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). I found a sample essay, possibly better english dissertation for medical papers.

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. =)

Now THIS is funny...

Hehe... Someone at Mirco$oft (not necessarily Micro$oft itself) used warez'd programs to make some of the audio files in Windows Media Player. What's funny is that you can see for yourself.

Open notepad in Windows.
Select open and goto your Windows Directory.
Open Help.
Open Tours.
Open WindowsMediaPlayer.
Open Audio.
Open Wav.
Select any of those files.
Give notepad a second to open it and scroll all the way to the bottom.

See that "SoundForge 4.5" and "Deepz0ne". Yeah, hacked version of Soundforge by cracker Deepz0ne. Way to go MS for checking your code and business practices.

Original story here.

As the first comment on that story says, "Do what we say, not what we do". Way to go Micro$oft!!! HA! Sooooo true!!!

History repeats itself...

How long until MS learns its lesson??? Friggin' strong arms...

Great Read: I, Cringley

Thats odd...

You know how in Windoze XP, the Start Menu "shrinks" itself by hiding icons and folders that have not been used in the last two weeks or so? Has anyone else noticed that the Internet Explorer icon never gets hidden???

Micro$oft must have forgot why they got sued a couple of years ago...

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)

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.

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.

Typical...

Why is it that whenever I move my computer something has to go wrong with it... And it's not even hardware. You'd figure a hard drive would die, or some card would fry, but no. It has to be the drivers that control my hardware DVD controller card. So when I wanna watch The Matrix with my kick ass surround sound system I have for my computer, I can't! *huff puff*

Grrrr... Sometimes I really hate windows. I just wish it would be easier to mgirate over to Linux. I'd love to go in that direction, but then I'd lose all the money I've invested in my current software...

::The geek hates double edged swords::

It just won't stop...

I love this referrer page I setup... Now I'm linked in with all the Warez, Serialz, and Pron links that are out there... Why? Because I have a post about a "remote registry changer" and there just happens to be a program out there that is called that, and amazingly EVERYONE have the serial hack for it... ;)

WOHOO!!! Go 25gb a month of bandwidth! KEEP EM COMING!!! =)

On another completely dorky topic... The advantages of being a college student at my college. Micro$oft Windows XP, Micro$oft Frontpage 2002, Micro$oft Visual Studio, Maple 8.

Cost in stores: Over $900
Cost for me: $11.05

BOOYAH!!!! =)

Just a reminder...

...of how much I hate Micro$oft. I install the upgrade Dial-Up-Networking on my Win98 laptop so I could connect to my VPN at home. After doing that my computer wouldn't even boot.

After hours of reinstalls and checks, I had to hack the registry just to get it booting... Grr...

And everyone asks why I love Linux...