Damn smokers

Damn smokers
Originally uploaded by TomTheGeek.

We had another fire alarm tonight, false thankfully. When I looked out in the hallway it looked a little smoky but nothing was visibly on fire. Could have been a smoker, could have been some burnt toast, who knows. The fire department took quite a while to get here this time, I hope that does not become a habit for them. I feel a little safer knowing I have renters insurance but it would still suck. If the building ever does catch on fire I'll grab my phone then start chucking computers out the window.

Pimp My Computer

JBensch over at DeviantArt.com put a picture of my computer on his site. I had him draw the flames which I then got cut out in vinyl by a sign shop. I am thinking about reversing the red and black on the front cover but I haven't decided yet. It would work pretty nicely I think but I would have to paint it so I may do a digital version first and see what I think.

I Heart Bart PE

I got a hold of a busted laptop that had been struck by lightning and the hard drive no longer works recently. I was originally going to try and turn the LCD into a stand alone display but it turns out that is very hard to do because they leave out the important parts for you to be able to do that. Since the only thing broken is the hard drive I was able to build a Bart's Boot Cd with Bart PE that has drivers for my wireless card and runs Firefox. That's all I really need it to do, I like to have an internet terminal in the living room in front of the TV. You can get almost any app to run under Bart, Firefox is just the tip of the iceburg.

Bart PE isn't something new, it has been around for quite a while but except in recovery CD's I havn't had a reason to use it. I thought about using a Linux boot CD like a live SuSe disc but I had a lot of problems getting SuSe 9.2 to recognize my WiFi card before so I don't have much hope. Since Bart PE is just a stripped down version of XP I had no problem getting it to recognize the card.

Now if I can just get the battery working it would be perfect.

Fastest AGP card ever?

This may very well be the last AGP card I buy. I just picked up a watered cooled version of the BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra on eBay for $300. I know I know, I could have gotten a 7800 GT for only $130 more, but they don't sell the 7800 in an AGP version. I just bought a new mobo and CPU so I don't really feel like upgrading again already, not to mention it would cost me another $300 minimum and not really be that big of a speed bump.

The card I bought is water cooled so I will be needing to switch to regular heatsink before I can use it. I'm not used to shopping for heatsinks for my graphics card but there seem to be only a couple choices available. There's the Arctic Cooling VGA NV Silencer 5 which is pretty close to the stock heatsink and there's the Zalman VF700 which is closer to their CPU cooler designs. I am leaning towards the NV Silencer right now because it outputs the hot air outside the case which will help keep my PSU cooler. That's important because this card will be pushing my PSU pretty hard. I remember seeing someone using a regular CPU heatsink on their graphics card so I'm going to look that up again and see if I can do something similar.

Where have all the DL DVD's Gone?

Some CEO in charge of making dual layer DVD media needs to be bitch slapped. Why are the discs so freakin expensive? Dual layer burners have been out for more than a year; you can pick one up for under fifty bucks but good luck trying to get some blank media at a reasonable price. Single layer DVD's are around 20¢ apiece but dual layer DVD's are $3.50! Is the whole dual layer feature just a marketing ploy in order to get us to buy new burners or is the media really that hard to make? At this point I wouldn't be surprised if it's a conspiracy by the movie studios trying to keep DL DVD's off the market.

I don't have a dual layer burner yet because there's no reason to upgrade if the media isn't there. Does anybody remember 2.88mb floppies? I didn't think so. This is exactly the same situation, only the numbers have changed. Back when floppies were cool 2.88mb was a lot of storage and most people would have switched if they were reasonably priced. No one had a problem switching from single sided to dual sided floppies, so why 2.88? Some moron priced them to high and it just wasn't worth it.

Oh Dual Layer Digital Versatile Disc, we hardly knew thee.

Goosed

Goosed
Originally uploaded by TomTheGeek.

I came out my apartment this morning and there were tons of geese everywhere. I don't know where they came from but it feels like a petting zoo in my back yard. As long as they stay in the grass and off my car we won't have any problems.

Till death do we part

Till death do we part
Originally uploaded by TomTheGeek.

I'm not much for weddings but today I watched a good friend of mine tie the knot. I never imagined this girl would get married but she's never done things by the book. I wish them the best of luck and hope they have many happy years together.

Kaput & Zosky

I think I just found my new favorite cartoon. It's called Kaput and Zosky and it's played on Nicktoons usually late at night. These two guys go from planet to planet trying to rule whatever civilazations they come across. It's not the funniest cartoon out there but I just love the main characters. I had a hard time finding any info about the cartoon and almost no pictures except for the DVD covers. I am probably going to pick up a couple of the DVD's as they're only $6.

Some great K&Z art can be found at kaputandzoskyfans.

Earmuffs are the new black

Earmuffs are the new black
Originally uploaded by dreadfuldan.

I love this picture, I'm not even sure why. It could be the look on her face or the fact that she's wearing earmuffs indoors, I dunno. One thing is for sure though, this pic is proof positive that smoking does in fact make you cooler. Where are my cigarettes?

So now what?

I haven't really figured out what I'm going to post about on this site. I think it will be a whole lot of nothing until I get the hang of it. Problem is I don't think people would find what I have to say interesting. I mean, I'm a geek so unless you're a geek also chances are I'm pretty boring. I guess there's nothing wrong with writing about geeky tech spec and whatnot, geeks are the most likely to read a blog anyways. Not to mention the title of this blog is TomTheGeek so I guess that pretty much seals the deal right there.

Unfortunately there are million + 1 tech blogs and there's nothing much I could come up with that would be anything different. I don't want to just post about stuff I found on Slashdot ect.., if you wanted to know what's going on at Slashdot you would be over there instead of reading this. So now what?

How about this for starters:

Since I mentioned Slashdot several times already, what is the deal with the spelling Nazi's correcting everybody in the comments? I know there are English majors or whatever that cannot stand to hear someone talk improperly but it's Slashdot, not an English forum. It's gotten to the point where they are just a given and people are apologizing in advance for their comment and half the posts are about how the article has a bazillion errors in it.

We can't spell. We get it. Now leave us alone. Go talk about complete sentances and pronouns in the corner with the other freaks and let us talk about routing protocols in peace. I'm sure there are plenty of forums dedicated to proper english, go bother them for a while.

I can post from my phone!

I set up blogging from my phone so now I can post from wherever I can get a GPRS signal. Aren't you excited boys and girls?

Recommended Reading

I'm reading the very obnoxiously titled "Someone come to town, Someone leaves town" by Cory Doctorow. It's a fiction book about a guy that is somehow the offspring of a mountain and a washing machine. You heard me.

I'm not all the way through it yet but it's fairly interesting so far, if a little weird. It's kind of confusing since it keeps skipping around in time and not telling you. Also there's this huge section of the book talking about wireless mesh networks; what they are and how everybody should have one which is good and all, it just seems out of place.

Mice!

Mice!
Originally uploaded by TomTheGeek.

Ha ha look at all these mice at the local pet store. I want to buy them all and set up a huge maze of space age tubes in my house for them to run around in.

Boobies!

Woot! First post Boobies!