the initial estimate, Scotty says it's going to take three weeks.  He knows that it will likely take just one, but he builds in wiggle room and the opportunity to be a "miracle worker".  Scotty's boss is not James T. Kirk anymore, but the CFO of the Enterprise called Mr. Henderson.  Mr. Henderson asks how much it's going to cost.

This concept is foreign to Scotty as he's never paid for a thing in his life seeing the United Federation of Planets is a socialist utopia.  He's now in an alternate universe where the UFP is in a stalwart capitalist economy.  Fortunately for Scotty, he's in Star Fleet which gives him some market power, but not as much as you would think.  Scotty realizes that in Star Fleet alone, there are thousands of engineers out there who desire ship upgrades and the competition for these allotments are stiff.  Doing a little bit of research, Scotty determines that the parts alone will cost three million credits.  He's called into one of several meetings about the new upgrade project where he's asked to present the costs of the upgrades, which Scotty dutifully reports.  He's then excused from the meeting by Mr. Henderson as he and the others in the room discuss feasibility issues with the project.  It should be noted that two weeks have already passed.

Scotty is confused.  In the past, this would have been simple.  He would be given an order and as chief engineer, he'd make it happen.  Now it's been run over by people he's never met before who don't understand the technology behind the project.  Scotty is called into another meeting where he's asked to not only bring time estimates but also how many man hours will be needed and who will he require.  This is good for Scotty because it's right up his alley and he walks into the meeting with confidence.  Rather than getting right to the nuts and bolts of the project, Mr. Henderson asks just why is the upgrade needed and necessary and if there was someway that Scotty could provide a return on investment estimate.  Mr. Henderson is weary that the numbers of man hours seem excessive and that the personnel needed for the project could impact other areas of the ship.  He also thinks that three million for parts costs is too much and asks Scotty to shop around for a better deal.  The door opens and Kirk enters and has a seat.

Scotty's asked to justify the project to both of them.  He goes in a detailed explanation of how the computer systems are out of date and explains the technologically dense reasons why having incompatible systems with the rest of Star Fleet is a problem.  Kirk nods his head.  Mr. Henderson excuses Scotty from the room with a curt thanks for Scotty's time.

A day later, Scotty is brought into another meeting.  Mr. Henderson is there with two other people who clearly not Star Fleet members and wearing the latest fashions.  The two other people also look incredibly smug.  Mr. Henderson explains that these are consultants and have pitched to do the upgrade in half the time and cost.

*Let me cut to the end as you can see where this is going*

It is several months later.  Scotty has gone nuts.  He's also in the brig for punching one of the consultants.  Also, in having to shop for parts to get within the constricted budget for the upgrade, Scotty has been visited by an unscrupulous Orion who made him "an offer he couldn't refuse" and now is in debt to the interstellar mob.  Mr. Henderson has laid the failure of the computer upgrade project at Scotty's feet and is threatening dire consequences.  Mr. Henderson has also absolved himself from any responsibility in the failure of the computer upgrade.  Several more meetings are held with various members of the crew to figure out how it ended up over budget, late and virtually inoperable.  The consultants are gone and with them, a virtual raft of credits.

The computer system is "upgraded" and now only speaks in Andorian.  This has made the only Andorian on board, a cook's assistant, a vital crew member and default command crew.  Because of necessity, the Andorian can also never leave the bridge.  The Andorian's quarters are now a small cot near the science station on the bridge.  Kirk is pretty peeved about the whole thing, but understands little of the technology involved and is not sure who he wants to throw out an airlock.  The ship also seems "slower" than before.

Scotty wonders why he got into IT in the first place.

“The Holidays”

I know Christmas is next week, but for me it starts this weekend as I travel home to visit my family.  It being "the holidays" and that I'm often asked to pitch in cooking, posts here might be a bit sparse over the next couple of weeks.  Not that I wouldn't love to set aside some time and post, but this time of year is often unpredictable.  I cannot make any promises.

I was looking for something cool to link today, but wasted my time cruising Cracked.com.  Oh well.

Tres Frais!

Found this. Be prepared to be assaulted by an onslaught of cute!

Clicky.

UPDATE:  Man, I should have just surfed away from the site.  Definitely now before it eats all of my time.  But here's another funny bit from the site.  Not cute, just funny.

Brand New Toy, Baby

Occasionally when I a fellow geek gets a new computer, there is the natural tug of curiosity which is sometimes accompanied by curiosity's vulgar companion, jealousy.  Envious feelings can be especially strong when what they have is significantly better than what you have.

When said fellow geek actually builds a PC that is better than yours, the virtual gauntlet has been thrown.  That's not a perfect analogy unless the geek is in your face being Smuggy McSmugMug about their new build.  Usually though, the geek is wrapped up in the joy of having the next shiny thing and could care less about what you're feeling.  Hey man, when a gamer geek can play L4D2 with the settings maxed out, you're lucky they even acknowledge your presence.

But there it is for you...that twinge.  The thought that you are hopelessly behind the curve and forced to play games that are already two years old.  In the interests of honesty, I felt the twinge when my friend Mark updated his PC.  Now, Mark did so because he wanted to play some PC games and really wanted a good experience and not because he wanted a new smoking machine.  For me...twinge.

It wasn't just because Mark got a new PC that I wanted to upgrade.  Looking at some of the games coming out next year that I'm really interested in playing, I found that although I was doing okay on most components, I actually found that my CPU stats were out of date.  That seems ridiculous to me, but there it was.  Minimum specs were already above what I had on my current PC on a highly desirable game, which I should mention was not a high end, graphics punishing game.

I did the shopping, did the one to one comparisons, and found the nice middle road of price and performance.  In doing so, I thought I'd  break down the build and show you what goes into building a machine.  I have pics too, so even extra special bonus.  All parts here were purchased from that bastion of PC building geekdom, Newegg.com.

Here's a pic of the packages that had arrived.

packages

You might notice with close examination that there is no case.  There's a reason for this.  I had an extra case sitting in the garage, and although this was an older case, it would serve just fine for transporting my "old rig" into while I would put the new parts into my perfectly fine case.  Let's get to it.

old case

Here you can see my old PC with the video card out and all of the power cables removed.  Also unplugged are the SATA cables, but nearly everything else would remain.  My thought would be that I would take out the motherboard complete with CPU and memory still attached and transplant as much as I could without removing every single part.  Memory, of course, is not a big deal but the CPU can be a bit of a pain to reseat.  Seeing I was not expecting many problems with it fitting into the other case, this seemed logical for me to do.  However, I ran into some other "things" that would make the transplant more of a bother than I  initially thought.

empty case

Not much to say here.  Everything is out except the DVD burner which was next and took only a few seconds to pop out of the case.

new motherboard

For the motherboard, I went with the ASUS M4A785-TD EVO.  Lots of letters which probably don't mean much to most people.  Here's the things that appealed to me as a PC builder.  Nice, clean layout.  Everything is clearly marked on the board, tons of USB ports on the back, lots of SATA ports, a Firewire port, good placement of heatsinks and bunch of nice features in the BIOS.  Not that I was planning on it, but this board overclocks nicely and I could really squeeze more performance out of every component if I needed.  One thing to note for those considering this board.  It does have on-board video which I thought was pretty nice and includes an HDMI port.  People not looking for a top end video solution might be pleasantly surprised with this feature.

new motherboard in case

Here we see the new motherboard in the "old" case.  You might notice the new power supply in the bottom left corner of the picture.  A few words on the PSU.  This is a Corsair CMPSU-650TX.  In the past, I've just thought power supplies were pretty much all the same.  This power supply changed my mind, not just with PSUs, but pretty much all components.  I'll explain my reasonings further into the post for the other parts.  With this Corsair PSU, I was pleasantly surprised with the sturdiness, the ease with which it fit into the case, the little extras that were in the package like the case screws, the included cable ties, the packaging.  Everything was a nice experience rather than a "just enough" solution.  The extras meant a lot to me as a buyer.

CPU mount

Here we see the CPU mounted into the board.  The CPU I went with was the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2Ghz.  Yeah, I know.  Like the motherboard name, a lot of letters and numbers but what does it all mean.  Quite simply, this is one of their top consumer offerings right now.

I've been a long time AMD supporter and have not been disappointed with their offerings, so once again, I went with them.  I also like competition in the marketplace and AMD is really the only consumer CPU manufacturer besides the giant that is Intel.  While I could have gone with the better performing, and consequently more expensive Intel chip, AMD offers better bang for the buck.  The Phenom chip I purchased has four cores, the Black Edition offers easy overclocking and the price simply could not be beat in comparison to Intel chips.  I just simply wouldn't notice the gains I would get from paying an extra $30 getting an i5 chip.  The cheapest i7 chip cost $125 more than the Phenom from AMD.  Does mean that I would get a comparable performance boost?  Not really.

One thing you may notice is that I went with a stock case fan and heatsink.  Like I said before, I don't plan on overclocking the chip as of yet, so why sink an extra $50 into a after-market CPU cooling solution if I don't have to?  All of the reviews I saw said the heatsink/fan which came with the chip would do the trick.  Good enough for me.  Other than the off center branding on the top of the fan, everything else about the cooling fan and heatsink seemed solid.

Somewhat ironically, I don't have a photo of my video card, an HIS Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB of on-board RAM by ATI.  I took a risk here seeing that HIS is a relatively new player in the video card scene, but the reviews on this manufacturer have generally been positive.  I went with the HD 5750 for the good reviews on it's performance in comparison to other cards.  At it's price point, it should be a value card, but the performance and features really stand out.  It has a lot of upside, beating other cards handily in it's price range.  It will also will do DirectX 11 when it comes out, something a lot of video cards cannot promise and which will save me from an unnecessary upgrade in the future.  Another upside is that if I wanted, I could buy another card and put them into Crossfire mode.  I know this is a lot to go on just by the reviews from other people, but I felt relatively safe with this choice.  Out of all of the parts, this one was the hardest to choose.

Hard drive is not really worth talking about as I got a standard 320GB.  My media actually goes on either my external hard drive or a 1TB drive I bought for just that purpose.  The DVD player...meh.  Hardly worth mentioning.  The memory purchased was 4GB of G-Skill memory.  Again, nothing to get too excited about.  Not like the next photo, anyway.

Windows 7

Yes, I know.  I've railed against Windows and Microsoft many times in the past, but there's two reasons for this purchase.  First of all, Windows 7 will see all 4GB of my memory.  That's no small thing.  In fact, the first upgrade I will do in the future will be to fill my other two slots of memory and go to 8GB which Windows 7 will see and use.  The venerable Windows XP just does not have that sort of memory capacity and we are in the days of cheap RAM.

Secondly, I blogged about this before.  The game support for Linux just isn't there.  I don't like it and I'm not a fan of supporting Microsoft just because of it, but I like my PC to play games.  I'm taking out one frustration for what is supposed to be something enjoyable.  There are two things here that are a problem with gaming on a Linux platform.  First, the audio drivers/codecs just have not caught up.  I've been watching that scene from a distance, but it still seems that they are not making significant strides toward providing a good audio experience.

The second reason, which I lie squarely at the feet of developers, is their continued practice not using common tools which can be easily ported to different systems.  Back in the day, games were written in C.  Simple to move a game from one system to the next because it didn't matter what platform you were on as long as it could run the standard C programs.  Now, it's a big issue.  Take LOTRO, for example.  It's a game that runs fine on other operating systems with a few bugs--I don't know what it is written in, but I know that it works for the most part.  The program launcher is written in .NET though.  Why?  Seems like a stupid way to shut out part of your potential audience.  I really don't want to think that this is some idiotic way of kissing up to Microsoft.  But I digress.  Let's get back to the build.

When I fired up the PC, good things were happening.  Believe me, there's a little drop of your heart when you fire up your PC and what you expect to happen doesn't and you begin to catalog in your head what possibly could have gone wrong.  Luckily, no problem here.  The BIOS came up and after entering time and date, everything else seemed in order.  I booted it up, loaded Windows 7 and got to my desktop in about forty minutes.  Not bad.

It seemed snappier, quieter and ironed out some strange bugs that were beginning to irritate me on the XP system.  I don't have too much on the system now as I haven't moved over my games from Steam.  I did load up LOTRO (which if the guys from Turbine are reading...seriously, it took me almost three hours to download the updates for the game--can you spell "frustration"?) and it looked gorgeous.  Silky smooth animation, fast load times and a beautiful looking game.  All of that meant that my video card was working great, my CPU was easily keeping up and the memory I loaded was chugging along quite nicely.

I mentioned earlier about how I was impressed with the power supply and that I saw this in other components.  Mainly, this build was a breeze because the main parts were quality built.  The ASUS board had a lot to like in the layout, the labeling, the pin assignments...everything was put together in a way that had the builder in mind.  Same could be said for the power supply and the case (a Cooler Master Centurion 5) which all in combination, made this an easy build.  They all cost a few dollars more, but the satisfaction in the ease of building made all the difference to me.  All other parts are pretty much plug and play, so if you can get these three right, you can certainly save yourself some frustration.

So, to my geeky, PC building friends out there...I guess my own gauntlet has been thrown.  I won't mind if you feel the need to out-do me here because I'll be too busy drooling over my new box, playing LOTRO, killing zombies or taking care of the dog.

Hope, in Trailer Form

New Star Trek Online trailer out on the Game Trailers website. I'm encouraged by the fact that you actually see some form of gameplay other than combat. Not that I don't like combat oriented games, but if I want a Star Trek experience, I want it to be more than just a shoot-em-up fest.

Clicky here for the trailer.

Unified Thoughts in the Following

This is going to be a post about Twitter.  I know some of my friends are virulently anti-Twitter, but I'm asking that you bear through this and go with what I'm saying.

I joined Twitter on a lark.  I knew people were joining up and had felt you couldn't really say a hell of a lot in just 140 characters.  But the Lynsens got me involved and I have to say that I spend more time on Twitter than I do than the ever-declining Facebook.  Partially because I started following people who were funny and could really cram a good laugh in that small space.  Also, on some of the celebrities that do performances, you can catch shows that you might have missed.  And some people post links to some really interesting things on the web.  I was hooked.  Twitter wasn't dumb anymore and did have something to offer.  I started to follow my friends who were on Twitter and also people of interest that I thought were pretty interesting or funny.

Recently, one of the celebs that I follow recommended another celebrity.  I was familiar with the person's work and thought it might be fun to see what they were up to.  Follow away, I thought.  Then I saw the tweets from this person.

The tweets ran against my moral compass, linking to people who I didn't like, critical of people I did like and really nothing in between.  The first thought that crossed my mind was that as much respect I had for this person's work as an actor, I didn't think much of his views and didn't really care for that expression in my Twitter stream.  My second thought on this was far more interesting though.  I considered that maybe I was carving out my own ideological cave where any thoughts or expressions that ran contrary to my own beliefs would just be thrown out without any consideration and treated with derision.  I had to think about this as I've always considered myself an open minded person.  It really bothered me.  I eventually stopped following the person after a "meeting of the minds" exchange with someone whom I have no respect for and whom I consider morally bankrupt.

It still bothered me that I made that uncomfortable choice.  My Twitter stream is populated with people that I largely hold the same views and ideals.  I don't go out of my way with finding those other views when it's just easier to follow people who I would like to see.  I am concerned with balance, in fairly hearing opposing viewpoints.  As I looked further and deeper into the people I followed, I did notice something.  Those people would link to topics or happenings and maybe comment on them, but they left out disparaging comments about people who might have been involved.  It was the situation they were interested in and not the personalities necessarily that may surround the issue.

It's too easy these days to create your own echo chamber.  Not so many years ago, we knew our neighbors and talked with them, even if they held opposing views on topics which you felt strongly towards.  We had to be civil because that's the way you were in society.  In many ways, I think we were better off then because you knew and understood the point of view of someone who didn't agree with you.  That was expected and taught a measure of tolerance.  Today, we have media saturation and its ability to comment upon anything that swings into view, then does its best to boil down every issue into just two sides.  Shades of grey are not acceptable, you're either with us or against us.  With the web creeping further and further into our homes, it's easier than ever to connect with others who have the same homogenized views, often carefully crafted from someone else who has some interest in keeping issues black and white.

When checking the people that I followed, I found no talking heads.  Although my views fall with what people would consider liberal, I don't follow either side.  Why bother because they often spend their time tearing apart the personalities around the issues rather than spend qualitative time analyzing issues I would consider important.  Why then should I follow someone who links or repeats carefully crafted messages meant to embolden their base and please the people who funded that message in the first place.  Once I had these thoughts worked out, it was with an easy mind that I felt like I could stop following people who were this level of pseudo-intellectual.  I don't like wasting time with those who don't take the time to examine their own beliefs.

However, now I feel like I should try to find people/organizations on Twitter that discuss issues with which I'm concerned.  It's a worthier cause than just finding people who revel in the schadenfreude of their contemporaries and ignore their own shortcomings.