07.06.06
Posted in Toys at 10:56 am by Soabirw
Well, the projector finally came. Unfortunately my dad decided to go out of town again this morning, so I wont get any help with building a tripod thingy for it. We are renting, so not sure we can go punching holes in the ceiling or wall. Found some pictures of it in action in a forum though:
Think it will work out well if I can find a good stand for the projector and get the screen figured out. Might have to ninja some hooks into the walls and mud over them when we leave.
Edit: Here is a neat comparison of an older screen and mine.
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06.28.06
Posted in Toys at 8:32 am by Soabirw
Probably going to be moving in the next month or two (towards glorious Utopia) and there is no way I am taking that massive Wega with me. I think we’ve sacraficed enough toes. It’s a great T.V., but about 150lbs too heavy. So I am leaving it with the house and was needing a replacement. Preferably one that doesn’t match the Wega’s fantastic weight. Thought about doing a projector, but all I knew about them is that they project. The Projector People helped with that a bit. They have some good buyer guides and tutorials and such. Ended up buying this sweet rig. The picture makes it look a bit goofy, but the manual really shows it off.
Seems more then perfect for my needs. Since we will be renting I doubt thy want us punching holes in their cieling to mount cages and such. This is a table top unit, so no problems there. Until the 30th they are running a special, so it comes with a 92″ screen and a sub woofer. 92″ is kick ass, but the subwoofer may seem wierd. Turns out this unit has a build in DVD player with stereo speakers. Making it very portable. Want to watch a movie in another room or even outside and you will have a DVD player and basic sound without transporting half your entertainment center. As far as quality goes it is supposed to be very nice. Does HD, VGA, Component, S-Video, and Composite. Supports 480i/p, 720p, 1080i and some other less common resolutions. So as far as specs and features go I am very happy. Hopefully I don’t find out I hate projectors in general though. Never seen them in action in a home theater environment.
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06.26.06
Posted in Toys at 10:54 am by Soabirw
Co-worker told me about this sweet app. I’m not normally a fan of such things, but it is supposed to have a very nice memory manager, which as you probably got from my recent posts, I could probably use. Ended up checking out a lot of other functionality it provides and am very impressed. Goes through all your Windows settings and gives advice on tweaking settings for performance or you can just let it take care of it. Cleans up your registry, temp files, etc. Even checked out my Firefox settings and gave like 14 recomendations on improving it’s performance. Even lets you restore stuff you permanantly deleted. Does some XP “styling” too if you are into that. Ran it on the work computer and it had a lot of cleaning up to do. Looking forward to trying it at home. Maybe it will help Windows stop using a 2gb page file when I have a gig of RAM still unused.
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06.22.06
Posted in Toys at 8:54 am by Soabirw
After that last batch of RAM, I was worried that my motherboard wasn’t going to support the full speed it was supposed to. But this new Corsair XMS stuff is working just dandy. Same speed as the other stuff (PC3200/400mhz). My co-worker is the one who talked me into trying the higher end stuff. Never had a problem with the normal Crucial before, but now I am definitely sold. I ran 2gb of Crucial for a while, when it wasn’t crashing I thought my computer ran much better. Especially with games. Now I’m running 2gb of this Corsair stuff and I am noticing a significant difference over the 2gb of Crucial. This stuff is damn fast. Cranked City of Heroes up to max graphics and ran around town with Super Speed. Normally, even with the 2gb Crucial, it would start cranking pretty heftily. You just move so fast and they have so many people and objects in a town. With this new stuff, not even the slightest pause. Don’t think I have ever seen this game run so smooth.
Windows is still a pile and demands 1.5gb for page file. I had it set to 1gb, but I guess it was doing a “give or take 500mb”. So I set it to 512mb. Still uses 1.5gb even though my RAM isn’t even close to being all used up. It’s looking like a re-install will happen at some point, but at least I can function until then. And I’ll be all the happier with this RAM and a working Windows. If that’s even possible anyway. Maybe this time around I wont apply a single update. Those are what seem to keep hosing my install. I’ll do SP1 and stop there.
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06.17.06
Posted in Toys at 5:23 pm by Soabirw
The new Crucial RAM is either bad or incompatible. Can’t get even one stick to pass Prime95 tests. A new mobo could solve that, but I’d rather not risk it. So I am sending it back for a refund and picking up these babies. Along with a USB hub to replace the one that just fried. Even with a $50 restocking fee I will come out even. I would love to go all Mac right now, but I think I’ll keep this sumbitch alive a little longer.
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06.14.06
Posted in Rant, Toys at 6:22 pm by Soabirw
My three 1gb sticks of RAM came today. Was all excited to start up CoH to see if the performance was any better. Instead it immediately froze. Turns out the 2nd memory slot on my mobo is bad. I hate computers so very much. The last three mother boards I’ve owned has had this issue. So not even sure buying a new one will help. Such a God damn gamble with computer hardware these days. So I have 2gb of worthless RAM sitting on my desk. Fun.
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Posted in Rant, Toys at 9:09 am by Soabirw
What a miserable day yesterday was. I thought Apple Support was better then any other support I have had to deal with, but in the end that is the only part I am upset about. We verified that my laptop was fuckered, so I said i wanted to do a return. Because I ordered it online and made changes to it, like adding another 512mb RAM, that I don’t qualify for a normal return or refund. I have to take it to a certified Apple support center, have them verify the problem, then they can help me setup the return. The nearest one is in Salt Lake. So I drive my ass all the way up there and the main Apple technician has no idea what I’m talking about. Said they only do repairs there, which I could have done at a place 1 mile from my home. I told him everything I tried and that somebody in a forum said they had the exact same problem and it was determined to be bad RAM. He was way ahead of me though and already at the Memory Tester that comes on the Mac install disc. Almost immediately it failed. Lame thing is, he still has to ship it all the way to Apple. Can’t just swap it out right there.
Now here are three problems I have with that situation. First, the only way to order online is through the customization screen. Yet if you choose anything at all, you are negating the option for a return for exchange or refund. That’s a dirty policy. Secondly, telling me something that gives me 2 hours of driving in nasty weather and rush hour when it isn’t even remotely accurate. The support people should have told me straight up that I don’t qualify for a return, instead of tricking me into the repair solution. Thirdly, why the fuck don’t they run their own damn RAM test before shipping it to people? Sounds like this isn’t a rare problem. The guy at the Mac store said he gets at leat two a week with bad RAM issues.
But on the plus side, I should have my MacBook in good working order next week. Hopefully they’ll ship it to the house and not make me do that drive again. And after I got home I went to a real Mac store called Mac Something. “Something” is really part of the name, it’s not me forgetting like usual. Sweet digs. Had a gorgeous 30″ cinema display running with all kinds of sexy accessories. Sosacms came with me and he was drooling over everything. Karen’s work PC is a 900mhz, 256mb ram pile of shit. And once again Windows fucked over my folks. Second time they have legitimately bought Windows and had it disable because it was “pirated”. I’m sure it is some idiot with a keygen who actually registers his ill gotten Windows. So instead of spending more time and money on this garbage we went the Mac Mini route.
Brought it to work with me and put it on my 2nd monitor. It’s a bit noisy, unlike the pre-Intel ones, but I hear that will be fixed soon since it is just a software glitch in one of the patches. Doing updates now, hopefully that will resolve it. Other then that I am as happy with it as I was with my MacBook. And getting it from a local store will make any possible woes easier. I also had them upgrade and test the RAM when I bought it. The Mighty Mouse is wild. 4 button, 3D scroll mouse. Crazy thing is the button is actually the entire bottom of the mouse. So if you are a savage, you can just mash your entire hand down to click. Or you can do left and right clicking as it is pressure and position sensitive. Also has two side buttons that do some pretty neat effects in the OS. Scroll wheels works great too. And it’s nice to have horizontal scroll without having to hold down a keyboard button.
I think my mom will have a blast with this thing. She is a hobby artist, but damn good at it and definitely has that mind set most of the time. Have until Monday to have all her office needs setup on this thing. Should be fun for me.
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06.13.06
Posted in Toys, Weepin' Words at 9:01 am by Soabirw
MacBook is already dead. I left it copying music last night for work. When I got up this morning the screen was black, which I would expect and assumed it was just sleeping. But I can’t get it to come out. Been trying for an hour now. Even contacted Apple Support. I took the battery out and held down the power button for 30 seconds. Then put it back in and powered it on. Also tried holding command + option + p + r. No idea why, but support asked me too. Then tried hooking it up to an external monitor. Still nothing. Looking like I’ll be sending it in for repairs. Not sure if I should start to hate Apple or if I should just continue to hate all laptops. So far I haven’t had a decent one. Even my very expensive Alienware was sent back shortly after getting it after the USB ports all broke and cause a short. Maybe I’ll see if I can trade it in for a Mac Mini. I was really loving the OS last night. And the portability would be very nice, but not at the cost of hardware stability.
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06.12.06
Posted in Toys at 5:25 pm by Soabirw
It finally arrived today. Luckily I didn’t find out until right before I left work. Their estimate wasn’t until Wednesday or Thursday. Otherwise I would have been going nuts all day and gotten nothing done.
So far I can’t stop giggling. Everything about it is so damn neat. First off, I was able to one hand the box all the way down stairs. If I tried that with my Alienware I would be minus a hand. The laptop itself is very solidly built. First fun thing I noticed was the power cable. When I went to plug it in, as soon as I got near the plug-in point it sucked itself right in. Has a pretty tough magnet apparantly. That’s is a fantastic idea. The touch pad is funky though. Nice size, but just one big pad with one big button. 
Which shouldn’t surprise me, but neither should a one button mouse. But I’ll still stare at in awe for 10 minutes.
Next was getting it on the wireless network. This never goes as smoothly as it should. Especially with Linksys. Quickly read there was a bug in the Linksys products that make it hard for a Mac to connect via WEP. Changed to another mode and it is working just fine.
Going through the usual setup screens with it’s very pretty Cube roll over effects. Oh and now the iSight found me. Wants to take a picture of me for my account avatar.
Egad! No Home key. Home and End are shared with Left and Right arrow keys. Anyhoo, going to spend the evening playing and getting my usual software going. First thing is online chat with iChat.
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06.10.06
Posted in Rant, Toys at 11:42 am by Soabirw
Last night my computer started to really crawl. And I don’t exactly have a wimpy box. Here is what I do have:
- AMD64 2800
- 1gb PC3200 RAM
- GeForce 4 6800 Ultra 256mb
- Two striped 160gb SATA drives
So it is frustrating when Windows runs like total garbage. So I look at my page file usage and it is over 2 God damn gigs. I hard set it to match my physical memory, but it doesn’t seem to care. Now it only goes up to 1.7gigs and then Windows yells at me for not having enough virtual memory. Nothing in Task Manager is using more then 30mb or RAM. Just booting up Windows and looking at my memory usage, 50% of my physical memory is gone and the page file is at 500mb. This is before loading a single app.
So either I need some help making Windows not suck nuts or I need to buy 3 gigs of RAM. Which I’m not totally against, I’m just not confident Windows wont gobble all of that up as well. I am constantly running Spybot, Ad-Aware, and AVG and they never find anything.
I’ve been wanting to separate work from play, so maybe my 3rd option would be to dual boot Windows and Linux again. Only thing I don’t like about that is I like to quickly transition between work and gaming. 15 minute breaks here and there. Or I like to work while gaming. Slow CoH missions and I can get some decent work done. The other issue is my storage. Never found a smooth way to handle a dual boot. Neither OS needs all 320gb to itself, but they do need most of that shared. Only Fat32 is comfortably supported in Linux, but I wouldn’t even be able to rip a damn DVD if I did that.
Eventually the solution will be a Mac Mini on a KVM probably. For now, looks like it’s off to Newegg for 3 gigs of RAM. Will probably be my last big PC upgrade for a long time.
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