Made the switch...

I dropped cable. Totem and I are trying to save some money for Christmas and a $100+ cable/internet bill was not helping. We were able to cut that in half but switching to satellite and dsl. Almost the same offering for half the price. Totem is happy. =)

I'm pretty happy too. We still got to keep DVR. Totem gets all her speciality channels. I still have broadband and I'm getting 826/160 for an advertised 768/128. Not too shabby. Time will tell though. I didn't think I would ever be able to go back to DSL since all the companies went bankrupt a couple of years back but things aer running smoothly for now. Who knows.... Either way, I know we'll be saving a little bit of money.

Ramblings...

School has been really REALLY different than what I am used to. We are writing and discuss so many things that are opinionated instead of factual that it is almost not school to me. I have to write a 4 page paper on how I applied a managerial skill to a situation at work. I need to explain how equality in the workforce affects the moral. About the only thing factual is my accounting class which itself feels like I am in kindergarten (assigned seats, participation points, when we ask a question the prof does not know how to answer - she makes us give her an answer that we "think" would be fair)... Its just really odd. I'm so used to having confident teachers that care about the students learning their material and now I'm thrown into classes "taught" by researchers who don't know how to teach, and are more concerned with writing their books (literally) than the sucess of the class... It should be a fun three years.

On the gaming scene, LOTR Battle for Middle Earth and Freelancer have been put on hold so I can finish LOTR The Third Age for PS2. It's been a more mindless game that really helps me wind down. Plus I can stay downstairs with Totem and Alex instead of disappearing up to my office...

I've just finished updating Gentoo on my laptop. After I got wireless working, I updated KDE and basically everything else on the system. The only task now is to get WEP working so I can actually use my own wireless network at home and not have to bum the neighbor's open wireless connections. I also got a new toy. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have a DVD Lightscribe drive in my hands. I'm looking forward to it for the snazzy "labels" I'll be able to make, but more importantly, it will do more than my current DVD burner. I found out last week that the old HP 600i dvd burner (which I have), can ONLY write to DVD+RW discs. Not DVD+R, DVD-R, or DVD-RW. It took me awhile to figure this out, and a lot of misc media purchases, but I'm glad I have a "modern" burner coming so I can use all the media I bought and have not been able to use. ;) Plus I get to do lightscribe and DVD DL too! =)

Alex is getting huge. =) He has his own personality and LOVES to giggle. He's even showing the "dog salivates when you ring a bell" type stuff too. I'll pick him up out of his crib in the morning and he starts smiling and laughing. If I don't have a bottom there waiting for him, he starts screaming. ;) And I think he's going to like cooking b/c he sure likes to BAM!!! =)

Figured it out...

My linux box has been plagued by hard drive error messages over the last couple of months. Errors have been creeping up about nore being able to read from the hd when heavy data access goes on... I don't have the error message on me, but a quick Google search I did about two weeks ago had everyone who was experiencing that error chuck the hd out the window.

So I joined the bandwagon and jumped off the cliff too. Got a brand new "cheap-o" 80gb hard drive (sheesh, I remember when a 2gb hard drive was a couple hundred bucks and some motherboards couldn't support it). What blew me out of the water was when I did a fresh Debian install on the new hard drive, the same messages popped up.

OK... So what else coule be affecting it? The damned cable. Replaced it, and guess what? I now have 80gb more of storage on my Linux box. =)

The next rant...

The past week has been really rough. Really high highs and some really low lows (read second last entry)... Work has stabalized back into a norm and thing are returning to as normal as they can. Buts thats enough about that...

On the upswing, side jobs are picking up. I've taken on two webmaster positions with companies in the area. I'm also now the DBA of a third company that I work for part time. They all look like a decent challenge but I'm looking forward to puling through for all of them. Plus, I get some practical experience in the workplace instead of personal experience which is a great advantage...

Three days ago I was followed home, literally. Totem and I were coming home from lisalou's house, Totem was taking an odd route, and well, I had a little case of road rage. ;) We approached an intersecion with a green light, turn into the left turn lane, stopped, and then verred into the right lane and continuted going straight. So I'm fuming, but I notice a car behind me turn on his blinker to turn with us, turn it off and then follow us back on the road. I'm like WTF and I tried to figure out what was going on... Left turn, followed. Right turn followed. OK, now my paranoia has got the best of me. I let Totem drive home while I keep driving (she does not know this is happening BTW)... She turns and the person keeps following me. Left turn, followed. I did a "S" drive up and down a couple of streets and I'm still being followed. Now I'm creeped out... I manage to get a block ahead and park my car in front of a house. He/She (I couldn't tell) pulled onto the street and waited. About two minutes later, they drove off. I never saw them again. I have a feeling a punk a$$ kid was just trying to see what would happen if he keep following me. Whoever it was, they had a souped up neon with fog lights, spoiler, and decals... I didn't get the lics though. I'm just glad I figured it out and didn't lead whoever it was to my house...

I also started playing Final Fantasy XI this week. The online one. I'm not that impressed. The game is huge and very detailed, I'm not putting that down. What got to me early on was the lack of info for newbies to the game... It took me a really long time to get used to the interface and when I did, there wasn't much for me to do. Again on the expansiveness, there are a tons of things to do, but for a newbie, many of those are in areas that I couldn't survive. So, for the time being, I'm limited to local areas with low end monsters. Needless to say, I'm only level 8 and things are very, very repetitive. I don't know if I am going to renew my subscription, maybe one month more, but I don't see me going beyond two months unfortunately.

When Totem and I buy a house, I want to it be one level. Now that the computer is up, I'm spending way to much time upstairs. Totem's even said I can go and disappear now. While being on the same floor won't eliminate me using my computer, we'd be essentially togther. IE: Me sitting on my laptop in the living while we watch TV is better than me going upstairs to play a game...

Onward and upward. New project, I'm redoing my Linux box with a new kernel. It's a biggie redo b/c I tried to upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6 and was not too successful... Plus the box needs to be rebooted every couple of days to make sure it still works... I think it's because I did a hardware swap without a new install (pulled all hardware out of old 350mhz box and put it into 700mhz box with no OS reinstall). Should be fun...

Looking back... LOL...

A year ago today, I was talking about needing a new computer b/c the games had finally caught up to the speed of my older system. I think its kind of funny that almost a year to the date, I do have that new system. Now the question is that in 2010, will I be saying I need a new one again???

Or will my baby's computer be too out of date for his software? ;) Wow, he'll be 5 then... 8|

Complete!!!

Looks like I was using the wrong RAID driver the other night. Once I had the right one, everything went smoothly. Got the OS up, downloaded and installed all the latest drivers. Then tackled all the updates for Windoze and BAM! All done. =)

Yup, Doom3 was first. Lets just say when things come out of the dark to bite you (literally) at 32fps, it is a little more shocking than 5-6fps. You get to see it biting. Instead of empty hallway, half a second of seeing something in the distance, and then its on you... ;) I watched it walk at me his time around. :p

Anyway, I just installed Doom3 to install it (real playing is later). So this morning I tackled some of the more "mainstream" applications that I had on my old system... An office program. Web development tools. Antivirus and security. Sound apps... Yadda yadda yadda.

Needless to say the system SCREAMS! Even with the antivirus installed. I'm very VERY pleased at the outcome. Now to just clean my office. ;)

One step closer...

I got the hard drives last night. x2 Western Digital 200gb SATA drives. Popped them in, setup the raid and closed the case. I'm kind of surprised at how quiet the system is. The loudest part is the CPU fan and there are 7 other fans in the case!!! I think this is the most time and money I have ever put into a system but I'm feeling really good about it being done (and the fact that I have a computer back).

The only stumbling point has been getting Windows on the RAID. Granted I tried this at 1AM last night so I was dead tired, but I couldn't get the setup program to see the RAID, even with the promise drivers installed. I'm going to be reading over the manual again (so don't RTFM me), to see if I missed anything nad maybe if I'm lucky, I'll be scaring the crap out of myself with Doom3 on Saturday evening. =)

It's chuggin'...

Got the memory last night. Everything booted. =) I left my Knoppix CD at work and I didn't feel like burning another one so I didn't get around to doing too much... I was able to boot off of a Gentoo Live CD. Took 15 seconds, from the last BIOS screen to command prompt. 8) Oh yeah, you know I'm drooling. I should be getting the hard drives in a week and then I'll finally have a desktop for the first time in I don't know how many months.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is that when the system is done, I've got a reason to go up to my office now. And clean it. ;) I never really moved in because right around the time when Totem and I got things organized up there, I ended up selling my desktop. Papers have been piling up and with the wireless network, I really only go up to my office if I need to work on the Linux box. Sitting in the living room, surfing the Internet is actually pretty comfortable. ;) But I do miss having my "space" to goto and vege out in...

ITS ALIVE!!! Almost...

I was able to purchase the memory for my new system yesterday (currently in transit to me) so I wanted to get the case as configured as possible before it gets here. I don't think I've ever put this much time into a system before. ;) Cables are tied down. Wiring is set for the fans. The LED's are plugged in. Temp sensors installed...

Probably the best thing was that when I powered up the system (with every piece of hardware that I have installed), I got the distinct system beep that you get when something is wrong with the motherboard. AWESOME! ??? There was no memory installed, thats why it beeped... But it beeped!!! Trust me, thats a good sign. When a computer can still function enough to tell you that something is wrong, that is MUCH better than it just not working, or the computer starts smoking (which has happened to me in the past. Fun time... =) ).

So once the memory gets here, I can boot up Knoppix to play around with the it. I can't do much more than load a Linux Live CD b/c I don't have hard drives yet... But something is better than nothing.

I'll at least be able to surf the web on my new system. ;)

More customization...

While working on getting my Linux box more locked down and up to date, I started to tackle some of the things that I left behind when I started over. You know, the things you like but don't really need like sound drivers, X Windows, and some scripts that were "nice" but not required. Well, I tackled my backup scripts. Went to mount the new DVDRAM drive that backed all my data up to from before the "re-do". Got a message.

/dev/sr0 is not a valid block device.

...well $hit. Start sweating because almost everything you needed to save was one that disc. Try it again. Same message. Try it again specifying a file system. No go. Hmm... Now is where my years of "learn by breaking the fscker" kicked in. I tried:

mount -t ext2 /dev/sr0 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/sr2 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/sr3 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/sr4 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/sr6 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/sr /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/scd0 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/scd9 /dvdram
mount -t ext2 /dev/scd7 /dvdram

And guess what?

/dev/[WHATEVER THE FSCK I TYPED] is not a valid block device.

OK. OK. OK. So maybe it isn't a really valid device. It worked before. It worked for any of the LiveCD's I tried. How do I know? A.) The DVDRAM drive just worked. B.) A message during bootup found the drive. So I checked the logs... No DVDRAM drive found. Rebooted. Nothing. Looked a little harder and found the Adaptec SCSI card was not found either...

DOH! I didn't compile SCSI drivers into the kernel. Son of a... Recompiled kernel with SCSI drivers. BAM! DVDRAM drive found...

Oh but it wasn't over. ;) So, happy that my drive was now working, I went over to my laptop to check my email. No connection. Odd... It got an IP address and was on the network but couldn't access any websites, check my email, or ping anything that was not on my network. Because I had just looked at it, I went right for the kernel as being the problem. Guess what? That was it... Apparently when I added SCSI drivers, IPTABLES was dropped from the kernel. Just my luck, huh? ;) Recompiled, again, and bingo, everything back to normal.

People ask me a lot how I know all this stuff. You just found out how. I break it. I tinker. I break it some more. Then I fix it. If most people wouldn't be afraid of computers, they'd really be able to do a lot. IMHO, this can go for everything in life. I'm afraid to touch a car out of fear that I'm gonna do something to it. My brother is the opposite. His car was Kia until he started "modifying" it. Now, he's his own mechanic and if I have any troubles with my truck, he's there to help just like I am if his computer goes south. Point? There is some aura around computers that just gets people scared. Break down that aura and there's really not much too it.

Changes... Here and everywhere...

Things have been happening over the last couple of weeks that have made me take a step back and look around... I've been very frustrated at the economy ever since I left college. I set myself up for failure and hit a brick wall before I realized it was coming. Now, with a baby on the way, with the first christmas as my own family, and with the very first tight, and I mean do we want gifts or to pay the bills, holiday season, things have taken on different meanings. And I mean everything.

For the first time, I can honestly say I do not know what I want to do with my life, job wise. The jobs that I want I know are just not available anymore because they are either taken or are non-existent. I even tossed up the possiblity of starting my own business, but the risk is too great and I don't believe in gambling a job in exchange for a family. So, with the help of Totem, I've settled on what we have (having a job) versus what we want (a job I don't have) and I am going to change my outlook. Pending I still have this job next fall, I will be going back to school of my MBA (one of the benefit os this job is they will pay for secondary education). Plus, the Management school has what they called a PMBA program that will let me keep my job full time, attend classes at night, and get my MBA after three years. Should I finish it, not only would I actually have a Masters degree, the MBA would open the door to a completely different market of job opportunities for me that can help me move on in life and better support my family.

Totem is on the up and up as well. She got a new job recently and already the management and owners are impressed with her. So much so that they are going to help her get back into school to get her teaching lics. Something that is NOT a company benefit. Whats even better is that her job (which is at a day care) has a benefit of free child care for the first child and they have no problem at all that she is pregnant. Big plus for us not only b/c it will help out trememdously in about 6 months, but b/c she has the backing of the day care. Yeah, I know it is against the law to descriminate, but you can't tell me that when someone sees a new applicant who is pregnant, that they do everything to avoid hiring them. It happens. I've seen it.

In terms of coding, designing, website, geek type world... Dad (or Pops - what he wants to be called by his grandchildren ;))and I are trying to get a web design business off of the ground. We've got a couple of low end jobs lined up that will hopefully just get our name out there, I can only hope this balloons into a good thing. I've slowed down on doing my usual computer stuff. I'm going to let a couple of the "wishful thinking" domains that I have expire because I never got them off of the ground, even after a year has gone by... Others are just waiting to be finished (I've got a PHP site coded and almost ready for release, I just don't have time to finish it). Other sites, like this one, I think I'm leaning towards a revamp. Spam has gotten so much out of control here that I'm just going to take down all of the public tracking tools and blocks and just let everyone and anyone do what they please. Well kind of, I'll still be in the background but it will be much more transparent to the user... Basically my goal on this website is at least to trim the fat. Get rid of some of the things that are (literally) slowing down the response time. Images that aren't needed. Public stats that, while useful to me, are just being filled with spam sites. Inactive links. Stuff like that... Hopefully I'll have that done soon enough...

On the homefront, the computer situation is getting slightly better. Parts have not come in yet, but planning stages have been changes. I've got a better handle on how I'm going to get my Linux box back to the way I want it, instead of just being back. My laptop has become my production machine and it is holding up pretty well. Ever since I've picked up the browser based online web gaming, the lack of video power hasn't really been an issue. Totems laptop is out on loan while her mother goes into and recovers from surgery. When we get it back, if I've got some extra cash, I plan on getting a wireless network going in the house so Totem does not have to go upstairs to get to her computer. I think she'll use her computer that much more if she can just connect to the Internet anywhere in the house...

And me. Well, I kind of liked venting a little bit so maybe I'll try to get back into the swing of things. It helps me relax a little bit... And its nice to keep track of things. Enough from me...

Buckling...

Things aren't going as well with Gentoo as they did a while ago when I installed it on my laptop. I'm just getting errors after errors, even when I start from scratch and try a different route...

When I started to seriously consider starting using Gentoo from Stage 2, I realized, I just might as well go back to Debian. It's still minimal, and if I don't do the bootstrap, I really won't have an OS that is optimized for my system (just like any other version of Linux that you don't start from strach with). Even on that note, how optimized can you get for a 700mhz system? This isn't going to be a high availavbility internet server. Just a firewall, router, and storage system. Will I really notice a speedup or even need one???

In any event, I've got a day to work out these bugs and get my Linux box back up or I'll be usng Debian again... Totem's getting ancy without internet access. ;)

On the ball...

Last night was a big push. Normally, I would have just held off all the work until I had my new desktop built but Totem convinced me to work backwards. I'm now desktop-less (which is really really wierd for me), but a plus is that when I do get all the parts for my new desktop, I can focus on it and not be rushed to get everything else done.

All data has been pulled off the desktop and intiailly stored in the Linux box. Desktop was then "parted". Things I'm holding onto (video card, modem, memory, dvd burner) are now sitting on my work bench waiting to be installed. Then I took the old desktop hard drive and installed it in my Linux Box. Copied all data from Linux box to the old desktop hard drive (it was 20gb larger) and then removed the Linux storage drive. While in there, also removed x2 9.1gb scsi drives, my scsi tape drive, and an old 100mb scsi zip drive. I figured I can try and get a couple of bucks off the stuff on ebay (yeah, right, 100mb scsi zip drive... Can I have a quarter? Ok, a dime? ... Nickel? Penny? Ok, this is as low as I go. A canadian penny?).

The good news is that I got the new DVD-RAM drive in. It's pretty neat. Formatted the disc as ext2, mounted it rw, and copied data over just as if it was a hard disc. I know the discs are only good for 100k re-writes so all I did was unmount it when I was finished backing up the data. The big bonus was that I copied 4gb of data in 10 minutes verus the 2 hours+ time it took to do that on tape... Makes backing up my stuff a LOT more managable.

So the "new" makeshift linux box is back up with more memory, more hard drive space, and a faster backup method. I then switched attention to my old desktop, which is becoming Jay's new desktop. Installed Windoze and I'm getting that up and running. Once that is done in a day or two, I'll get his old video card back from his girlfriend's system in exchange for a sound card on her system (she doesn't need the video processing power, plus with a 600mhz, there's not much in terms of high end gaming that the system can do, and on the other hand, she really doesn't do high end computer gaming anyway, that what her PS2 is for :) ). So now they'll both have complete systems that they can really play with (and Jay's new computer will be faster than his old computer too).

The computer I'll be getting back from Jay will become my new Linux box. Basically, I'll just be taking the mb and cpu (750mhz versus the 35mhz it has now) out of it so I'll have a third space system sitting around. I'll probably build it up, put Seti on it and let it sit until someone needs a computer or I need a spare... On that note, when everything else is done or if I'm still waiting for parts for the new beast, I've got a 266mhz system I need to build up for my inlaws. They want a computer to be able to get online if they need... That will be more than enough speed for a computer that can do a best of 14.4 with a 56k modem (their so far away from the CO).

Finally, its nice to have stuff to do... ;)

Side project...

Well, working on my blog has kind of put me into a modd to start working on a lot of other projects I've been sitting on. I started getting all the data and programs backed up or moved to get ready for the new configs that are coming. New desktop and new Linux Box. I'm figuring that if I haven't used it in a year, why hold on to it???

Wow... Talk about a pack rat... I'm reading homework that I typed on my first computer back in fourth grade... ... ...13 years ago. 8|

::shakes head::

EDIT: It feels really wierd deleting emails from two years ago too... :\

Apache Response Time...

I've got a lot of entries in my .htaccess file. Does anyone know how much processing goes on with Apache and if a huge .htaccess file will slow down a website???

Shuffled...

Plans for the new Linux box have been shuffled around a bit with others plans that I've had for the summer. Turns out Jay got screwed out of an on time bonus (its coming, just a month or two after it is supposed to) so he can't get his new system... The replacement Linux will be staying with him for a bit...

So, all the design work that I have had on the back burner is now coming up. Five sites. All different focuses (sp). One is nearing completion, one of my sites designed to promote a lot of the scripts I have written here. Mostly custom jobs of pretty popular tools out there on the Internet... Why can't I have a piece of the pie??? ;)

Who knows, hopefully some of them will work out in the end. UnknownGeek is still my flagship but it is doing nothing in terms of the financial department. :\ The other sites should be a big help b/c they will be more focussed and static than UG is... Plus, they'll actually have a purpose versus just reading about a crazy nerd... :p

Fun fun fun...

Some of you probably noticed that I got a new laptop as a graduation present from my parents... It was only attached to my hip for the last few weeks of school... ;)

Well, anyone can probably guess what the first thing I did was... YUP! Dual boot Windoze with Linux. 8) I've managed to get Debian on there but I'm having problems with X Windows [TO PLEASE SOMUS] (it looks like driver problems with the video card on my laptop) [/TO PLEASE SOMUS]... I don't want to try RH or Fedora b/c of all the extra stuff that gets installed that I will never use...

Then I remembered an distro I tried a long time ago, but backed off from b/c of the compiling time... Gentoo. On my Linux box, running at 350 mhz, it was taking a day or two to finish compiling. That was expected, just because of the sheer amount of compiling you have to do for that distro. (It results in an uber optimized box that is almost custom to run on your hardware... That a good thing if you don't understand. ;) )

Well, now that I have a speedy little 1.3 ghz processor, I figured why not give it a shot. 8) I've got the partitions setup and I know I can dual boot b/c I was able to get that working with Windoze and Debian. Now I just need to head over to my parents house so my laptop can "sit" on the Internet for a couple of hours, downloading and compiling packages as it needs. ;)

Small FPS Fun...

96K of Quake Fun!?!?!? YUP!!! 8)

http://theprodukkt.com/

The game is less than 100 kilobytes. It's pretty good, ESPECIALLY for being that small. You need a kick a$$ system to run it though... I just listened to my computer fans wizz up to full strength as my system struggled to keep up with the frame rate... ;)

Its that time again...

Well, it took me more 5 years to finally prove myself wrong...

Back when I built my current system, originally, the processor was the beefy part of the entire design. A whopping 1.4 GHz. Man that was fast back then. One thing that I kept telling myself and everyone else at the time was that "they" (software and game developers) are not going to make a program that will need much more power than was was currently out (Quake 1 at max resolution was the only program that I could find that could easily lag a system). So when people asked if 900 MHz or 1.0 GHz was fast enough, I told them yes.

For three years after that, it held. Only then did I have to upgrade my video card to keep up with some of the mind boggling graphics that games were dishing out. My 1.4 Ghz was still doing fine, though.

Not anymore. Over the weekend, X2: The Threat was just trying to control too many AI bots and my systems actually slowed down to 1-2 frames every three seconds. I ahdn;t seen that in a game since I tried Quake 1 at 1280x1024 on my 750 MHz with a 32 Meg video card. Well now I have a 128 Meg NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600 and the processor just can't keep up.

So, its time for an upgrade. :) I've got a very nice high end system priced out and good plans for shuffling around my systems among the network. Since Totem has a laptop and does not want her desktop back, I'm probably going to make the a secondary Windoze system and make my current desktop my new Linux box. Mmmmm... 1.4 Ghz Linux box... ;)

Probably won't happen till later this summer. I need about 3-4K to get everything I "need" (AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-53 Processor, SB Audigy 2.0 Platinum, 7.1 Surround Sound Speaker System, RAID HD's, ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT, Neon Lights ;) ) But now I've got my sights set. 8)

More 180's...

Well along with the moving plans taking a 180, the plans for my windoze box have also taken a turn... One of the (bad) things about moving is that I will lose all access to broadband. I can get it if I really want to via 2-way satellite, but to do that I'd end up paying more than I am paying for rent right now... (Can we say uh-uh???)

So because of that, I'm going to try and push myself to redo the box within the month so I'll still have access to some decent download speed. The month should get me enought time to get all the major software (Windows included) installed and patched before I disconnect. It's either that or nothing...

Can you imagine installed Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 2 on a 14.4 modem connection??? (Yes, that is the best I can get out there...)

Eat that!

Looks like the old playing-too-much-on-the-computer trend of thinking is wrong...

CNN article here...

EAT THAT!!! Geeks rule... ;)

Just in time I guess...

The one time I actually let Norton run until it completes, guess what it finds??? Yup, a virus. Something called "Dummy Class" and it is a trojan. I'm not too worried because my system isn't making any outbound connections. What does bother me is that Norton found it in one of the JAR files that I got when I installed Java 2... Hmmm...

Not like it matters, I'll be blowing away the partition in a day or two anyway... Maybe that is what was slowing down my system.

Revamping...

To get my mind off of websites and ways to try and make some more money, I'm gonna try and focus on redoing my windoze box. Only I think I'm going to actually try this time. :)

All that I really need to do is archive all my data to my linux box and then start having fun with magnets. ::evil grin:: Not really, but it would still be fun...

The one thing that I want to see if I can avoid when I start over is the slowness in XP. I know Norton is a friggin hog but it can't be lived without nowadays. I'm also read somwhere that turning off indexing can speed up XP a lot. I hope that it makes a difference if it is off from the start because my system is still slow now with it off.

I'm not too worried, though. It'll take me a couple of weeks but it should be a good project to pass the time and normally the results are good. If anyone reading this knows of any good tips to help speed up XP pro, drop me a line... Or comment... Or whatever. ;)

Time to die...

One of my projects in the past was to revamp my computers and network at my house. It was going well until school came around and I had to change my plans for a bit. Instead of redo-ing my windoze box, I just "cleaned" it.

As usual, changing my plans does not usually turn out to be th best option I could have taken...

Now my system is rendomly rebooting and every time I get the error reporting telling me it is a device driver, but they can't give me any details. Well since I didn't change anything, I'm glad to know that Micro$oft has a catch all for things they can't fix and know how to shift the blame to others...

Anyway, now that school is almost over, I'm gonna really redo my system during the break. A fresh install of XP Pro should help speed things up a bit.

Gimme...

Anyone feel like buying this for me? ;)

Ok, ok... That's a little much. What about this? *grins*