Shadowtwin.com

CyberPower PC response

2009-11-13T12:55:00.002-07:00

After my last, rather angry, post about CyberPower PC, I thought I should probably post that I did get a response from them regarding the condition of the PC when I received it.

First I want to say that one thing that they did right was to never try to blame the damage on UPS shipping. I say that because while it may be possible to believe that a component had come out of place during shipping, it doesn't seem that it would have been possible for the graphics card to unscrew itself, the CPU fan to detach itself, the front panel fan control to loosen its screws, and the Motherboard tray to also loosen its screws. This was clearly thrown together very quickly, most likely due to my email telling them to give me my money back if they couldn't ship it on the date promised.

As I said in the previous post, I put the components back in myself, tightened everything down, and fired it up. It seemed to work just fine except for a high pitched squealing noise that was coming from one of the fans. Since the two fans that were flopping around loosed during shipping were the one on the graphics card and the CPU fan, I naturally that one of those was going to be the culprit. But in typical, lazy fashion, I wanted to try the easiest ones first. So I began disconnecting the fans one by one (starting with the case fans) as I powered the machine up. It turned out that both of the 120mm side case fans were making a hell of a lot of noise. I was able to bang one of them around to get it a bit quieter, but I had to disconnect the other one entirely to be able to use the machine without getting a splitting headache. The back exhaust fan on the case is also making a lot of noise, however I think that it is just louder than the others due to it being an 80mm fan and -theoretically at least- running at a higher RPM.

I sent CyberPower PC an email at about 2am on Wednesday morning when I first opened the box. That email said that there was damage to the machine and linked to my last post for them to see it. I sent them another email at around 11am, after I was able to determine that the case fans were the ones in need of replacement. I finally got a response to the emails via a phone call on Friday night (more than 48 hours later). The guy was nice enough. He said it would be no problem to send me the new fans, they just needed to verify my shipping info. So we did, and that was that.

So on Friday night they verified the info. I expected they would ship them out on Monday, I would likely receive them by Wednesday. Instead, I got an email from UPS on Wednesday evening saying that they had only just picked the package up from CyberPower, I wouldn't be receiving them until Friday. At this point it doesn't matter a whole lot as far as the functioning of the PC is concerned, I still have three functioning case fans and have been running it without the fourth. What does matter though is that when they had the chance to really redeem themselves from a customer service standpoint, they failed twice. It took over 48 hours to respond in the first place, then they called to verify shipping, which was absolutely unnecessary unless they thought I had moved in the two days since they had shipped me the machine in the first place. Then it took them another 5 days to go ahead and drop the fans in the mail.

So, would I recommend CyberPower PC? At this point I would have to definitely recommend against customizing a pc through CyberPower and having it shipped to you directly. However, CyberPower does have pre-assembled machines available on NewEgg. The machine that I got from Newegg came in within 3 days, was assembled correctly, and has worked flawlessly for the last couple of months. Also worth noting, Newegg has probably the best RMA program in the business, I have never had a problem getting an RMA, nor do I get the accusatory "something you did caused it" attitude. You can get the CyberPower machine pre-assembled through Newegg cheaper than you can build it on their site, the only downside being you can't customize it so you just need to make sure it meets your minimum requirements or plan to upgrade it yourself.

I don't know if I just got unlucky on my particular order through Cyberpower, but I do know that while I would gladly order another CyberPower machine (even the one that arrived damaged has exceeded my expectations) I would certainly involve a third party distributor in future purchases. While they may be slow to react to a single customer, I would be willing to bet my house that they wouldn't give Newegg that kind of lackadaisical response time. Even if they did, Newegg wouldn't pass it on to their customers as they have their own reputation to think about.

In a nutshell, to get back to the point of this post. CyberPower did make it right for me in the end... It just didn't seem like they were all that concerned about getting it done very quickly.

CyberPower PC disappointment

2009-11-04T03:11:00.004-07:00

Normally I am not the type to complain. Well, I complain a lot here, but I mean in real life I am not the type to bitch about a lot of things. The world is an imperfect place, imperfect things are going to happen, if you spend your time bitching about it, you are dwelling way too much on it and it just puts you in a foul mood. But sometimes I just get really, really irritated.

I mentioned previously that I was extremely happy with my new CyberPower PC. Happy enough, in fact, that I decided to get one for my wife as well. The one that I am using I actually bought pre-assembled from Newegg, but I wasn't able to find a similar deal on a similar system when I started looking to buy a new one, so I went straight to the company's website instead.

They give you options... Boy do they ever give you options... In fact, they give you every option. I chose to go with a gigabyte motherboard with an AMD Atholn 3.0ghz processor complete with a mean ass cooling thing, 4 slots for DIMM (upgradeable to 16gigs), 4x2gig (some brand) RAM with heat spreaders, an nVidea GeForce 220 1 gig video card, 4x red neon cooling fans, 500gig HDD, 22x DVDR, front panel fan control unit, and a 600 watt power supply, also threw in a red cold cathode light just for fun. I put my order in and they charged my credit card immediately. Then it listed my estimated ship date to be 16 days later.

Now the delay in shipping wasn't a complete surprise; the website actually displayed a date a couple weeks in the future, but I assumed that was just so people wouldn't get pissed off if it took them 5 or 6 days to get their system. What was a surprise was that as I checked my order status everyday, they had not even began to assemble the machine on the date it was supposed to be shipped. The order still just read as "payment processed". The lines for assembly date, quality control date, final quality control date, etc. were all blank.

Since it was already about 3pm on the day they were supposed to be shipping the machine, I dropped them an email that basically said, "Look, you haven't even started to build it yet, give me my money back so I can buy the parts and build it myself." That email got a quick reply stating that the (some brand)RAM I had ordered was on backorder, but that they would upgrade me to Kingston HyperX RAM so they could get the machine together and ship it that day.

So, at 3pm they had not even started to put it together, but by the end of the business day they actually did ship it. And a few days later it arrived at my door.

I just opened it up, and here is the first thing I saw when I got it out of the box:

That empty PCI slot you are looking at is where the video card is supposed to be. At first I thought that maybe they had forgotten to install it, but then why would they have removed the shield for the slot. So it must be in there somewhere...

Ah yes, there it is, hanging ever so precariously in the middle of that mass of wires, a mass of wire which can be seen much better in this picture:

You can even see the now completely broken cold cathode tube floating around in there amongst the wires. But the fancy light was the least of my concern. Here is how it looked as I began to pull the cover off to assess the damage:

The Video card is actually sort of connected to the CPU cooling fan, which has also fallen off of the fancy heat disperser thing. Now they are both floating around in there beating each other up as well as the rest of the components. Here are a couple more shots of the Video card and fan, taken simply because I couldn't believe I was actually looking at it:

The enormous cooling fin system on the CPU is also bent, but doesn't appear to be damaged beyond cosmetic. The screws holding down the motherboard are all loose. The fan control on the front of the box is also loose and flops up and down every time you touch it...

I am very disappointed with the condition of the system and the non-existent customer service prior to my angry email. If one of the components that I had ordered was not available, why didn't they call or email me sometime prior to the day it was supposed to ship to ask if I would like to choose a different type of RAM? Was the sale so important to them that they rushed putting this together to get it shipped? I would have been irritated if it had taken an extra day to get the system, but I can guarantee you that if it had arrived in perfect condition I wouldn't be writing this -despite the wait.

I put the parts back where they go and powered it up anyway. It is currently downloading updates. The motherboard, power supply, HDD, DVD, CPU, and RAM all appear to be in working order, the only question is which of the fans was damaged. I know one of them was damaged because I can hear the high-pitched squeal of it even as I type this. If it is one of the 5 dollar case fans I will simply buy a new one. If it is the fan on the Video card or CPU (which seems the most likely since they were the ones banging around during shipping) I will ask them to kindly send me a replacement -which I will install myself- and hopefully they will; I would love for this to have a happy follow-up, but I'll be damned if I am going to send this back to them and wait another month to get it up and running.

Update Here

FTP

2009-10-30T11:37:00.002-07:00

I have been having problems with Leech FTP for a while now, but continued using it anyway. There were random error messages, random disconnects, and at times it would just get stuck on an upload, download, or directory switch. The reason I continued to use it was that it was so simple and basic; I don't need a lot of ~~beneficial features~~ crap cluttering it up. I want to upload and download files, I will handle all editing on machine. Yesterday I couldn't get Leech to connect at all, so I had to find something else. What I ended up with is Core FTP.

Core FTP has roughly the same minimal features, but with the bonus of not locking up at random intervals. An additional bonus is that it automatically refreshes the remote directory on upload, that's something that I always wished Leech did. It occurs to me that rather than post that here I really should just make a short list of links to put on my sidebar with all the programs that I use for website related stuff. Then I could just visit my page to download them if the need arises. But damn I am lazy...

Shower faucets aren't really figner tight

2009-10-29T22:53:00.007-07:00

I have been having problems with the faucet in my shower for about six months now. I have neglected to fix it because I absolutely knew that I was going to encounter all kinds of problems when I tried to fix it, and of course I was right.

The problem with the shower is a bit odd, really. For reasons unknown the hot water side will gain and lose pressure seemingly at random. It could go for 2 weeks without having a problem, it could go for 2 weeks without working properly. I had tried disconnecting the hot water line and just blowing water through it without success, so I needed to try something else. The plan was to try to just pull the control lever and clean the fittings inside of that; possibly replace a couple of the rubber seats. Of course this all went to hell the second I touched it.

You can see that little bastard here. I have taken off the trim already, and started trying to take the ring that holds the faucet together off. Up to this point it hadn't been working -which is to say that it wouldn't move a bit- so I knew it was only a matter of time before this minor repair became a major headache. You can actually tell from the photo that the whole faucet has been moving as I have been trying to apply gentle and even force with a wrench, you can also tell by the angle it is currently at that is hasn't been working to loosen the retaining ring at all. I already have the water off at this point, and I have no intention of stopping until I get the damn thing working again, for better or worse, so I grabbed the camera to document the ~~demolition phase~~ disassembley.

There are lots of instructional videos online showing just how to do this (take the ring off and replace the seats and springs, that is), and in all of the videos these fittings are barely finger tight, and the entire operation takes about two minutes. Of course in the real world you will be there with a pipe wrench -actually leaning on it for additional torque- and the fucker is going to break. You'll know you've reached this point when the water starts pouring out of the handle as seen here. Pretty much as expected I broke one of the lines on the back of the faucet well before the retaining ring broke free. I want to point out the quality of the image though: you are seeing a version that is cropped pretty heavily and reduced to 20% of the original size, and still those little water droplets just hang there, as if frozen in time... It's a good thing I had the camera handy, eh?

Another thing that all the instructional videos I saw online had in common was that there was always ready and easy access to all of the plumbing. That's nice for making a video, but a house generally tends to have most of the plumbing fixtures hidden away in walls. They are much more difficult to get at there, but they also aren't nearly as much of an eyesore. My house is one that has said plumbing connections hidden away, so there was much work to be done. The wall behind the shower (the one on the outside of the bathroom) is about 18 inches of solid adobe. There is an access panel that goes about halfway up the back of the bathtub, but no reasonable way to access the faucet from there. You can reach the water supply lines and that is about it. That meant I had to do all the work from the front (and theoretically finished) side. First I had to remove the sliding glass doors that I put in when I initially remodeled the bathroom a few years back. That is easy enough; the top bar is held in place only by gravity, and each end is easily pulled off by removing three screws and cutting the bead of silicone running along the edges.

The walls of my bathtub/shower are covered with a 5-piece pre-molded surround. This also went in when I did the bathroom remodel. Previously there had been 8"x8" ceramic tiles that ran only about 30 inches up the wall. Water had gotten between and behind them and done some horrible damage to the adobe. Water is the #1 enemy of any structure, but in adobe that is tenfold: water + packed dirt = mud. The goal was now to try to remove this piece of the surround without doing extensive damage to it. I expected I was probably not going to be able to do it without getting any cracks in it, but I was hoping that I would be able to reuse it; I really don't want to have to replace the entire surround. So with a chisel and some finesse, off to work I go.

Now having mentioned the prior problems I had with water getting behind the shower enclosure, I knew that I took extra effort to make sure that it wouldn't happen again. I remember being pretty liberal with the liquid nails on the back of all of the panels, then going batshit with the silicone near the top and edges, but even I was surprised to see just how much glue I had holding this thing up. I mean holy mother-loving shitballs that is a lot of glue! I was taking my time here to try to do this slowly, peeling it back a little at a time, trying not to let it crease so that it wouldn't crack. You can see one large crack near the top of the picture but thankfully that is behind an overlap when installed.

I managed to get it off in one piece, with only a minimum of damage. Near the bottom left you can see a crease which would end up cracking, but with a little bit of caulking it will be just fine. If I was doing this for someone else I would certainly replace this whole sheet (I should also point out that there is absolutely no way I would do this for someone else anyway, so that example probably doesn't mean much), but since it is my house and I don't mind a few imperfections this is good enough for me. I would move this out of here and lay it flat on the floor after I saw that first crease form, and that was the only visible crack that formed during the process.

Getting the plastic surround off was really the only part I was dreading. Once I got down to the lumber and plumbing I was a lot more confident that I could do this without too much of a headache. The plywood that you see in the picture here was all added when I remodeled the bathroom. There had been a couple of 1"x4"'s behind this previously that were holding up some particle board, and it had all rotted through. Plywood is not an ideal structural material, but in this application the only thing it is actually holding up is the thin plastic shower surround, so there isn't any real weight to it, and it needed to be smooth. This whole thing came off easily, there are about 10 screws holding it up (they can be seen as little black dots throughout). A couple of them had gotten hidden behind that ridiculous mass of glue, but I was able to get them all out pretty easily to get at the plumbing.

The cup that I had been holing all of my screws and other hardware in got knocked over into the tub. As I was picking the parts up, I snapped this picture. If you are ever working on a sink or bathtub, make sure you plug the drain. I just threw a handy washcloth in there, and as you can see there are still a couple of little red washers in there from where the cup tipped. I'm sure that the sliding glass door frame would go back up just fine without them, but the less crap you get in your drain the better. The last thing you want is to have to tear out your drain as well.

Here we see the faucet assembly. The board that it is mounted to is another addition I had to put in there, the old faucet had been simply held in by the pipes and I needed to change that. Also the little pieces of one inch lumber on the sides were added to give me a couple more screw points for the plywood front. Down at the bottom you can see a piece of lumber with a square cut out if it, that exterior access is just below that. As you can imagine it would be impossible to get a screwdriver all the way up to the faucet mounting screws from there. I am to the easy part at last!

This shot is just to get a good look at the copper and bronze fittings. You can see a lot of discoloration on them right near the tips, and the hot water side has some running the length of the pipe, but being copper and bronze these are still in pretty good condition and don't really need to be replaced. Those bronze elbows go 5-8 bucks each (depending on the store) and sweated copper pipe can last a hundred years easy, so there is really no need to replace it.

Remember to disconnect the shower head assembly before you start trying to remove this line. I actually neglected to do that during the remodel and was forced to replace the entire line after I applied about three ass tons of force and creased the copper. This top piece is usually in a finished chrome so be careful not to damage it if you are going to reuse it. I find that you can usually stick a screwdriver inside of it and use it for leverage (the top piece that goes into the shower should be bent so this works nicely).

Disconnect the water supply. I am going to point out that this is one area where I probably went far astray from building code. I really shouldn't have the flex lines you see there in this application. I should be using compression fittings for this (the ones with the nut that crimps down on the pipe to tighten it) and I think building code would dictate that since this is inside a wall you shouldn't have this type of connector (I can't swear to that) but when I put this thing in I knew I was going to have to replace it eventually, and using the flex lines meant I would be able to put just about any faucet back in here, where if I had gone with a solid line I would have had to do a lot of cutting and soldering if it didn't all line up. I do have access to these lines from the outside (note the hole in the block in the back of the picture) and since I am replacing the faucet now I sure am glad I did it this way.

Once all the other water lines are disconnected, there are only a couple of screws holding the faucet up. These ones were rusty as hell, but they came right out.

Then to pull the spout out... Unfortunately the length of this piece of pipe wasn't something that I had a great deal of control over. It had to be long enough that the spout would sit snugly against the wall when the whole thing is assemble, and as it turns out that is about an inch longer than the space I had available to remove it. As you can see I actually had to notch a piece of the lumber out in the back to get this thing pulled out. Again, the plan is to reuse all of this, so I didn't want to just cut the pipe.

I wanted to take a shot of this one to show the actual end of the pipe. While it looks extremely corroded, you can see that the threads are still in excellent condition. There was clearly a leak at some point, or it could be from condensation, these lines are not in an insulated area, but there is no damage to any of the pipes or fittings beyond superficial. The flux was still clean and unbroken, there were no bends, kinks, or crimps. I'm sure your helpful hardware store attendant would probably give you the opposite advice, and equally as sure that a general contractor would point to the corrosion as evidence of a need to replace all the plumbing in the house, but in the real world there is no need to throw money at it just because the faucet was faulty.

Here are those pieces again, cleaned up just a bit. Just hit them with a wire brush to get rid of any loose debris. The only concern is anything on the threads that might keep the teflon tape from making a seal, remnants of old teflon tape doesn't fall into that category. Also I didn't clean the threads all the way to the nut simply because it's not necessary to screw them any tighter than a couple of turns. Again, a contractor may offer different advice, but we are looking at real world application. Just as there is no need to waste a lot of money, there is also no need to waste a lot of time, unless you happen to be paying yourself by the hour for this repair, if that's the case, by all means, clean those pipes up like new!

Here is the whole assembly reattached to the new faucet. You can see that the teflon tape hid all those imperfections around the threads anyway. A couple things to note if you are using a single faucet handle like this: The first is to make sure that you have the correct side up. It would be entirely possible to install this thing upside down. As I'm thinking about it, it might still work upside down, but better safe than sorry. The second is to make sure you get the pipes oriented correctly. I could probably still turn each of those pipes a quarter turn with a wrench, give or take, but since they have to line up, snug (with a wrench) is all you need; if you get stuck and are force to back it out, remove the pipe, retape it, and do it again.

It all goes back together just the way it came apart. Just hook it all back up and, with any luck, there won't be any leaks. Make sure to test it for leaks before you put the whole wall back together. I have the wallboard only connected by three screws and the laminate cover not glued in place so that I can check again in a couple days to make sure the temperature changes don't cause it to start leaking.

And that is about as far from the three finger-tightened screw walktrhoughs that you are going to find.

Help my wife raise money for breast cancer! (please)

2009-10-22T16:58:00.002-07:00

Every year my wife does the annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk here in Phoenix. Her mother passed away from breast cancer a few years ago, so it is something that she feels pretty strongly about. I also like the ta-ta's, but my job keeps me from making the walk; I settle for a nominal donation to her.

She is doing her fund raising exclusively online this year, and I wanted to pass that link on to some people at work, unfortunately the web address to make a donation to her is: "http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/MakingStridesAgainstBreastCancer/MSABCFY10GreatWest?px=2331810&pg=personal&fr_id=19864". Since I know that some people will have to actually write the link down, I decided I would just throw a link to it up here, 'cause shadowtin.com is easier to remember than http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/MakingStridesAgainstBreastCancer/MSABCFY10GreatWest?px=2331810&pg=personal&fr_id=19864.

So here is that difficult to copy and paste link in a handy, clickable format.

Please go and donate...Or I curse you to experience homosexual desires the next time you see bare breasts!

Installing case fans (aka cutting into the tower)

2009-10-21T12:10:00.006-07:00

I got up this morning and jumped into the case fan install project. It seems to have gone pretty smoothly; the pc is back up and running and the fan control is operating all of the fans. There were a couple of setbacks, but nothing major, I will go into them in a minute.

I consider myself to have a moderate knowledge of computer hardware, and that was more than sufficient for this job. I also consider myself to be relatively skilled in the all-purpose-handyman type skills necessary for the install, but honestly it was easy enough that I would expect someone with little or no skill or knowledge on either subject would be able to complete this. From powering down the pc to having it back up and running took me roughly two hours. I could have done it quicker, but I was stopping to take pictures, and I was extremely nervous when I got the power tools to the case and took it really slow.

Tools: Adding the case fans only took a screwdriver, but cutting the hole for the top vent fan required a Jigsaw and a ~~Dremmel~~ High-Speed Rotary Tool. You could probably accomplish it with only the rotary tool, but I lacked the bit to make circular cuts in metal, so I used to a jigsaw to cut the shape and the rotary tool to smooth the edges. And I really do recommend the rotary tool and not just a drill; the rotary tool can smooth the edges, quickly punch the screw holes, and can be used to clean up any rough edges the other tools leave behind. You will also need either a silver sharpie or a knife for marking the case.

Here we go. I stopped for the first picture after I had made the cut in the top of the case and punched the screw holes. I used one of the metal grills that I bought as a template and etched a line around it with my pocket knife (this would have been easier if I had a silver sharpie, but I didn't). I used a jigsaw to make the rough cut, then smoothed the edges with the rotary tool. I used the same grill as a template for the screw holes; I held it in place with one hand, put the rotary bit into each of the mounting holes, and drilled through. It took a bit of light grinding to get the holes large enough to accommodate the screws, and it was also necessary to grind the underside of the case to flatten out the raised edges the drilling had left behind. In the picture you can see all of the electronics, and unfortunately I did have to make the cut with the tower assembled; the top is actually riveted to the frame so I had little choice. I put a scrap piece of cardboard between the top and the electronics while I was making the cuts, it kept the metal shavings from getting onto the delicate parts.

As you can see the cutting and grinding left some exposed edges. I wish I had thought ahead and bought some high gloss black paint to hide the edges. The majority of what you see here though is just metal shavings that didn't come off with compressed air. I was able to clean them up with a rag and some alcohol later, so all you can really see at this point is a little silver ring right around the edge. The hole didn't come out exactly round, but I didn't really expect perfection here. The fan and grill are covering the hole from both sides, so pretty damn close to round is good enough for my purposes. Of course if I had been doing this for someone else I would have spent a lot more time on this portion of it, making sure to get the hole exact and the edges finished, but for me this was perfectly acceptable. You can pick up a three pack of these black metal grills on newegg for about 5 bucks. You should always cover the exterior fans, but an exhaust fan just needs something to make sure nothing falls into it and these do nicely.

Installing the front fan actually turned out to be more work than installing the top one. Getting the front panel off was a bit of a chore. There are little plastic clips wedged between the HDD bays and the sides of the tower that you have to squeeze and pull forward to get to release, this took me needle-nosed pliers and a lot of patience, though I imagine all towers have these installed differently. In addition to the plastic clip hassle, the screw holes for the fan were much too small for the screws to fit through, so I had to drill them out. Unfortunately the area I was having to drill is so very close to the edges that I had to do it at somewhat of an angle. I went really slow and checked the size frequently to make sure I stopped before making them too big. Finally, I had to remove the Hard Disk to access two of the screw holes when I got to actually screwing the fan into place. As I said, installing this fan was probably more difficult, and definitely too longer, than installing the top exhaust fan. I should also point out that I was so paranoid that I was going to install the fans backwards that I must have checked each of the air direction arrows half a dozen times before I tightened down the screws.

The side fan was very simple to install, that was why I saved it for last. This is the same fan as I installed on the top and the front, but this one I put a grill and filter assembly onto. Of course keeping dust out of your machine is paramount, so wherever possible you should put filters onto your intake fans. I think this grill and filter set cost 6 bucks on Newegg. The outer cover of it snaps off so you can clean out or replace the filter, and there is actually a grill hidden by the filter that looks just like the one I put on top of the case, only made of plastic. Bear in mind that it is made out of thin plastic, so take care when you are removing and replacing it. I briefly debated putting the filter on the inside of the case with the fan blowing through it so that the LED's would show more prominently. In the end I opted against that, knowing that I would probably never pull the case apart to clean the filter, this way it is staring at me all the time, hopefully it will guilt me into it.

The fan control was actually really simple to install. Especially so since I already had the front opened to put the fan in. There is a jumper on the circuitry that allows you to set the temperature display to Fahrenheit and Celsius, I opted to move it to Fahrenheit so I wouldn't have to keep a calculator handy to figure out how hot it was. The instruction page for this was done in about 7 different languages and I couldn't find the English portion most of the time, but the circuit board actually had print on it -in English- that said "Fan 1", "Fan 2", "Temp1", "Temp2", etc. I just went by that for the cable routing. I ended up with one temperature sensor each at the top, front, and bottom of the case, with the fourth actually attached to the housing for my Power Supply. The instructions did have a warning about getting the wires too close to heat sinks, and I was independently worried about them getting into the now plentiful fans, so they just ended up more or less right where the fans were installed -even if that was not the place I really wanted to know the temperature. Also in the picture you can see that the top exhaust fan install is actually much smoother than it appeared in the other pictures. And you can see that fine layer of dust all over the machine. This dust is all from the install process, as I dusted it thoroughly prior to the install, so make sure that you use compressed air liberally inside the machine before you power it back up; I must assume that this dust is from grinding the metal, and I can't imagine a more conductive material than metal powder to short out your Motherboard.

Here is the fan control just as I powered it up, you can also see the LED's of the top exhaust fan. I have all of the fans set right about half speed as I am checking to make sure I don't have any phantom noises like scratching, scraping, or thermonuclear meltdown. I didn't realize until I actually had the machine back together that this fan control allows you to turn off each of the fans, which is nice, and that the LED's dim with the speed control. I also didn't realize until I had it back together that the stock exhaust fan is only capable of running at about half the RPM of the new fans I installed. While the others can go to about 1900 RPM (as read on the fan control) the stock one can only do 1050. I wish I had bought one more fan and replaced it, although I'm fairly certain the other three fans can make up for it.

When I bought the fans, controller, and grills, I got a free blue (my choice of red, blue or green actually) dual cold cathode lighting kit. I went ahead and put it in here, 'cause what the hell else am I going to do with it? As you can see by the mass of wires on the right, I've never been one for the "finishing touches" aspect of this type of work. Thankfully that cold cathode lighting kit has a switch (that mounts into an empty pci bay -which I have about 6 of with no corresponding slots on the motherboard) that I can easily turn off. Which is how it will remain unless there is someone who really wants to see just how bright I can make that mess of wires look.

Here is the finished product in as near darkness as I can get it at noon in Arizona. My camera has some weird feature that makes it so the flash free photos take a second (well fractions of a second, but it's relative; it takes longer than instantaneous) to process, and that makes for slightly blurry photos. I have to admit that I am very pleased that I went with the LED fans. They really do transform it from being just a plain metal box to something... well, to something. I especially like the way the front intake lights up the trim around the bottom of the front. And in the dark that top exhaust fan looks like it was meant to be there. I have spent a lot of time working with computer hardware, but this is the closest I have yet come to any actual modification. It was easy enough, and the result is eye-pleasing enough, that I won't hesitate to do it again if I should ever find myself in a position where I need to.

The total cost of this install was about $75 shipped from Newegg. That includes three 120mm blue LED fans, the Scythe fan control unit, the three pack of black metal grills (of which I only used one for this install), and two of the grill and filter packs (again, only one used during the install. I was planning to put one on the front intake, but the difficulty of getting to the fan nixed that idea, it would take me an hour to clean the filter). As I said, it took about two hours from power down to power up. That includes the time spent searching for stubby screwdrivers, digging out a flexible screwdriver extension, trying to find my new jigsaw blades, 'cause dammit I know I just bought some, etc.

Cutting into the case was really quite intimidating for me, and I wasn't able to find a "how-to" type guide to answer any questions I had before going into it. It turns out that the case actually cuts quite easily with a standard, all-purpose jigsaw blade, and as long as you take your time for the cut it will look just fine when you are done. If you happen to be thinking about doing this either because you need the additional airflow, or just for the eye appeal, don't hesitate to do it; it is really pretty simple, and the result looks pretty cool.

PC cooling

2009-10-21T02:16:00.002-07:00

After seeing the heat issues that come from trying to run a 3d game on a laptop -even a laptop that has plenty of muscle to run such a game- I had to start rethinking the issue. I had always made the assumption that any pre-assembled machine that you buy off the shelf would come with adequate hardware to keep it within normal operational temperature. I couldn't have been more wrong.

I still happen to have about a half a dozen old pc's within thirty yards of the chair that I am sitting in now (I actually just gave two systems to my brother-in-law, who, not being a gamer, was more than happy with 1.5 year old stuff). I took a minute to look inside them specifically for fans and was surprised to find none. The only fans on any of the boxes I have around me are on the CPU and the power supply (a couple of the video cards also have small fans, but I don't put a lot of faith in those, for reasons I am sure I will discuss later). There are only vents on all of those boxes, so unless I happen to have them sitting in the direct path of a fan, the hot air inside them just sits there. I'm sure this has been my biggest problem all along: I probably wouldn't have to replace the PC every few months if they weren't left to bake in their own radiant heat.

On the right here, you can see the case that my new machine came with. I'm not a huge fan of the overall design of the thing, I mean the window in the side could be a cool idea if there was anything in there to look at, but as it is all you can see is the dull gray metal of the case. I have, however, had the time to think it through, and I think I need to retract my previous statement about the box being too big. That, it seems, is a good thing. All the little parts in there generate a lot of heat, and in order to get that heat out I am going to need some serious airflow, the open space makes it easier to move the air. The case came with a 120mm exhaust fan pre-installed on the back panel, and there may or may not be an intake fan installed on the front under the logo (it is an option for the case, but I didn't pay much attention when I opened the case to upgrade the ram, and can't tell observing from the outside), and a spot to put one on the side of the case. I am going to put all of those to use, and I am going to add an extra exhaust fan on the top. I am going to go all out on this, I want to see just how much I can improve performance with nothing but cooling fans.

Fans are dirt cheap. I really had no idea. I never really thought about how much they might cost, but I would have assumed they had to be more expensive than the 5 bucks a piece I dropped on these Rosewill fans. The manufacturer had a lot of good reviews for fans and power supplies, the price was right, and the LED's, well, I dunno, maybe they will add a cool factor, or maybe they will just be annoying. I am not in the room with the PC when I am sleeping or watching TV, so I don't imagine they could be much of an annoyance, but I somehow doubt they can transform my plain case into an otherworldly piece of alien technology...But I have been wrong before.

Since I bought this system pre-made from Newegg, I didn't get to choose the box. Thankfully it has vent running all around the bottom part of the front; from roughly where the logo is down, there is a recess with a screen for ventilation. This, along with the mounting spots on the back and side, means I will only have to make one major modification to the box to get all the fans it: I have to cut a 120mm hole right in the top of it. Well, I am also going to cut out the whole "bullet hole grill" part of the side intake as well, but the top is the more major modification. I have never cut a hole in a computer case before, and I am a bit apprehensive about it. In fact, I plan to practice on one of the old machines laying around the house before I actually put a high speed rotary device to the real thing.

So for those of you keeping track at home, the last, say, 6 PCs I have bought have had a combined total of 0 case fans. This one is going to have 4 120mm fans. I spent some time reading up before I bought all the fans, and I should have enough power to keep everything running.

One other thing that I bought for this project was a Scythe fan controller like the one pictured. I am honestly not 100% sure if this was actually necessary, but I did like the idea of being able to control the speeds; I have no idea how loud this is going to be with all four fans, plus the PSU fan and the CPU fan going on full speed. If it is deafening I would like to be able to turn it down a bit.

I just wanted to get a quick note about this up here tonight, because I plan to unplug the PC and start cutting into it tomorrow. Hopefully it won't turn into some pseudo-nightmare and the carnage will be minimal. If it goes well I will probably slap up some photos and afterthoughts...If everything goes wrong, I will probably have to make my next post from my wife's computer.

PC and Music

2009-10-01T11:20:00.003-07:00

My recent small flurry of website related activity seems to have stopped almost as quickly as it started. I got the pages that I wanted to reformatted, and started on a couple of the features that I had been thinking about for a while, and then my Laptop crashed.

There are two extremely annoying aspects to the Laptop crash. The first is that it was just after we got back from vacation, and aside from the photos that I have posted on the Vacation Photos page (in vastly reduced size and quality), I had no backups of the images that I lost. A total of roughly 300 pictures, from vacation photos to pets, just gone. Damn it. The other annoying aspect was the loss of all the programs I use for the website: Leech FTP, Screen Hunter (image saving program, saves pictures to file with a click of keyboard button), Audacity (music editing), and numerous others. Some of those are easy to pick up again, just a click through download.com, but others I was using older freeware versions instead of new trial versions so I could have full functionality. Those are harder to come by, and usually require going through a seedy website and praying you come out of it without a virus (much like picking up a hooker on Van Buren). And I didn't want to waste the time doing that on the Laptop since the crash, coupled with heat issues had cemented in my mind that I needed to get a new PC anyway.

I ended up getting a new PC from NewEgg. If you have read my page in that past, you know that I like them so much I am practically a spokesman for the company. The last time I bought a computer I stuck with a name I knew. This time, before I even went to shop for one, I knew that I was going to try a PC built specifically for gaming. Either a CyberPower PC or an iBuyPower machine. Both of these have an entry level price that is roughly the same as an entry level eMachine or a Compaq, but they are (theoretically) built for gaming. The one I chose this time was a CyberPower PC.

The CyberPower was my second choice. I had actually already put one from iBuyPower into my cart and went through the payment process, but due to a changing zip code my order was put on hold. Three days later it still hadn't processed so I cancelled the order. By that time the machine that I wanted had sold out, so I went to plan b. The CyberPower machine I chose came with a 2.9ghz processor, 4gigs of RAM (upgradeable to 16gigs), a 1gig GeForce 9500 video card, and integrated 5.1 surround. I ordered an additional 4 gigs of RAM (to upgrade myself) and got the whole setup for just a shade over 600 dollars. And boy am I ever glad that I chose to go with a name I hadn't heard of.

The tower is huge, but that is pretty much my only complaint about the system. When I fired it up for the first time and got to the desktop I was ecstatic to see that there were no icons there. The machine came equipped with 64bit Windows Vista and nothing else! This was a huge plus for me, though I could see how it could be a minus for someone who actually uses anti-virus software. The thing about anti-virus software is that it has always bogged down my machine so much that the tiny amount of security it provided (let's face it, I have been on the internet for 15 years, I know how to keep myself virus free) isn't worth sacrificing the performance. Honestly, I think the anti-virus software does more to harm the system by constantly running and updating, keeping you from running programs -even windows update won't run under some of the bigger names-, than the actual viruses they are meant to protect against. In addition to the lack of anti-virus, there were also no trial software offers for AoL, NetZero, MSN, and all that other crap that usually clutters up a new machine. In fact while looking through the start menu, the only trial offer I could find was Microsoft Office. There were only a recycle bin and two other icons on the desktop, neither of which necessarily needed to be removed. The lack of third party software is why my next PC purchase will definitely be from these guys.

I do have one petty bitch about the machine though. For reasons unknown the 5.1 surround that it comes pre-installed with has all of the tools turned off. Instead of having an audio manager with an equalizer and such, the only thing it shows when you click on the "Via HD Audio Deck" is the ability to change the input/output assignments of the audio ports on the tower. It took me a lot of toying around to find out that if you go into the control panel and get into the sounds settings, under the advanced tab there is an equalizer option (which has presets that sound so terrible and tinny that they are of 0 use to anyone) which I was able to use to get it to sound great -but not through headphones. I am not sure if the headphone issue is my hardware or a software issue though, so I will hold back my tirade on that bit of it for now.

So in order to set the equalizer, I needed to get some samples of different types of music onto the machine. I have an external hard drive networked here in the, well, let's call it an office, that all the pcs have access to, so I copied the library here. I started tweaking the settings while playing different styles of music until I got to where it sounded great for the Heroic Power Metal that I seem to listen to the most, and it still sounds good for the more popular Rock and Metal that makes up the rest of the library.

While I was copying the entire library from the external drive, I realized that my taste in music has changed quite a bit over the last decade. I used to listen to almost exclusively death/thrash metal, but that has been slowly evolving to where I now enjoy melodic stuff more. I still like the music to be in-your-face and pounding, but with death metal getting ever more bestial in the lyrics (the sound, not the content), and me with no particular desire to listen to the Cookie Monster doing death metal, I have been gravitating to the other type of music that seems so prevalent now: Heavy Music with a woman doing harmony over it.

I heard a song by the band Luna Mortis a couple of months ago, but wasn't able to find the album online until recently. This is just the type of thing I am talking about, but with a twist. The music is heavy, but the vocals on this one range from beautiful and melodic to just a hint of the cookie monster-esque death metal that turned me off to death metal in the first place. For unknown reasons it doesn't bother me in these songs, perhaps since there is actual singing to compliment it? That well could be, as I also like the band Bullet For My Valentine, who also have normal vocals mixed in with the Jaba the Hut chorus. Here is a sample of the song "Ruin" from Luna Mortis' album The Absence

I chose that song because it was a good example of the mix of lyrical styles, not because it is one of the better songs on the album. In fact, I think it is probably one of my least favorite songs, but it typifies the style in a small sample far better than any of the other songs do. Now even I can't listen to this style of music exclusively, but mixed in with a library old Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, and newer, popular rock and metal, it fits nicely.

And speaking of newer, popular rock, I can't stop listening to Halestorm, even though every time I find myself enjoying it I want to kick my own ass. They are another band with a female vocalist, but very clearly trying desperately to be mainstream. All of the songs are three minutes long, they all have very easy to remember hooks for the chorus, and let's face it, if you have a penis, you can't help but want to bang the singer. She does display some amazing vocals in a couple of the songs, but every time I started trying to find an example of that to sample, I just ended up scrapping it and going back to this:

That is the beginning of I Get Off from their self-titled album. I don't know what it is that keeps me coming back to that song. Perhaps it is the sexual deviant in me finding some comfort in a woman finally admitting that she knows that she is being watched when she is undressing near the window, and that she is doing it exactly for that reason. Which is great for me, since it just gives me a visual of a sexy, sultry woman in a teddy, posing near a window. But I could certainly see how a more delusional sexual deviant could take this as license to stop jerking off outside her window and go in to get him some. I have no doubt in my mind that within a year this song will be cited as a mitigating factor for some pervert raping someone. Just hopefully not Lzzy Hale, 'cause the visual doesn't ~~currently~~ work for me if the woman teasing me is dead -that is an entirely different song.

Monopoly

2009-08-05T10:50:00.002-07:00

My wife downloaded the Monopoly game for her iPod and we had it with us on our trip to California this year. I played the game a few times during the drive, mostly to keep me from staring out the front window. Even with sunglasses on, if I find myself looking out the window for extended periods on very bright days it gives me terrible headaches. The little monopoly game kept my focus inside the car, which seemed to have worked for keeping the headaches at bay.

I also have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms. My sleeping is sketchy in the best of conditions, I don't really know why. In an average night I may have three stretches of uninterrupted sleep that range from 2-3 hours each, with each one requiring me to go back through the falling asleep process (which can take from 10 minutes to more than an hour). If I don't have somewhere that I have to be in the morning, I usually just get up after the first increment of sleep and occupy myself until I feel tired again. If I try to go right back to sleep I often find myself just staring at the alarm clock for a couple hours before eventually drifting off, only to wake up feeling extremely tired in the morning. It is entirely possible for me to get only three hours of sleep -when I am feeling really tired- and wake up feeling better than having had 7 hours of that incremental sleep under normal conditions. When I am on vacation I try to only sleep when my body tells me to, which often leaves me awake till 3am or so. Or if I get to sleep early, I will most likely be waking up between 3 and 4am, with little chance of getting back to sleep for at least a few hours.

Of course my wife doesn't suffer from any such sleeping problem. So when I wake up (of if I can't fall asleep) I have to find things to do to occupy myself that won't bother her. In the hotel this year I found myself on the laptop, but without internet access the first day I started making notes about Monopoly instead:

I played Monopoly against the computer three times during the trip, which just cements in my mind why you should never play these games with friends or family: emotion. Honestly, if you ever play the game with someone you know, it can only end one way: People shouting at each other, the game board flying, accusations of theft from the bank. That's how it was in my family anyway. With the computer there isn't any emotion. The computer is also more likely to make trades since it is looking at the potential value of the property to his future bankroll, while a human opponent seems to see only the potential value of the trade to their opponent's bankroll.

I played two of the games on medium difficulty and one on hard. I would have played them all on hard had I known that there was a setting for difficulty. The only difference I could see between medium and hard was that the computer would actually mortgage properties to outbid me on anything that made it to auction on hard mode. Of course once I realized he would do that I used it to my advantage; mortgaging my own properties to drive the price up, but always stopping just short of what I thought he was really going to pay for it, then unmortgaging the properties before the next roll.

The game went the same way every time. The computer was using the same strategy that a lot of people use; He was putting all his eggs on Boardwalk and Park Place all three games. He didn't land on them both, of course, so I was able to make a trade to him in all three games. While I don't remember precisely the way the trades went down, I do know that in one game he traded me one of the yellow properties on top of the board, one of the purple on the left of the board, and the only railroad I didn't own for Boardwalk. This gave me a Monopoly on yellow and purple, along with all the railroads. I also had both utilities and all the orange and red properties. He ended up having the 5 actual properties on the right side of the board (three greens and the 2 biggies) but I owned every space between the jail and the go to jail corners -and had a minumum of 2 houses on each property. I hit his green spaces a couple of times, but I made enough money off of him hitting my properties usually three times on the other half of the board that I was always able to stay on the offensive.

My monopoly game in a nutshell is this: Try to get all four railroads and avoid trading. At any given time every player has a minimum 8% chance of landing on a railroad -that doubles if they are on Batlic Avenue, States Avenue, Indiana Avenue, or the Community Chest space on the east of the board- with an overall chance of 9.75% to land on one (you can't roll from the Go To Jail tile). If you have all 4 railroads, every player has a roughly 10% chance to owe you $200 every time they roll the dice. There are no other properties that give you that. If you own Boardwalk and Park Place, for instance, there is a 69% chance that the opponent won't be in range to land on one with any roll of the dice. So if you own both the overall odds of them landing on one are about 4.26%, counting only rolls of course (it is closer to 7% for any 3 card set). This completely dismissing the fact that there are many "Advance token to 'X'" cards that will skip you past that side of the board completely.

To look at actual values of rent, the $200 you get if you own all the railroads may not seem like a lot, but it really is. There is no other property on the board that commands that amount without building houses. Boardwalk is the only property that can fetch $200 with a single house, all the rest require more. Roughly half the spaces will get more than $200 with 2 houses, but that requires a pretty decent investment, while the railroads require no additions. Also having the extra space on every side of the board gives you one less chance to land on someone else's property.

Whether you are playing a single opponent or multiple, consider only trades that will give you railroads early on. If someone is willing to trade you your third railroad in the second orbit, but this will give them a monopoly on a set, they probably don't have enough money to build houses on the property you are trading them anyway. The rents that are being traded the first 4 or 5 times around the board are under 50 bucks, but if you can get those railroads you can be making 4x the base rent of Boardwalk while the others are trying to trade their way into those monopolies. Every time a player hits your railroads they lose their salary for that orbit. That can be devastating if it starts to happen before they have built houses or hotels, or especially if they haven't completed any monopolies.

Always consider any trade that will give you that fourth railroad. It may not seem like a good idea to trade away Boardwalk for a railroad, but if it completes your set you should really consider it. Unless you are trading it to someone who already has a couple of monopolies, or a ridiculous amount of cash, you can usually do this safely. The more people there are playing, the easier the trade for that last railroad will be. If you have Marvin Gardens and someone else has the other two of the set but no monopolies, they will usually be happy to trade that last railroad to you so that they can start building some houses. This is a bit tougher if you are playing a single opponent, but if you can pull it off you are in a great position to win the game.

I guess I must have been pretty bored the night I sat down to write that out, but that is pretty much my game. The railroad strategy has always worked for me. Of course there are times when a trade has come back to bite me. Catch the wrong end of variance and hit Park Place with a hotel on it a couple orbits in a row and you can go from sitting pretty to bankrupt real quick. More often than not, though, you will be able to keep your opponents from building much if you control the railroads.

fun with text walls

2009-07-31T04:04:00.002-07:00

I have been spending some time going through my content pages (here so called for lack of another term. While I question just how much "content" there is on them I don't know of a more applicable term) in an effort to make them more uniform and clean up the coding a bit. Most of the pages that I set up before blogger were all set up before I knew a great deal about html, and while I knew how to set up tables and use most of the tags I needed, I didn't know about the simple "---include virtual---" html command (which, of course, needs the greater-than/less-than symbols to make it work). So that rather than having a file that held my link bar, which I could then just insert into pages using the virtual command, I had been coding the links directly into the html. So if I added a link, as I recently did in the case of the Music Lost to History Archive, I would have to go through every html page one at a time and add that line. Needless to say, many of the pages just never got updated.

I was downloading some of the html files through my ftp client yesterday so that I could change the table layout on them and get the banner into the right half (matching the layout you see here), but when I opened the source on many of them for editing, I saw roughly what you see here:

That is a pretty incredible wall of text! I have only two ways to view that: I can bring it up just like you see there, or I can turn word wrap off and see the same thing with a combined total of about 4 lines -each stretching on for near eternity. I know I didn't write the pages that way. In fact I can clearly remember the cut-and-paste fashion that went into creating all the pages, and I don't really know why they are displaying like that for me now. I have intentionally always done all my HTML programming in notepad, theorizing that I then wouldn't have to worry about the stuff not displaying correctly for me if I set them up in Word or Frontpage and later upgraded to a newer version.

The good news is that it hasn't been as bad as it may look. There are really only about four distinct sections of each page, so with 4 clicks of my return key I am able to break them up into workable sections for what I need to do. I suppose if I cared a little bit more I would go back and change the META tags to something a little bit more useful and search-able, but I can't imagine that anyone is ever really going to enter a keyword or string of text into the google window that would result in one of my poetry pages, or one of my 2004 archive pages coming up anyway.

But it seems with each bit of html/layout I get cleaned up, there is more to do. The big question I am facing now is if I should go back and change the formatting on every page of the pre-blogger archives, or leave them as is for historical purposes (read:lazy). I have already changed the first navigation page of that directory, and I will probably get as far as fixing the monthly listing pages, but not the day to day pages. I actually find some amusement in clicking back through the old archives from time to time to look at how the site has evolved from trying to emulate the really bad 90's homepage look to the more tame setup it has changed into.

If you are at all curious as to why I have decided to clean the site up a bit, it is because I went ahead and registered my name DonnieBurgess.com and pointed it here. A google search for my name now brings up pages of hits, of which only a few are me. Better to grab the name myself in case I should ever be rich and famous. Of course it is no secret who runs this site, as I have always had my name displayed on the bottom of each post and content page, but for those who may happen across this site looking for a different Donnie Burgess, I'm hoping to at least give the impression that it is not written by a monkey flinging feces at the keyboard and posting whatever text strings appear (My level of success at that being debatable). Also giving the entire site a uniform look will make it clear when you are navigating away from it, not to mention it gives me the excuse to edit the content of some of the pages that have really just been there as placeholders for these last 5 years.

A couple of changes

2009-07-29T03:33:00.002-07:00

I have made a couple of changes to the site in the last few days. Some of them are cosmetic, as you can no doubt see, the others are horoscopes and advertising.

The latter first. Advertising on websites has really evolved over the years, and looking into the buttons and banners they have available to place into a webpage now I wasn't nearly as disgusted. I decided to add a small button there on the top left, as well as a vertical banner (set to display image ads only, I hate those long text link ad bars) for a month or so to see if it is worth my while. Currently I have had them on the page for about 36 hours, and have netted a whopping $.01! They pay based on both impressions and click-throughs, though they don't really specify how much for either, so I will just leave them up for a bit. They are just taking up dead space anyway.

And among the various updates I made to the sidebar was the addition of ~~Wildly inaccurate, yet shockingly precise, predictions based completely on happenstance and arbitrary universal fluctuations.~~ horoscopes. I used to frequent a few sites that did humorous horoscopes, and I figured I would try my hand at it. The current plan is to update them once a month or so, but that will vary with how overfilled (or underfilled) my notepad of ideas becomes.

Most horoscopes are necessarily vague, and I decided to throw that out and write some very specific ones. Millions of people were born every day of the month, hundreds of millions share the same zodiac sign, so odds are these will be accurate for at least one person. Or not, they are pretty out there. But the goal was to add something new to the site, something that I could get by with updating infrequently, and, at least for now, they fit the bill.

If you are a regular visitor to the site, drop me an email and let me know what you think.

Inverse credit card scam?

2009-07-26T05:52:00.003-07:00

I'm not really sure if this is a commentary on myself or the state of the world today. I received a letter in the mail recently that read:

Dear Consumer:

The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC"), the nation's consumer protection agency, filed a lawsuit against Kenneth and Teresa Taves, and Dennis Rappaport and their businesses J.K. Publications, Inc., MJD Service Corp., Herbal Care, Inc., and Discreet Bill, Inc. The complaint charged that the defendants were billing consumers without authorization for alleged visits to web sites. Consumers saw charges on their credit card bills under the names "Netfill," "N-Bill," MJD Service Corp," and "Webtel." The defendants bought access to lists from a bank that provided the account numbers for more than 3 million valid Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Rather than use the lists to confirm that potential customers had valid credit cards, the defendants debited the cards for web site services the cardholder had never used.

The unauthorized charges were incurred by you many years ago, and you may no longer have the credit card that was charged. The enclosed check is you share of the funds collected.
...

(Who knew you could buy 3 million valid credit card numbers?)

I actually do remember having a charge appear on my credit card back before I moved out of my studio apartment (2 actually), somewhere around 1998 or 1999. I don't remember the name of the company that made the charges, but they totaled $98. I remember that clearly because I spent hours on the phone arguing with someone about the charges before I eventually hung up, cut up that credit card, and canceled that account -the credit card company refused to reverse the charge, and I was not able to contact the company that had actually made the charge. In an odd twist of fate, I never paid the credit card bill and let it go into collection (That credit card company (MBNA) was later part of a different class action lawsuit, where I also received a check) but it never actually made it onto my credit report.

Now that brings me to the part where I don't know if it is a commentary about my paranoia, or that credit card fraud and mail scams are so commonplace. This letter came with a check attached. The amount, $27.68. The entire thing is printed up on an impressive letterhead, complete with a claim number and a return address of "FTC v. J.K Publications, Inc., et. al." There is also a link listed on the letter: http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/9823616.shtm. I followed the link through, and this does appear to be the legitimate FTC website for this case.

While it is possible that this is 100% legitimate (I would go so far as to say probable), how can I be sure? If I cash this check my bank account number will be stamped on the back of it, and whoever issued it will then have access to that number once the check is cleared to their bank. How can I be sure that J.K. Publications didn't send out these checks in an effort to gather bank accounts? I mean really, why did it take 10 years to get these checks issued? The website says:

Most of the illegal billing dates back to 1998. Substantial time passed between the court’s judgment and the issuance of these checks because the defendants moved millions of dollars of their ill-gotten funds offshore, and it took significant time and effort to locate and repatriate the fraudulently obtained money.

If J.K Publications is based offshore (which isn't made clear in the FTC information) it is entirely possible that they are still involved in fraudulent activity, and what better guise to hide behind than a court ruling; Mail out a few thousand dollars in checks to get account information, then move a couple million from those accounts to your offshore shelter...

This has every air of legitimacy, and I'm sure it probably is my cut of the class-action suit. But the skeptic in me says that it's not worth the $27 to find out. The fact that I am going to wad this check up rather than take the chance either says that I need a tin-foil hat, or something needs to be done about the rampant mail scams and credit card fraud. Possibly both.

Audio Editing

2009-07-24T14:49:00.002-07:00

Since I have been playing WoW so much less of late, I find that I have had some time to work on a couple of website related projects that I have been putting off for, oh, let's call it 4 years. If you stopped by my page in 2005, then again yesterday, you would have noticed that my navbar (everything to the left of the body here) has remained unchanged for that entire time (and you would also have a freakishly good memory). Since converting to the blogger script way back when, I have to update my blogger template to change any of that. Of course when I do that anything that is already over there is just gone unless I take the time to archive it. What I have been working on all day is just that: archiving the Music Lost to History.

I had to trudge through all my pre-blogger posts to find as many of the songs I had featured there as possible, and was a bit irritated that the links to samples of the songs were now all broken. So I decided to figure out how to do the samples myself. First I had to figure out how to embed them. Of course I know the standard HTML functions for embedding .wav files, however since a 1 minute wave file weighs in at about 11megs, I wanted to try to get a slightly smaller format. That was when I found out that a standard MP3 can't be embedded unless the user (you) has a third party plugin to play it. I also found out that the third party plugin that had been in use for Firefox browsers has been blacklisted for allowing remote code execution. So I had to find another way.

A bit of hunting around on google found me a number of audio embeds, but the thing they all had in common was that the source was stored on their server. These are available from Google, Yahoo, MSN, pretty much any name that you can quickly link to anything internet related. Since the actual source is stored on their server, it is subject to being moved/renamed/changed without warning, thus leaving all my links just as dead as they currently were, so that was straight out the window. Most of these players are running in Shockwave Flash though, so I started searching for shockwave audio embeds rather than MP3 embeds and soon found myself at this site, which was offering just what I wanted: A source that I upload to my own directory for embedding the files. Bonus is that it is so lightweight and hides away (mostly) when not in use, and is easily resizable. Here is a sample:

So now that I was able to embed it, I had to find a way to edit the MP3's so that -hopefully- I won't get any angry emails from the record companies. I am going on the logic that if I am only offering a small sample of the song I am more likely increasing their revenue (by forcing readers to seek out the MP3 and pay for a download) than advocating piracy. I don't know anyone that has an MP3 library filled with about a minute's worth of each song at the very least.

In the past I have used Goldwave for my audio editing needs. At least I have tried to. Since I lack any post-graduate work in audio engineering, I am barely able to figure out how to make it do a damn thing. I'm sure it is extremely versatile (hell it has to be with that intimidating wall of sliders and buttons), but I've no inclination to become a sound engineer just to sample a song. Thankfully I happened across Audacity.

Audacity is great for what I am doing. The intimidating wall of sliders and buttons are neatly stored in drop-down menus so I don't have to look at them. There was a minor situation involving being able to extract my edited songs as MP3's, which required downloading a "Lame.DLL" encoder, but that went fairly smoothly. Now I am able to open up the song, slide the bars to the section I want to sample, extract it as MP3 and upload it. It only takes a minute to get all this done (a huge plus since I am so lazy), so I have no excuse not to do it.

If I would have known how easy it would be to find the tools I needed to complete this project I would have done it years ago. There are so many programs and applications available for just about any task you can imagine now, it boggles the mind. When I first set up this site I had a problem finding applications like this, and if I even could find them they were ridiculously complicated to use. I'm glad to see that so much of this stuff is so readily available now. Perhaps it will motivate me to take care of a few other things I've been meaning to do here...I still haven't changed the rest of my navbar since 2005, for instance.

The World of OMFG Get a Life, Man

2009-07-23T06:22:00.002-07:00

World of Warcraft has become a time vampire of epic proportions for me. It seems that no matter how good I become at the characters, or how much gear I get to drop, there is always something else to do. Maybe it's working on getting my reputation to exalted with some faction; maybe it's getting my trade skills to maximum level; maybe it's leveling my fishing skill... And when you find yourself fishing in a game, I'm pretty sure that is a warning sign (unless it is actually a fishing game, but that is probably a completely different warning sign all on its own).

I have been getting bored with the game of late. Having not played at all for a week while I was on vacation, I found that it was dreadfully boring when I tried to play it once we got back. I have run a couple of raids since we have been back, but the thought of day to day questing and reputation grinding just isn't appealing anymore -at least not right now. The Wrath of the Lich King expansion added 10 levels and a lot of new dungeons, but the levels went fast, and the dungeons are old news by now.

The biggest contributing factor for my distaste for it at the moment is the bloated badge system that they have going right now. You use these badges to upgrade your gear, and prior to WotLK there was only one type of badge: the Badge of Justice. Just collect however many you need (items cost between 15 and 150 badges) and trade them in. Right now there are three separate types of badges: Emblems of Conquest, Valor, and Heroism. There are 3 separate vendors that sell items for each respective emblem, and each emblem can only be acquired by running very specific dungeons or raids. So if you run normal 5-man dungeons you can only get one type of emblem, that can only be traded for very specific items. If you want the better quality items, or something for a different item slot -a ring for example- you have to run 25-man raids. And of course the best items (newly released with the Ulduar patch) can only be acquired by doing 25-man Ulduar, which can only be done once per week. Blizzard seems to have realized how cumbersome and annoying the current system is and are scrapping it completely with the next patch, making all emblems from all dungeons and raids the same -which can then be traded in for other emblems if you need to fill other equipment slots. Once that happens I may start taking some more pulls at the giant slot machine that is WoW, but for now I just find it annoying.

This morning, just for fun, I logged on and took some screenshots of each of my characters to do a cast of characters here. So here we go.

Crackhor:
This is my Priest. Since the WotLK update made dual-specs possible, I haven't been referring to her as a Holy Priest, but that is my specialty. Which is a nice way of saying that I kind of suck at Shadow. I have never really played her as Shadow, not even for leveling, and do so now only when it is necessary in raids. She was my first Horde character, with a time played of 35 days, 1 hour and 10 minutes. She is probably the easiest for me to play. Of course as a healer you do get the majority of the blame for any deaths in the raid, regardless of how the death came about: Say a Tank accidentally pulls 3 groups and the party wipes, that is the healer's fault. A Rogue forgets to stealth when he tries to sap a mob and pulls while you are drinking thus wiping the party, again, your fault. A Mob Mind Controls you for 15 seconds and no one in the party attacks that mob, so the group goes for 15 seconds without a heal and wipes... Yep, your fault. Even so, a good healer can be tough to find, so if you play the class well (hell, if you just don't outright suck) you can easily find a group for pretty much anything you want. Prior to this recent step back from the game I had been playing her a lot again, after not paying her much attention since WotLK came out.

Bulsai:
This is my Warrior (the name sounds like bullseye, so the mobs know who to attack). He is my second Horde character, with a time played of 26 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes. I haven't bothered to dual-spec him, since I have only ever played him as protection, and have no intention of playing him otherwise. I created him when I was a member of a guild who just didn't have enough tanks. I was able to get him to max level in about 7 days (time played, not calendar days) which was my fastest by far at the time. He was a main tank to be envied back before WorLK came out. I dispensed with the classic stamina is king mentality and instead built him on avoidance. Just before WotLK came out I had built him up to an impressive 60% avoidance (dodge/parry((through gear, socketing and enchantments))) so that only 40% of attacks even made it far enough to roll for damage. Though my health was low for the class, I didn't get hit often, and as such most healers I played with loved me for not taxing their mana pools. Since WotLK, the Death Knight and Paladin have become kings of tanking, capable of more or less instantly getting threat on every target in a group. Because the Warrior still can't do that (it takes several seconds to get them all) they have really been relegated to dps/offtank duty, and I just don't play him that way. Aside from leveling him and getting him a base level of gear, he has been on a shelf since the expansion.

Flamenheimer:
My Mage, time played: 17 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes. One of my first WoW characters was an ally Mage that I named Nukenheimer (I was going to name him Oppenheimer, but I didn't think many people would know who that was), and he was a lot of fun to play. I made this Mage when I got tired of getting killed by Alliance on my Holy Priest and Prot Warrior. I did a lot of PvP on my Ally Mage and had gotten fairly good at it, so I kept this guy wherever my Warrior or Priest were leveling/questing to get some retaliation on people who would attack those relatively defenseless classes. Since the release of WotLK I have been in a guild that didn't need me to play my healer or tank, so the Mage is the one that normally raids with them (the only one that makes it into groups for new content and progression). Unfortunately it isn't the one that I really like to play. As I say, I loved to PvP with him, but I get tired of doing instances and raids. He does great damage, but it is so dependent on mana that I am often sitting in the back drinking while everyone else has already moved on to the next fight. There are so many silence and interrupt spells on the new raid bosses that I am often just standing around waiting for a dispel. Once dispelled, I often only get 2/3 of the way through the next cast before I am silenced again. Frustrating. A fun class to play for sure, but one needs a break from the mana-dependent dps and endless silencing from time to time.

Prophesier:
My Death Knight, time played: 9 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes. Death Knights were the new class in the expansion, and when it was initially released they were comically overpowered. One could go into any dungeon or raid wearing only common items and do more damage than any other class in full epic gear. I had to get me some of that! I leveled this guy in a hurry too (easy to do since they start at level 55). I didn't really have the intention of playing him when I created him, and that is how it has become. Several changes to the talent trees have taken him from comically overpowered to merely ridiculously overpowered. I take him out to collect herbs for potions and elixirs since the Allys tend to leave him alone, but I never really enjoyed playing him. To this day I couldn't tell you the name of more than 2 of his skills since all you have to do is mash all the buttons to do great dps. He is fun to play in battlegrounds, but in the end it almost feels like cheating. I haven't ever really raided with him and I probably never will.

Ehpikfaal:
(That's right, Epic Fail) My Rogue, time played: 11 days, 12 hours, 32 minutes. I had an Ally Rogue, and I loved the class. When I got sick of the aforementioned problems with the Mage, I made a Horde Rogue. This one is a lot of fun to play because there are so many skills. You can't just 1 button your way to good dps, nor can you just mash all the buttons. Good dps requires a good skill rotation and keeping a number of buffs active on yourself, while keeping debuffs active on mobs. Always deadly in PvP and against single mobs, the Rogue was given an updated AoE skill for multiple mobs in dungeons and raids. There is probably no class hated as much as the Rogue, mostly for their ability to kill players (or NPC's) without the other guy being able to cast a single spell. The problem is that there are a lot of really, really bad players who have Rogues. I named him Ehpikfaal for the humor of it, but have come to realize that when you create a character that already has a bad reputation, giving him such a name will keep you out of most groups. So you see him on the right there doing what he does most of the time; sitting around town waiting to get into a group for a dungeon. Even so if I had to pick only 1 character to play going forward it would be the Rogue. Great dps and a lot of fun both PvP and raiding.

UnclBadTouch:
My Warlock, time played: 18 hours 39 minutes. It was in an episode of American Dad that I heard one of the kids call his relative "Uncle Bad Touch" and I liked it so much that I made a Warlock with that name (had to leave out 1 character because it was too long). Included here only because I like the name. I also have an Ally Warlock and I was never able to level either of them. This class bores me to tears. The play goes like this (at least for leveling): Your minion tanks the mobs, you cast a couple curses on them, then stand around and wait for them to die. You can't really use and direct damage spells since they are so costly in mana, and they aren't necessary anyway (at low level) since everything dies so quickly from your curses. I think I would really like this character at max level, once you are able to dispense with your minion and start doing some direct damage spells, but I simply get too bored trying to level him. Uncle Bad Touch has a macro that I run around town casting on people that reads something like this: "...Psst, hey (character name)..." "Would you like some candy?" "UncleBadTouch beckons (character name) to follow" "I have some in my panel van parked behind the Inn in Brill." I laugh every time I use the macro, though the people I use it on rarely find it as funny as I do.

So this morning I was logging onto the characters to see how long I have spent playing the game and I made the foolish decision to total it up. Counting only the characters you see here (which ignores all Alliance players, of which I have 2 at level 70 and 5 others between level 40 and 70) I have 99 days, 8 hours into playing. Mind you that is actual game time, so we are talking about 2384 hours spent playing. Is that disturbing or what?

At any rate, I may find myself enjoying it again once they make the changes to the badge system, but for now I am getting really burned out on it. But after 2400 hours, can you blame me?

Vacation photos page

2009-07-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

Tentative vacation photo page is now up! You can find that Here

Vacationing

2009-07-11T20:07:00.003-07:00

Vacation is underway and this year I brought along a laptop pc and the camera my wife won at a party at work. Of course in addition to that we brought along a Tomtom (no link on borrowed electronics) that my brother-in-law has set to give voice directions as Mr. T. For instance, "Don't give me no jibber jabber, make a right at the next stop and then get on the motorway. Mr T. Don't get no tickets!" (that is a quote.) And an iPod, in addition to both of our cell phones... Se we're not exactly leaving the world behind this year, but then I'm not sure if I could function without at least some of this stuff.

Vacation destination this year was the California coast. The wife looked up the locations of the missions that run along the coast on El Camino Real, and planned out a day trip to the Channel Islands. I have been merrily snapping pictures the entire time, not even remotely concerned about running out of memory on the camera means I am taking pictures of damn near everything.

Right now I am sitting in a hotel in Lompoc, CA. This is the first night that I have had access to WiFi, and I am taking full advantage of that by uploading hundreds of photos. I am taking care to only upload the reduced versions of them though (most of which I have reduced to 35%) because the full size ones are 2.2MB, and don't really buzz through the airwaves on this gratis connection. But the resolution on them is amazing. Here is an example:

What you are looking at there is a cropped and resized version of this scene which isn't exactly web friendly, if you know what I mean.

So until I get back home and have the time to wade through the picture and properly thumbnail them, etc, I am going to just throw a couple of them up. On these next ones just click on the image to see it in it's browser bending beauty.

Here is the Mission Santa Barbara. This is the first one that we stopped by today.

While I am not a religious man, I have to admit that when you see these structures you have to at least be taken back a bit by the amount of time and effort the believers spend both building and maintaining these throughout the centuries. The buildings really are beautiful, and somehow manage to evoke the same reverence in everyone who walks through the doors. I only took photos inside the main temple of one of the missions that we visited today, and then only when it was expressed to me that it was okay to do so. Not that I think it would have been an affront to God to do so, but that I thought it would have been disrespectful to do so without permission. And I had no intention of seeking out someone to ask if it was okay.

This next one is from the outside of the same mission, in the graveyard.

That was (I think) one of the best photos that came from the missions today. It was actually very dark inside there and with the naked eye I could hardly tell what it was at all. In the photo you can clearly see that at least two people are interred there (one on either side). The stained glass in the center is gorgeous, but to look at it from the outside it actually looked like it was paint. This photo was snapped between the bars of a locked gate in the cemetery -a place that I am relatively sure I wasn't supposed to be taking a photo. Of course if you were to ask me why I thought it was okay to take this picture while I didn't think it was okay to take them inside the church I would stare at you like Paris Hilton would if you asked her a math question.

We also took the time to stop at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. While I have never been to this specific museum, I am pretty damn sure they make these things with a cookie cutter and throw them up every 200 miles or so. It looks just like the one I remember visiting in Oregon and in Arizona. Right down to the planetarium and the fossils. One interesting thing they did have though was the butterflies.

If you are going to look at the full size versions of any of the pictures I posted, make it that one. I wasn't sure that the camera was going to be able to capture the colors and contrasts of the butterflies, but boy was I ever wrong. This looks like the photo you would see on the outside of the box the camera comes in; the one that you can never take no matter how perfect the lighting. The thing is I managed to take about a dozen photos of different butterflies that all look this good. The ones that don't look good are because the damn butterflies refuse to sit still for the pictures. Bastards!

Anyway, once I have a real broadband connection again I will finish uploading some photos from vacation, and there may even be a couple worth looking at.

A Short Story

2009-04-15T10:25:00.002-07:00

While loading World of Warcraft recently I saw a ling to a creative writing contest. I haven't really sat down and written a short story in a while, so I figured I would give it a go. Without further ado I will post that story here, reserving my notes for after.

The sun’s rays were just beginning to spill over the tops of the mountains of Kalimdor as Pedan stole silently through the streets of Orgrimmar. The streets were near deserted in these pre-dawn hours, with only an occasional patrol from one of the city guards (Grunts as they were called) disturbing the now calm city. This was just as Pedan liked it; his task was easier performed in silence. As he made the turn into the Valley of Spirits, he took another look to make sure he hadn’t been followed. Satisfied that he was indeed alone, he took up his post on the west of the pond and sat down. Today, he hoped, would be the day.

With one mighty swing it began. His lure touched down near a stand of cattails, just where Old Crafty was rumored to have been seen before. Old Crafty was the fish that Pedan had been trying to catch since coming to Orgrimmar, in truth it was the reason he had come here in the first place. Pedan was Undead, he had grown up near Brill in the Eastern Kingdoms, one of the few places where Undead were safe from the murderous hands of the Alliance forces. It was there in Trisfal Glade that Pedan had learned how to fish and, rather unfortunately, how to fight. He had spent many a night, and even more early mornings on the shores of Stillwater Pond or Brightwater Lake fishing with is brother, Lekor. Lekor kept him entertained with stories of Old Crafty, the most elusive fish in all of Azeroth. Said to inhabit the waters of both the Valley of Spirits and the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar (an impossibility, as Pedan had found when he arrived in Orgrimmar. The two bodies of water were located at opposite ends of the map, and no fish, no matter how crafty, was capable of traveling between the two), he was more myth than fish. Anyone who ever pulled in a line with the bait gone claimed that it had been taken by Old Crafty.

Pedan’s line caught a nibble and he hauled it in. Another Mud Snapper. He put it in his pack and cast again. Since the Death Knights had descended on Azeroth all trade supplies had become immensely valuable. The Death Knights were the product of a powerful magic, and while they were skilled fighters, most lacked the most basic trade skills. Without the ability to catch fish of their own, they would buy them and experiment until they were able to learn to create the fish that granted special powers when eaten. A pack full of fish like these could bring a couple of gold at auction. That is what kept Pedan going. He was here to catch Old Crafty, but picking up a couple gold for the trash fish he caught along the way made the task seem less arduous.

Pedan loathed the Death Knights, for it was a Death Knight that had killed his brother. His brother, like him, was a Rogue. Also like him, his brother was far more skilled in his trade professions than he was in battle. Pedan had actually passed his brother in his combat training, he was at his 34th rank while his brother was only at his 32nd. They had gone together to do some fishing off the coast of Stranglethorn Vale, hoping to catch some larger fish in the Vile Reef. They were just outside of Grom’Gol when a Human Death Knight appeared and struck down his brother in two hits. Pedan had fled and managed to make it back to the relative safety of the camp. He waited there for his brother, knowing that the Spirit Healer could bring him back to life, but he never came. The next day his brother's body lay lifeless on the ground just outside Grom’Gol, and the day after, and the day after that. And on and on until he eventually quit going to check. He had never seen someone actually die; the Spirit Healers were always able to bring them back, but this time, it seemed, it really had been the end.

In the months that followed he was filled with a vengeance, and set out to bring his combat training to a high enough level to combat the Alliance Death Knights. He followed the orders of all the Horde factions, a mercenary for hire, doing anything that was asked of him, and killing anyone who got in his way. He had misplaced his hatred on the Scarlet Crusade and the Witherbark Trolls. On the Syndicate and the Bloodsail Buccaneers. On anyone who stood in his way. It was while he was at his 51st rank of combat training, doing a favor for Timbermaw Hold in Felwood, that he too was struck down by a Death Knight. A heartless, Human Death Knight who, at his 80th rank, found it necessary to strike down the rogue in training. That was when Pedan gave up his quest. He couldn’t complete his training with the Death Knights on their killing spree.

That was when he thought back to the time spent fishing in Trisfal, and his brother’s stories of Old Crafty. While he wasn‘t sure if the fish was real, he needed something to do to keep his mind off of things. There was nothing wrong, he reasoned, with carving out a modest living for himself while he waited for the chaos to pass. But once he reached Orgrimmar he became so obsessed with the fish that he gave up on his combat training completely. For several weeks now he had done nothing but fish. He fished as his friends went off to battle the servants of the Lich King.

A frantic scream broke through Pedan’s reverie, “Orgrimmar is under attack!”

This was another circumstance that came with the arrival of the Death Knights. While the Horde was off battling the servants of the Lich King, the Alliance seized on the opportunity to attack their major cities. Most every able-bodied soldier of the Horde was battling in the snows of Northrend, leaving only a skeleton crew of City Guard to defend against such attacks. By the time news of the attack reached Northrend, and transportation was secured to Orgrimmar (or The Undercity, or Silvermoon -wherever the Alliance was attacking) it was usually too late. The city would be sacked leaving nothing but skeletons filling the streets; the city’s leader then absent for hours as the Spirit Healers worked to revive them; crushing the spirit of the Horde and giving the Alliance a renewed confidence.

“Orgrimmar is under attack!” came the alarm again.

Pedan watched as dozens of Alliance soldiers rode past him on the way to the Grommash Hold and the throne of Thrall, the Warchief. They were all rank 80 soldiers, and he knew that he would be powerless to stop them. He was thankful, though, that the Horde and Alliance had made an agreement that each factions’ major cities were safe haven -an agreement which both sides adhered to implicitly- that meant the Alliance could not attack him unless he attacked first… At least not with swords, though the gestures they were now throwing at him were just as hurtful. He did the best he could to ignore them as he continued to pull in Mud Snapper after Mud Snapper.

The attack on Orgrimmar had been going on for ten minutes or more, panicked screams for help came from the local defense as more and more Horde forces made it back to defend the warchief. Pedan felt a tug on his line and began to pull it in. This fish had some fight in him, not like the mud snappers he had been catching all these weeks. He let his line go slack before yanking hard to drive home his hook. The tug-of-war continued for several minutes before Pedan was finally able to bring in this monster. Once he hauled it to the shore he could hardly believe his eyes, for there on the end of the line was Old Crafty. He knew it instantly. He had never seen a photo of the fish, and eyewitness descriptions varied so widely that he had secretly wondered if he would even know if he caught him, but as he stared at this fish in bewilderment he knew -there could be no mistaking- this was him. He stood there for what seemed like hours (but was really only a couple of minutes) staring with a mixture of shock and bewilderment. What now? Surely a merchant would give him a pretty penny for him, to finally prove that he was real. But then what? And then he knew what he had to do, “I got you, old boy,” he whispered to the fish “better stay away from these aquadynamic fish attractors." And with that he turned him loose. No one would ever believe it, but that wasn't what mattered, what mattered was that he believed it. And in that instant he believed a lot more than just that.

He carefully packed away his fishing pole and pulled out his daggers. He coated their blades with instant and deadly poisons. He mounted his horse. He was going to help save the warchief.

Just how he was going to help wasn't clear to him as he made his way to Grommash Hold. His daggers would be all but useless against the Alliance, whose defense was far superior to his melee skill. He wasn't sure just how he was going to do it, but if he could catch Old Crafty, he reasoned, he could do pretty much anything.

He entered the throne room in stealth. He hadn't attacked anyone, so he was able to walk right into the fray without taking any damage. He stood and watched for a time. There were bones of the Alliance and Horde alike littering the floor. It looked like about a third of the Alliance forces had been downed, but one by one they would resurrect and continue fighting. He looked around to see who was healing them. He saw a couple of Shamans and a Druid casting healing spells, but they appeared to be focused on the group that was attacking the warchief. He looked back towards the door and saw a lone Priest. He watched as she would target each resurrected Alliance soldier and cast one mighty heal to bring their health back to near full before they would rejoin the melee. That was how he would help, they may be too skilled for his weapons to land, but his class skills would have a much better chance.

He watched for a few minutes making sure he knew who the healers were. There were only four of them left of the now 20 or so remaining Alliance soldiers. There were also probably 15 skilled Horde fighters assisting the warchief, it wouldn't take much to turn the tables. The Horde was beginning to attack one of the Shamans, he wouldn't last long with the kind of damage he was taking, if two of their healers were to go down this would end quickly. He looked around and saw an Undead Mage, he whispered to him, "I am going to Cheap Shot this Priest to lock up her skills just as soon as that Shaman falls. If you can kill her, this will be over in a hurry."
"She's going to dodge it." He replied.
"Maybe, but if she doesn't we win."
"Alright, wait until I have nearly finished casting my Pyroblast spell."
"Done."

The Priest didn't move as he snuck up behind her, not viewing him as a threat since he had not yet joined combat. The Mage and Rogue watched in anticipation as the Shaman inched ever closer to death, and just before his health was gone, the Mage began to cast Pyroblast. Pedan waited until the last possible second before attempting the Cheap Shot. He missed! The Pyroblast was in the air, and Pedan was now in combat, one hit from any Alliance soldier in the room would likely kill him. Thinking fast he Kicked, this one landed, stunning the Priest. The Shaman went down and within a couple seconds a Hunter who had been attacking him assisted the Mage in killing the Priest. She was down without casting a spell. The Mage and Hunter turned their attention to the Druid as Pedan vanished and quickly ran out the door. The Alliance soldiers could easily have killed him, but the tables had turned and they now had trouble of their own. The rest of the Horde soldiers joined in on the remaining Shaman and Druid. Both healers were down in seconds. The Alliance soldiers then went down in short order until all that remained was the warchief, the Horde, and the bodies of the Alliance.

Soon after, Thrall went back to his seat on the throne, looking disinterested as always. Pedan almost got the feeling that his actions went unnoticed, but he had seen as the Priest went down that the warchief had granted him full honor for his part in the fight. He approached the warchief to speak to him.

"Lok'Tar" Thrall said (he was always a man of few words).

"I just want you to know that it was my honor to defend you." Pedan said, a pride filling him.

He waited for the warchief to respond, but after a few moments of silence he turned to walk away. Once he had taken a couple of steps Thrall did speak, "For the Horde!!"

Pedan had a new vigor after this encounter. He vowed that never again would he be caught so woefully unprepared to defend his leaders. He also vowed to exact revenge on Varian Wryn, the king of Stormwind, the Human Capital. The majority of the Alliance soldiers had been Human, so it must have been Wryn who ordered the attack on Thrall. But first he must get his combat skills to the 80th rank.

With his renewed fervor, Pedan was able to tear through Winterspring and Silithus. Soon he was at his 60th combat level, and headed to the Outlands to continue training. It was here that he began to encounter the Alliance Death Knights in force. Most were near his equal in skill, and most times he was able to fight them off. This he didn’t mind; he had never been one to back away from a fair fight. Sometimes, though, he would run into one of the highest rank, there was little he could do then. He would try to vanish and run away, but their diseases made it impossible to stay hidden for long. Even if the diseases didn’t break his stealth, their skill was such that they could see him blending with the shadows if they were within a dozen yards of him. He began to only train at night, and to despise the Alliance Death Knights more and more. So it went as Pedan continued and completed his training in the outlands and moved on to help his brethren battle the forces of the Lich King in Northrend.

When Pedan first arrived in the Howling Fjord he hadn’t been prepared for the bitter cold. Wearing only light leather he felt particularly vulnerable to the harsh conditions, but he knew that the whole of the Horde army was subjected to the same -some of them only wearing light cloth- and bore their suffering in silence. He must do the same. He also found himself unprepared for the tenacity of the Lich King’s forces. While their combat training was equal to the foes he had been battling in Netherstorm, they hit much harder and could take much more of a beating before submission. Now in addition to keeping an eye out for the Alliance Death Knights, he also had to be very cautious to make sure he could battle the Lich King’s army one soldier at a time. His training was a bit slower, but steadily progressing all the same.

Pedan had reached the 76th level of training by the time he reached Zul’Drak, and found that he was now at or above the level of most of the Lich King’s army and, more importantly, of the Alliance Death Knights training in this region. With his goal in sight, it finally began to get easier.

Pedan was battling the scourge near Voltarus when, after a particularly ill-advised attack on three of the sickly beings, he found himself on the very edge of death. Once he was mercifully clear of the melee, he began to bandage himself. It was then that he saw him, an Alliance Death Knight swooping in on his skeletal flight. He struck Pedan, in the middle of tending to his wounds, with a hard two-handed blow. The blow had not left him poisoned though, and Pedan made use of this fortuitous turn by vanishing. He sprinted immediately away so as not to end up in the Death Knight’s circle of Death & Decay. Though the Death Knight was at maximum combat level, it was only four ranks ahead of him, and Pedan was able to successfully hide at a safe range as the Death Knight searched in vain. After a couple of minutes the Death Knight seemed to give up the search for him, and turned his attention to an outcropping of Saronite ore. Pedan took advantage of this and used the time to break stealth long enough to eat and restore his health. The Death Knight was at the ore now and began to swing his pick. His health now full, Pedan began to wonder, if he had first strike, could he do it? He knew he was going to try, for even as he was wondering, he had refreshed the instant and deadly poisons on his daggers. He may have been an easy kill in the past, but he was now a master poisoner, and given the opportunity to strike first, if he used his skills well, he was sure he could do it.

He snuck up behind the still mining Death Knight, and steeled himself. Now was the time. Before the Death Knight knew what was happening, Pedan had hit him with Garrote and Backstab. After a quick Sinister Strike, he hit him with a Kidney Shot, incapacitating him. He waited a couple of seconds to regain some energy before hitting him again with a couple of Sinister Strikes and Rupture. As he saw the Death Knight attempt to cast, a quick Kick shut him down again. A few more Sinister Strikes and a couple of Eviscerates and it would all be over. Pedan stood above the body of the Death Knight who had so recently, and so cowardly attacked him. He raised his arms in the air and cheered. This was a blow not only for him, but for every brother of the Horde who had been mercilessly slaughtered by his kind. Most of all for Lekor. While it was unlikely that this particular Death Knight had been the one that killed his brother, the symbolism was the same; no longer would he be a slave to the ways of the Alliance Death Knights.

Pedan completed his combat training in a work-like fashion. Having killed his first Death Knight, he found he had a flare for it. Now instead of cowering and running away when he encountered one, he was more likely to kill them before they had the chance to kill him. From that day on not once did a Death Knight best him in combat. This allowed him to complete the missions he was assigned in very matter-of-fact fashion. He would simply kill anyone who tried to stand in his way. Soon he could train no more in combat, and it was time to seek the vengeance he had sworn that day in Grommash Hold.

Pedan began to gather his friends and members of his guild for the attack. He had done extensive study into previous attempts the Horde had made to take down Wryn and he took these into account as he made his plan to assault Stormwind.

The Horde’s attempts to kill Wryn had always focused on using the tram between Stormwind and Ironforge as a base. He was going to use the fact that the Alliance would expect this to happen again to his advantage. Forty of them would make the trip to Stormwind under the cover of night. Once at the gates of the city they would split up. While five of their strongest would make a lot of noise on their way to the tram, the rest of them would quietly sneak through into the Stockades. The five creating the diversion would be a group of three Paladins, a Druid and a single Warlock. They would go just inside the tram and battle anyone that came to face them. If anyone noticed the others slipping through to the stockades, they would quickly give up on looking for them to go join the fray in the tram. They would give them ten or fifteen minutes to attract the attention of the whole of Stormwind, then they would make their way to the King’s Chamber. This distraction would give them the valuable time they needed to set up guard at the doors to the King’s Chamber to make sure no one could get in.

The five from the tram would then come inside Stormwind and use the tram entrance as a point of defense to fight off anyone attempting to reach the King’s Chamber from Ironforge. Five more would stand in the long hallway to the King, two Warlocks, two Death Knights, and a Druid would fight off anyone who happened to make it that far. That would leave thirty of them for the assault on the King. As the King neared death, they would pull in their positions so that they all could be there for the death of the King.

They would start the trek from Grom’Gol base camp in Stranglethorn Vale. If they started from there, Pedan reasoned, they could probably make it all the way to the castle without alerting any of the guards in the various regions. He set the time for just before dawn on a Monday morning, this should catch them completely unaware. Pedan issued only one rule before they were to start: No one was to attack an Alliance Soldier in training until they reached Stormwind, and then only if they were attacked first. There was no honor in killing a man so far beneath you in rank.

Pedan flew into Grom’Gol early on Sunday morning. He had instructed his allies to meet him there in the early dawn hours on Monday so the Alliance wouldn’t see their army mobilizing, but he wanted to be sure he was the first there. He knew the importance of keeping their presence a secret until they were ready to strike, and he feared that some over-exuberant soldiers may not be able to maintain their silence once they arrived. The men that he had chosen for this mission were selected for their combat prowess, not their discretion. He had made it clear that no one was to leave Grom’Gol before the raid was to start, and he would be there to enforce that.

Pedan made his way to the shore of the Great Sea and had a seat. He chuckled as he saw one of the Ravasaurs that had struck such fear in him when he last had visited the camp, the little thing looked so weak. He smiled and reached for his pack. From it he pulled his trusty fishing pole. While on his quest to reach the highest rank of combat he had found occasion to drop his line in a lake or two. Vendors in the Outlands and Northrend had tried to sell him a new pole, something flashier, but he had never replaced it. When it came down to it, it was really just a stick and a string. A true fisherman didn’t need anything more. He cast his line and watched as the waves slowly bobbed it up and down. He reached for his pack again and pulled out a container of Rumsey Rum, the fish always bite better when you have a drink.

“It seems some things never change.” Came a voice from behind him.

Pedan looked over his shoulder, rubbed his eyes, and blinked a couple of times. There behind him stood Lekor. He jumped up and ran towards him, “Lekor, my brother, I thought you were dead!”

“I was, for a time.” He said, then looked to the ground, “and then I just wished that I was.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I died that day and the Spirit Healer imbued me with the power to return, I realized that, in the spirit form, I could travel all of Azeroth without fear. And I did.” He was still staring at the ground as he spoke. “I saw so much … But it wasn’t real. I traveled to the furthest reaches of the map, I saw all the things I had always wished to see… But I didn’t really see it; I saw ethereal resemblances of it. I eventually realized how cowardly this was, and I used the power to restore my form.”

“But why didn’t you seek me out, Lekor? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried to, Pedan, at first. But as I arrived in Orgrimmar, I was just in time to hear that you, a Rogue of the 51st rank, managed to single-handedly kill a Priest of the 80th rank. You saved Thrall… You were a hero… What would you think of your brother, the coward?”

Pedan laughed, “Is that the story you heard? I assure you I did not single-handedly kill the Priest, in truth I took only two swings, and the first one missed.”

“But even so, you had the courage to join the fight. You were taking on Alliance soldiers that were 30 ranks your better, that is something I could never do.”

“You shouldn’t have to, Lekor. No one should have to. That is why I am here. I am leading an army to Stormwind in the morning, the message to the Alliance thugs will be clear: they are no match for the Horde, we work together to fight the Lick King … or they die.”

“But will it really work, Pedan? Will they not just retaliate against our leaders?”

“It is a show of strength, brother, surely they have seen that they can not fight the armies of the Lich King alone. They would waste their time -squander their newfound strength- assassinating our heroes in training; attacking our cities as we do battle with the Lich King..” Pedan smiled, a thought coming to him, “You should ride with us, Lekor. You should be there when we bring justice to the villainous King and his henchmen.”

“At my rank it would be suicide.”

“No. We have on our side powerful Warlocks that could capture the essence of your soul to keep you fighting should you suffer a fatal blow. We have Priests and Paladins that can call on holy power to shield you from their swords and protect you from their poisons. We have Mages that can call on the power of the Arcane to protect you from their magic and keep their curses from you. Our Shaman can fight any disease they should use… We will show them that their highest ranked soldiers can not best our weakest; strength that comes from solidarity. The strength of the just.“

“I will ride with you if you wish, Pedan, but I fear this show of strength may be seen as an act of defiance, not justice.”

“Defiance and justice are not mutually exclusive.” Pedan turned back to the great sea and sat down, “But enough of this. Have a seat, Lekor. It has been too long since we have spent a day fishing, and I have some Rumsey Rum Special Reserve for just such an occasion.”

Lekor took a seat beside Pedan, and dug his fishing rod out of his pack. He accepted a mug of Special Reserve, took a sip, and cast his line.

“I caught Old Crafty, you know.” Pedan said.

Lekor smiled, “Sure you did, brother, sure you did.”

They sat there throughout the morning and into the late afternoon fishing. They were smiling and laughing as they hadn’t done since their days fishing in Trisfal Glade. It could have been their joy at being reunited or it could have been the Rumsey Rum, but it was probably a little of both. Pedan told stories of his training in the Outlands and Northrend, the creatures he had faced, the quests he had accepted, the Death Knights he had slain. Lekor listened in wonder, there was so much he had yet to see.

As night fell they made their way back inside the gates of Grom’Gol. Pedan was pleased to see that almost everyone had already arrived. He had feared that some may try to back out, for as sure as he was that they would not fail, what they were doing was not going to be easy. Though it was still hours before they were to ride out, Pedan started arranging the army into groups. They would strike as one, but it was important that each man and woman knew their specific goal. Their party would be divided into eight groups, with each group watching after their own. He went over the specifics of his plan in detail, making sure that everyone understood: They must defeat Varian Wryn, and they must keep Lekor alive.

Once he was confident that everyone was ready, Pedan gave the order to mount up. They would use the Death Knight’s ability to turn water to ice and ride up the coast of Stranglethorn Vale into Westfall. They would turn to the shore at Gold Coast and ride the road from there to Elwynn Forest. Stormwind was surrounded by mountains on three sides so this was their only choice. The party would then wait at Crystal Lake as they sent their first group in. They would give them a five minute head start before the rest of the group would ride in and meet up in the stockades.

They began their ride across the water and were careful to stay just far enough from sure to be beyond the sight of any Alliance scouts, but not so far out as to be into uncharted waters. Their ride was uneventful until they reached the gold coast in Westfall. There they encountered an Alliance hunter of the 19th rank in battle with the murlocs. A warrior name Waltar jumped from his horse, ran up to the little hunter, and fell him with one mighty swing. He then stood above the body laughing. Pedan stopped and brought up his hand to signal the rest to stop. He imitated Waltar’s laughter and turned to face him, the rest of the group sat in stone silence.

“You find that funny, Waltar?”

“Did you see how fast he fell? He was a weakling!”

“Then why did you strike him?”

“He is the enemy… He would have done the same to me if the situations were reversed.”

“Which is it, Waltar? Did you strike him down because you viewed him, a 19th ranked soldier, as the enemy, or did you strike him because you think he would have done the same?”

Waltar stared at him in silence.

“This is exactly the type of cowardly, spiteful act I would expect from the murderous Alliance scum. Killing an untrained soldier is not killing the enemy, it is like killing a defenseless child. You are not defeating an enemy, you are feeding his hatred; that one blow will plant a seed of rage in his mind that will grow until he has perfected his skills, and then it will blossom. He will unleash that fury a thousand fold on our soldiers in training. This is not the action of an honorable soldier of the Horde!”

“Then why do we ride on Stormwind, Pedan? Is this not an act of vengeance?”

“This is justice! They would use their newfound powers to lay siege to our cities while our able-bodied warriors are fighting in Northrend.”

“And you think that their able-bodied soldiers will be there guarding Wryn? Then why are we riding out under the cover of darkness? Why did you ask that we so closely guard the time of the strike? This is no more justice than striking down that hunter!”

Pedan sat in silence for a moment, he realized that Waltar was right. As the forces of the Lich King were growing ever stronger in the Eye of Eternity, Naxxramas and Ulduar, he was planning to raid the alliance haven under a pretense of justice; perpetuating the infighting that would give the Lich King time to raise an unstoppable army. Until the land was rid of him there could be no peace for either side.

“It pains me to say it, but he is right. We can not attack Stormwind tonight. As long as the Lich King lives he must be our priority.” Pedan turned to the Mage, Izell, “Open us a portal to Dalaran, Izell.”

As the mage began channeling the spell, Waltar looked to Pedan, “What now, then?”

“We must destroy the servants of the Lich King. Tonight we ride on Ulduar!”

And there you have it. Now on to a few notes.

The contest stated that the size constraints were 3000-10,000k words, but I really wanted to keep it down to 5000 -reasoning that they will be reading hundreds of stories, I didn't want to waste too much of their time-. 5000 words should be plenty to get a story across. I managed to bring it in at just under 6000, but it began to get quite rushed. In reading it now, it seems almost like a fable; there is little or no extraneous activity and the dialogue is clearly not how the characters would really speak.

When I initially came up with the story idea it actually ended during the battle with Wryn, when a low level alliance soldier attacked Pedan and Pedan struck him down. That was what made him realize the futility of attacking to make his point to the alliance. I ended up scrapping that when I had gone to nearly 7000 words with the raid on Stormwind barely beginning and no end in sight, and even that was as rushed as it is now.

Once I had a reasonable ending, I did a quick spell check and submitted the story without revision. While I know I could spend a couple hours on it and make it much better, I also know that I have dozens of unfinished stories that will always remain as such. I just wanted to turn this in before I had a chance to talk myself into ripping it apart and starting over.

Do I think I have a chance of winning? Not even remote. I'm sure there will be thousands of people submitting stories with far better ideas, and who have taken much more time polishing their work. It is what it is: a quick story that was fun to write, and hopefully enough to hold a reader's interest for a few minutes. If you read this far, it held your's. :)

HP Slimline means I learn about Low Profile Video Cards

2009-03-05T14:55:00.002-07:00

My old pc had started making a horrible noise. Well, technically it started making several horrible noises. One of them I could pretty easily identify as the fan on the graphics card, as it only made the noise when I started gaming, you know, when the fan on it would start working. The other two noises I couldn't identify as easily. I was pretty sure that one of them was the hard drive going out, but I had also been getting an error message on startup for several months that some pci bridge was not functioning, and I have no idea what that was all about. I was playing some World of Warcraft one night and my framerate was an unbelievably low 12 frames per second. I say unbelievable because I remember when I first put that machine together I was able to get about 60 frames per second with ease.

I had to do something about it. My choices were to buy a new video card and hard drive to see if that would fix the problem, and if it didn't to keep replacing shit until it did. However the graphics card in my machine was at least 3 years old (it had been in my last machine as well) and my motherboard was at max level for ram, so I decided to just look into getting a new one.

Figuring I would spend about $500 on a new computer I found a Hewlett Packard (which I swore to myself 15 years ago I would never buy again) that was in the right price range, had a 320gig HD, 3GB ram and a 3.2ghz processor. That should get my by for what I need. I probably replace the computer once every 18 months or so, so it isn't that important to me to pick up cutting edge stuff; I only need middle of the road crap that I can throw a couple of cheap upgrades into to get me by for the next year or so. Unfortunately, in this case I spent so much time reading technical specs on it that I completely missed the big, bold Slimline listed on the front of the box. And since it came with a 22" widescreen monitor (a backup since we both already have one) it was in a box big enough to hold a standard PC. So when I got it out of the box, I opened it up to see my upgrade options before I even plugged it in. You can see what I saw here. The main problem is that the case is just over 4" wide, narrow enough that the cd player has to be mounted vertically, and narrow enough that a standard graphics card won't fit into it.

Through some searching around online I was able to find the specs for my computer, which stated that the graphics card could be upgraded with a pci-e X16 low profile video card. Being that the description has so many words, I figured it was going to be outrageously expensive, but I was able to find a pretty decent selection of them on Newegg.com. As an added bonus the price on low end memory cards has come down considerably from the last time I bought one a couple years ago. I was able to get basically the same 512mb Radeon card in a low profile design today for about 1/4 what I paid for it a couple of years ago. So it only cost me $39.99 to get the card shown here.

Of course when I got it out of the box I saw that while it was indeed shorter than your average video card, it wasn't actually set up for a low profile install. It had the bracket for it (to the left of the card in the photo) but it didn't have any instructions on how to actually change it. As you can see the standard VGA video out is on the top of the original bracket -the part of the bracket that I am going to have to remove to put the low profile bracket onto the card (also the standard bracket was a little bit bent when I got it, but I could have straightened it if I had planned to use it). So with no instructions, I just dove right in with some pliers and a screwdriver.

It was easy to change, just a couple of screws really, but the on thing I wondered about was what I was supposed to do with the VGA port. As you can see, I just left it attached to the standard size bracket and disconnected it from the card completely. My monitor doesn't have a DVI plug on it, but I did have an adapter laying around from a previous video card so I was hoping that it wasn't actually necessary for it to be there. I took another look through the instruction manual to make sure there was no mention of the VGA port, and to see if I had a high enough version of Direct X to run the card (and Kudos to the company that made this card. It came with an actual manual, with an actual English version, that used actual sentences. I have bought cards that had no English version, and possibly worse, cards that had bad English. They would say things like "Make happy the dutiful installation screws prior to the power performance of the repairing device."). And then set about putting it into the mini tower.

"Snug" doesn't adequately describe the fit of this card. While this photo may not show it as well as I can see it, there is maybe 1/16" of clearance between the video card and the other pci card. I also had to disconnect the gray cable you see at the bottom right of the photo because I had to push the card about a half an inch further that way to get it to clear the edge of the case before I was able to slide it back over to line up with the pci-e slot. And if it looks like the right of the card is bending ever-so-slightly, it probably is. There are cables below it, and not enough clearance above it to route the cable any other way. Hopefully there won't be enough strain on it to do any actual damage.

As for the performance, it does quite well. I am able to run the latest version of Wrath of the Lich King with the video setting all to max and get about 60 frames per second in zone where it is just me, down to about 25 frames in zones where there a lot of other people. And coming along with that, there is the inestimable joy that comes with fluid character movement. If you have ever played any 3d game you know how frustrating it can be when the movement is choppy, and I had gotten to where I was running into a lot of things because I could do an arc while running; more like a square-edged zigzag that resulted in lot of running into walls and other obstructions. In fact I am getting better graphics now than I have gotten at least since I built my computer before the last one, since I recycled my video card to build the last one and it was getting blocky from the start.

Anyway, the reason I was compelled to write about the process and the results of this is that while searching for suitable low profile video cards I found a lot -and I mean a lot- of people complaining that there weren't any available and that the only use you can get out of a slim tower is for office work. I don't find that to be the case at all. With the 3gigs of ram this had stock, and the new 512mb video card, I am getting great performance. And I am getting this knowing full well that I installed one of the cheapest cards on the market for slim towers (in fact the cheapest one I could find that came with a cooling fan). If you were willing to spend a couple hundred dollars on a real video card I am sure you wouldn't have any complaints about the gaming performance.

The battle for the tread: neither side is giving in

2009-02-05T09:46:00.003-07:00

The battle against the treadmill persists. A week into the war and neither of us is showing any signs of quitting -that disappoints me a little bit, I was hoping by now the treadmill would have succumbed to my strength and admitted that I was the victor. You know, so I could stick it out in the shed and never speak of it again.- although as far as signs of fatigue go, I am definitely showing a lot more than the bargain basement treadmill is.

I have yet to complete a full thirty minute workout. What is sad is that there is a part of me that wanted to lie about that here; write that I had completed it so that anyone who happens across this seldom visited page wouldn't know how horribly out of shape I am. Thankfully I haven't yet allowed myself to do that. I say thankfully because I really believe that being honest with yourself is one of the most important parts of trying to make a lifestyle change for the better. If it hadn't been for an offhand remark by a coworker, I would still believe that I was in great shape, if a bit heavy, and finding out that I wasn't isn't something that I should try to hide, but something that I should try to correct. If I were to exaggerate my progression in the treadmill war it would take away from the small victories that make it possible to go from the out-of-shape lump that I have become to the slightly-less-out-of-shape lump that I am striving to be. And currently that is my goal (sort of), to just be a bit less out of shape. Ultimately, of course, to be in good shape, but to get from where I am to there, well... If you were to try to put it on a bar graph, the line for what I wanted to achieve would be vertical, and since my line of progress would be horizontal that would be a tough program to stay with.

So I will use the treadmill's own built-in training programs as a gauge. First attempt was with a 9% incline and lasted for all of 8 minutes (that was in two separate attempts: 4minutes with 9% and 4minutes with 6%), it also left my legs so sore that I wasn't able to do it the next day (this, again, is from (the hard surface on my shins). I just got off of the machine one week after I started using it and I made it 16 minutes this time. I was able to do it this time without adjusting the speed set by the program, and I probably could have gone on a bit longer if it hadn't been switching back to running at the 16 minute mark. This, however, didn't have anything to do with my shins, I was starting to get a cramp in my side.

I will admit that I am a bit disappointed that I have not yet succeeded in doing a full thirty minute program, but I have showed at least minimal signs of progress on each successive attempt which keeps me going. For instance, the previous run ended at 15 minutes, this time I wanted to better that, so I set my goal to make it 1 mile -knowing full well that it would come far sooner than the twenty minute mark. Next time I will probably aim for the 20 minute mark, but allow myself to slow the speed for the last 4 minutes until I am able to do it without modification.

The good new is that while I am not showing any outward signs of the attempts at physical conditioning (another downside to starting such a program; it can take weeks to see any results at all), I am feeling the effects of it. My lungs don't feel like I am breathing molten fire by the tenth minute, I am starting to perspire more regularly (don't ask), my shins are barely hurting, and, perhaps most importantly, I am not dreading the task of getting on it to do my exercise. It is becoming routine, and hopefully I can keep that up.

The shoplifter that made me exercise. Bastard!

2009-01-29T10:32:00.005-07:00

It was just before midnight on a Tuesday night when I saw the kids come into the store. While I have over fifteen years in retail that makes me keenly sensitive to the signs put out by potential shoplifters, these kids were throwing out signs that anyone would have picked up on: The were both so nervous as to almost be shaking, they were looking back and forth more than I have ever seen anyone not on crystal meth do, when they saw the cashiers, their eyes went straight to the floor. Long story short, this would be a beer run, and one that was telegraphed so clearly that everyone in the store new it.

Nearly all retail stores have a fairly strict policy of not pursuing shoplifters. In the past several years several store clerks have been killed while trying to stop shoplifters, and in turn, several shoplifters have been killed by store owners who fear for their lives -a situation that only comes to bear when they have made the foolish decision to pursue the shoplifter in the first place. When it comes right down to it, there is nothing in a retail store that is worth a human life, neither the store clerk's nor the shoplifter's, and with security cameras able to catch every angle from inside a store nowadays, it really isn't necessary anyway.

All of this I know. But as I stood watching two kids, probably both between the ages of 15 and 17, so clumsily making preparations, it started to piss me off more than a bit. Being a salaried manager, my bonus comes directly from controlling profit and loss -which they were about to take a chunk out of- and maintaining a corporate set profit margin -which the loss directly effects-. I took up a post about 30 feet from the door and stared at them as they walked through the store, hoping that they would get the message. They didn't. But as they made their way to the door, someone opened it to come inside, and not having to stop to open the door gave them an extra second that I hadn't planned for when I took up my post. They were both in a dead sprint by the time they got to the door, and I had a corner to make it around plus the 30 feet to cover.

When I reached the door they were 20-25 yards ahead of me, running with, and quite possibly the funniest part of this, exactly: two 18 packs of budweiser, one 12 pack of budweiser, three 32oz bottles of gatorade, two 20oz Nestea Iced teas, and 2 bags of Cheetos Puffs. Frankly, if it had been just the beer I would have stopped at the door and let them go, but something about the random nature of the snack food just seemed so insulting that I got so angry I just couldn't. Also, they were running towards a gold Jeep Cherokee that was inexplicably parked at our fuel drop station, nearly a hundred yards from the front door. I wasn't going to let those little fuckers get away with it.

As anyone who played in sports knows, you can run much faster than your body thinks it can. While it is difficult to explain, you can overcome the limitations your body places on you more or less by willing it to be. I first discovered this back in High School while doing some distance running. Near the finish, when my legs could hardly carry me and my ribs were painfully cramped, I could call on this unforeseen reserve of energy to finish the last eighth of the lap as fast as if I was on fresh legs. I soon found that this energy could be called upon at will, and it made me a terror on the kickoff squad in football (affectionately called the meat squad), able to close the fifty yards in far less time than anyone my size had a right to. And while my body isn't conditioned like it was back then, the discipline to control it is still there.

I had to make up 20-25 yards before they made it the 70 or so yards to the safety of their vehicle. Game on. I caught up to them about 2/3 of the way to their car, and that was when I realized that I didn't really have a plan for what to do once I did. I was pretty sure they were both underage, and I wasn't (and still am not) sure what would happen to me, or the store, if I was to injure them. I smacked the beer from the hands of the larger boy, who then looked over his shoulder to see who was behind him. He yelled something I couldn't make out and the other boy threw down all he was carrying as well. Not sure what to do at this point, knowing that they would be leaving with nothing, I knew I had to let it go. Before I dropped the pursuit, in a final act of anger, I gave the big guy a firm push in the back which sent him tumbling to the ground. He was back up in a second and kept on running. The jeep that they had been running towards had long since taken off, having surely seen the pursuit, and no doubt knowing that if I was able to get their plate number it would be pretty easy to I.D. all involved, so both kids ran off the lot, through the desert landscaping, on the way to the freeway overpass. The Jeep was actually parked on that overpass waiting for them, but I had no intention of following them off the property; pursuing them into the lot was questionable at best, off the property was definitely going to get me fired.

As I began picking up the goods, which were now strewn about the parking lot, one of the clerks brought a couple of bags out to help me (the beer packages had split open when I knocked them from his hands, there were broken cans all over, but we could get credit on them, so it's all good). As we were picking the items up, he said to me, "You have amazing speed for your size." Obviously it is the last part of that line that did it. He didn't mean it like I took it, of course, but he said it all the same for my size. As we entered the store with the stuff, the other cashier said, "You're a lot faster than you look". Which is really just a variation on the same theme. I know they both meant it as a compliment, but when it hit my ears it came across as "Holy shit! Lard ass can move!"

I should take a moment here before I get into the self-deprecation to point out that at 5'10" and about 190 pounds, I am in better shape than most Americans. In this deep-fried, super-sized world though, that isn't saying a whole lot. As my weight would indicate, I am not into the range of morbidly obese. In fact I only show the weight in the form of love handles and a gut - a gut which, I am proud to say, doesn't flop over the top of my belt when I do up my pants (you know you have seen these guys who wear a 36 inch pant, even though it cuts through the flab, and the flab hides their belt buckle). And the weight fluctuates so that in the winter I usually go about 190 while in the summer it is more like 180. I know I am not in great shape, but I didn't realize the signs of it were so outward. But what really, really, got me to thinking about it was that I was winded, and couldn't even speak when I got back inside. A sprint of sixty or seventy yards had never done that to me before...

If my being out of shape were purely aesthetic, I would probably let it go. At least until 200 pounds. That is a deal that I made to myself long ago: If I ever hit 200 there must be a regiment of diet and exercise put into place to get me back below that mark. The 1000 pound man, I reasoned, must have crossed that 200 mark at some point, and if he had taken action then it wouldn't have come to a bed-ridden existence. It was the breathing and heart-rate that really had me concerned. At 34 years old, I shouldn't be winded with chest pounding after such a small exertion. I'm not sure what role adrenaline may have played in all this, but regardless, for my health something must be done.

I don't have the ~~time or~~ inclination to go to a gym, so I needed to find some sort of cardio training for the home. The first thing that came to mind was an elliptical machine. I spent a couple hours online reading reviews and found a couple that seemed to be pretty good value for the price at Wal-Mart. I looked at a few of them in store, and while they seemed sturdy enough, they were just so loud and clunky. I looked at some that cost a bit more money at Sears, including a Nordic Track, but it was just as loud and clunky as the others. I am at my most active between 2 and 4am, while my wife is asleep and I am winding down from work, and every machine that I looked at was loud enough that I feared it would wake her up if I used it. So I decided to just go with a simple treadmill.

I went for a low-end treadmill for several reasons. First, I'm not as young as I used to be, and one of my knees has been pretty screwed up since high school. I can certainly work through the pain now, but if the impact should become a problem in the future, I don't want to have a huge investment in the thing. Second, I'm not sure just how much use I am going to get out of it. Hopefully I will continue to use this thing as preventive maintenance for my body, but I am enough of a realist to admit that I may not. Third, it is just a motor and a piece of tread, all the rest is just frills. Why does one cost 300 and one cost 1000? Can the motor or tread really be 3x better? I guess I'll find that out in the future, and I will hope the answer is no.

And now to the whole point of this post. I had no idea just how bad of shape I was in until I got on the damn thing. Thinking I was in better shape than most (I think a lot of us walk around with that delusion) I set the incline to max, which is only 9% and started the first workout plan. 6 minutes into it I felt like I had a dagger under my ribs on the left side (a cramp) and my legs couldn't take it anymore. I adjusted the incline to the middle setting 6% and slowed it down to 4mph (a slow jog, or a really fast walk) and still only made it a total of 9 minutes before I had to give up. I had to give up from the pain in my shins though, and if you ever played sports on a hard surface you know that the shin splints hurt like hell. If you stop when you first start feeling them you won't be in debilitating pain the next day. So for the immediate future the plan is to use shortly every day until my shins can take a full thirty minute workout. Then I will probably get into an every other day, 30minute type thing.

So, 189 pounds and winded after 10 minutes to start. I'll check back later.

On Alcoholism (the addiction not the disease)

2008-08-20T02:20:00.003-07:00

In a casual conversation with a co-worker today, the subject of alcohol came up. Since I quit drinking I have been of the mind that while quitting drinking is a great accomplishment, it is also a personal one, and not one that I really run around telling everyone about. If asked directly, however, I do freely admit to having been an alcoholic. And this was the sticking point in the conversation. Having been an alcoholic.

First and foremost, I would like to say that I don't think anyone who has never personally had a substance abuse problem is capable of forming an educated opinion on the subject. You can read all you want to about, and know a lot about it, but without living through it you just don't know what it is like -much in the same way that I don't know what it is like to fly a rocket to space, even though I have read a great deal about it. Doctors are able to diagnose the substance abuse problem, but all they can really do is recommend detox and/or some form of third-party program to help deal with it.

In the conversation today, the co-worker said that I had a disease, and the fact that I hadn't drank for a couple years didn't mean that I wasn't an alcoholic anymore. This is where I call bullshit. I think the key point I want to make here is that I never claimed that I had a disease. That is an important point for me to make. Calling alcoholism a disease seems (to me at least) to absolve someone of blame. I disagree with that 100%. I had a very serious addiction, but it was entirely self-induced. I don't think a disease can be self-induced. There may have been factors that made me more susceptible to becoming an alcoholic, but again I had to make the choices to send me down the road to alcoholism. That's far different than suffering from a disease. You don't have much of a choice over whether you are going to have Parkinson's Disease, for instance. I always maintained that what I had was a compulsion; an addiction. Much in the same way that I used to have an almost subconscious compulsion to bite my fingernails. I was able to overcome that as well, and to my knowledge no one has ever referred to nail biting as a disease.

Since I don't believe that I had a disease, I think that since I quit I am just not an alcoholic anymore. I am not a "recovering alcoholic". I quit, I am done, end of story.

The co-worker went on to say that quitting without a 12-step program is extremely difficult to do. I agree with that completely: it was hard as fuck. But I did it. He then went on to say that I had completed most of the steps of the program, just that I had done it on my own. I disagree. Here are the original twelve steps, borrowed from the Wikipedia entry for Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Let's just start with point one, the argument won't get past there anyway. "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable." I will agree to the latter part of that sentence, my life had become unmanageable. The first part, however, is the polar opposite of what it took for me to quit drinking. I did not admit that I was powerless over alcohol; I forced myself to admit that the alcohol was powerless over me. It was entirely my decision whether or not I would drink it, and I decided not to. That is really skipping past the reality of how difficult it was to maintain the willpower, the weeks I went with literally no sleep as my body waited for me to administer a dose of the depressant, the mornings that I would wake up trembling, knowing that with just one drink my body would relax. But that is what it took to beat this addiction, so that is what I did.

Don't get me wrong, I know that AA works for a lot of people, and if you are an alcoholic you should use whatever means are necessary to reach the sober end. For me probably the biggest part was that I never said that I was going to "quit drinking forever". Instead I made a choice each morning to not drink that day. If I needed to, I reasoned, I could go ahead and have a drink the next day. And the next day I would make the same decision. And then a couple of months passed, having decided not to drink each day. That is still the philosophy I use today, though I rarely even think about alcohol anymore. And if I decide to have a beer with my friends one day, I don't think that will automatically make me an alcoholic relapsing, I think it will just be me having a beer with my friends. The me that was an alcoholic lost the battle a long time ago.

Take this post for what it's worth to you. I just wanted to get it out there that for some admitting they are powerless over alcohol may not be what it takes to beat the addiction. To admit that you are powerless over something can be really like giving up control completely, and feeling like you have no control is what leads a lot of people to alcohol in the first place.

More Dungeon, More Metal.

2008-02-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

With my posting schedule having dwindled down to nothing, I am always amazed when I check the site mail and find that there are still people reading, and that they still care to send me email. What is more surprising is the topic that is generating that email: Music.

I don't know a damn thing about music. Sure I can play the guitar (not as good as I could back when I practiced for hours on end every day, but I still have the gear just in case I get the call from Metallica..), but my musical tastes are, at best, questionable. The Dungeon Metal that I wrote about in the last post, and one some time earlier, generated more feedback than anything I have written here that wasn't poker related. There are two possibilities here: 1) There are a lot more people who like this type of music than I had ever thought. 2) There are only a few people who like this type of music, so few that they found my site because there are no other sites talking about it. While I refuse to believe the latter -can anyone seriously be coming to my site for actual information?- it is almost as difficult to believe the former.

Spending in excess of two hours in a car every day really gives me the opportunity to listen to a lot of music. The first few weeks I just listened to cds, but after I had worn out just about everything in my collection, the wife added me to her Sirius Radio account. There are dozens of stations on there dedicated to Rock, and many different types of it. I am partial to Octane, which plays mostly new Metal, mixed in with some classic Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, and the such, but when a band that I don't care for comes on (System of a Down, for instance) I venture to other stations. Mostly Hair Nation (big hair bands rock!) and Hard Attack. I can't listen to either of those stations for long though; I hate the growling, cookie-monster-esque voices of most of the bands on Hard Attack, and one can only take about so much Bon Jovi. During those times when I am listening, however, I do occasionally hear a band that I like, that I had never heard of previously. And since I had to listen to hours of mediocre crap to get to these few shining gems, I am really doing you a service by pointing them out here.

A lot of the times when I do hear a band that I like, it never merits a post here. Some of the bands, Forced Entry and Dark Angel come immediately to mind, are bands that I should have heard back in the early 90s, but for some reason missed. Since they aren't putting out albums anymore, I don't see a reason to tell anyone about them. The ones I put up here are currently putting out music, or at least currently enough that they have an album released within the last year or so. The one that I discovered today though has about 30 cds in the last 10 years, how the hell had I never heard of Nightwish?

These guys are like the Dungeon Metal I love so much, but take it to another level. The music is really fast, the beats are awesome, you can certainly bang your head to it... But, and I am sure I am going to lose some of you here, there is actual singing. I am not talking about a gruff sounding man barking out lyrics, or words for the sake not being an instrumental, I am talking about full-on, almost operatic singing. Looking for an example on Youtube, I found this version of Kinslayer(which is laid over clips from Silent Hill, and looks pretty good IMHO).

I understand that this isn't the music for everyone, but if you have listened to any of the other Dungeon Metal I have posted and enjoyed it even a little bit, and if you haven't heard any Nightwish, go listen now. You won't be disappointed.

Dungeon Metal!

2007-12-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

I have always liked what I refer to as "dungeon metal". I have never seen anyone else refer to it as such, but when I listen to old Yngwie Malmsteen that is still what I think of. This type of music was huge in the late 80s and into the early 90s, but I hadn't really heard a lot of it lately.

I happened to catch a Dragonforce video on MTV's Headbanger's Ball (I thought they canceled that when grunge and hip hop pushed metal into the underground in the mid 90's), and downloaded a couple of albums. Pretty good stuff. The guitarwork is excellent, the beat is fast, but the vocals are mixed so loud that they really take away from the song. In this type of music, the vocals are really irrelevant IMHO, the less you hear of them the better. This guy's voice in particular sours me, it is just too ... I dunno ... happy maybe? Not looking for growling here, but it really shouldn't sound the like the vocal track could be taken as is and laid over an Irish Spring commercial. Like I say, the music is awesome, and the vocals aren't really that bad, but I can't just sit and listen to it, mostly because of the vocals.

Last night I happened to hear a song by Symphony X on Sirius satellite radio, and was curious enough to look at some song samples from recent albums. This is exactly the kind of music I am talking about. The one I linked above is heavier than most of their stuff, but it sounds great. Probably a more representative song would be Paradise Lost (the vocals are mixed pretty heavy in that as well, but you get the idea). The music is awesome, and the vocals just add another layer to it. It could almost be classical music if you were to take away the distortion -which is pretty much what I am looking for.

I'm sure this isn't the type of music for everyone, but if you really like the musical side of some of the great Metallica songs, particularly the instrumentals, you should check these guys out. They write excellent melodies and the songs flow smoothly. Not so overly loud as to be deafening (again, IMHO), but heavy enough to be rock. Sort of like an opera without the the falsetto vocals and done in English. Some songs are relaxing, some are invigorating, and I have yet to hear one that I just dislike.

And coming from me, that is something.

I am the walking dead

2007-12-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

I sat in front of this computer screen on Friday night with the intention of writing a humorous little post about something rather corny, the thing is I found it simply impossible to do. You see, Monday was a rather significant day in my life. As most recently recounted here, it was the day that I was supposed to die.

As the years have passed since I first started to have the dreams about December 17th, 2007, I had started to take it far less seriously. When I started having the dream, it was shortly after my father died. As I have gotten older, possibly wiser, I have started to understand that the horrific dreams I was having were probably just my mind trying to convince me that there was some sort of order to it all. Watching my father die at such a young age (both his age when he died, and my age when I watched it) had an effect on me that ran far, far deeper than just emotion, and it left me feeling like everything around me was chaotic; there was no reason for anything, things just happened. I could die at any second. While that is all true enough, I think the very sudden realization of it was a bit too much for my tender brain to cope with.

My mother was living over a thousand miles away when dad died, and through choices of my own and others I was left with my eldest brother (he is 4 years my elder) as my legal guardian after it happened. Books could be written about everything that could have (and did) go wrong with that arrangement, but for my purposes here, suffice it to say that he was no better suited to deal with the loss than I. After that, the girl that I had been dating for several years (a very significant percentage of my life up to that point) and I began to have problems. When our break-up was imminent, on the heels of dad's death, everything that I had ever known was taken from me. Everything was in disorder and I simply couldn't cope with it all.

My inability to cope with everything that was going on would ultimately lead me down a long, lonely road. I retreated into myself, and wouldn't let myself get close to anyone for fear that they too would die, or worse just decide that I wasn't good enough for them anymore -and worse yet, I started to believe that they were probably right. That sort of self-loathing played a huge part in why I started drinking: I simply didn't care if I lived or died, and figured that no one else really did either. The battle with both alcohol and my self-esteem would take over a decade to resolve, but that is a story for another day, or possibly a story better left untold.

As for dreaming of my own death, I had always thought that it was a premonition. A frightening glimpse into the future that would be a constant reminder that everything I worked for would all be taken from me. While that may be true to a certain extent, and I think everyone probably thinks about their own mortality from time to time, I have started to think that maybe my mind was just trying to trick me into believing that there was an order to things. At a time in my life where everything was spinning out of control, my mind just kind of picked a date in the future for me to die. Far enough away that it wasn't that frightening (it freaked me out in the beginning, and even a little right up until December 18, 2007), in fact not meant to frighten me at all, but to assure me that I had at least 17 more years to go. Of course my mind probably didn't know that I was going to use this as license to do some pretty insane shit along the way; I felt pretty bulletproof after I started having the dreams, and as I was speeding down the freeway in excess of 160mph (or whatever crazy thing I happened to be doing), I did it knowing that I was going to live through it.

The fact that I have come to believe the dreams were just my mind trying to put a sense of order back into my life, though, didn't mean that I wasn't a bit freaked out when it actually got to be December 17th, 2007. When I tried to write a little something about the impending date, I couldn't do it. And I went through that day with an awareness of what was going on around me such as I have never had before. I drove to and from work more defensively than I have ever driven in my life. I took special care to avoid even the tiniest bit of confrontation with others (I stopped short of catching a teenage shoplifter in the parking lot at work. I had his license plate, and we had it on camera, no need to take a chance on him having a knife and an attitude).

As an aside, I got my promotion at work somewhere near the middle of October. Through clerical and accounting errors, I was not receiving my paycheck. Each payday the District Manager was having to email the corporate office to get them to write me out a check. This week was the first week that I received a salaried check without all the fuss. The date of the check? December 17th, 2007. So I didn't actually die on that date, but I certainly started a new phase of life. Maybe it was a premonition.

Compaq: An old Indian word meaning huge, steaming pile of SHIT.

2007-12-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

I know that I have made mention of the three computers that I keep running in my office on this site before. Reasoning was thus: One for me, one for the wife, and one just in case either of ours happened to go down. If you have ever had to go without your pc for even a few days, you will certainly understand the potential benefit of having another one, with all your software and the such already loaded onto it, right next to your main machine. So each time I bought a new machine, the eldest of our three would go to a needy relative (Hi Mom!) while ours would rotate so that the newest was the wife's, the oldest was the backup, and I generally always have the middle machine. So you see I absolutely knew that one of our machines would go down at some point, and I had planned for it pretty well. I just never really expected that it would be our third machine that went down.

It happened after a power surge a couple of months ago. Some cursory exploration under the cover led me to believe that it was just the power supply that had gone out, but as this was the eldest of our machines, I wasn't sure if it was worth it to me to fix it. Its 1.8Ghz processor, 512mb of RAM, 80Gb hard drive, and 256mb video card are pretty dated by my household standards, and the parts aren't replaceable to any other machines on hand (still using standard ddr ram, not ddr2. Video card is AGP and none of our other machines have such a slot. I could recycle the hard drive, but being only 80gigs, I could also replace it for about 20 bucks at this point). So for a couple of months I let it go, wondering if I should indeed replace our third computer.

Over the months that passed while I was debating whether to replace it, I kept my eye out for specials at Wal-Mart and Best Buy, my go-to places for getting good prices on the base eMachines that I like to buy for upgrading. But during this time, I came to realize that I really like having the third machine around. Since we have always had a spare, my mp3 library is backed up to it, and I listen to it over a set of speakers that are run through a shelf stereo unit with speakers directly beside my pc speakers. This takes the load off of my own processor (a must for gaming) while making it much easier to adjust the volume of the music without having to also fuck with the different device volumes on the games, audio player, and windows components on my machine. Lately I have also been listening to Sirius satellite radio online since it comes free with the subscription, and of course the streaming is another burden that really should be avoided while gaming if at all possible. The absolute worst of it all is when playing the mp3s through the audio player. Whenever it switches songs there is about a half a second where my keyboard controls will become unresponsive in game. As anyone who plays online games can tell you, a half a second can easily mean your life. And it did, on several occasions.

Because of all of that, I started my search for a new machine in earnest about eight weeks ago. I wasn't able to find an eMachine that met my simple criteria -had to have a faster processor than the old one, double the hard drive, expandable to 4x the memory, and a PCIe video slot. At least I couldn't find one being sold without the monitor, and I certainly have no need for the monitor when I already have three LCD monitors (two 19" and a 15" on the backup) in the room. Instead of waiting until I did find a suitable eMachine, I made a horrible, horrible mistake. I bought a Compaq.

The support and drivers page for it can be found right here. If you ever should buy a Compaq, you will no doubt be spending a lot of time there. No doubt by now you have probably figured out that this isn't going to be a glowing praise about the Compaq, so I may as well dive right into this.

I took the new computer out of the box, plugged in the basic cables (mouse, keyboard, monitor and power) and turned it on. After about a minute, it said "Please wait while windows prepares to install for the first time......" and it stayed that way for, well, I left it for about an hour, knowing that it was completely frozen (pc working light not flashing), for about an hour before doing a hard reboot. Straight out of the box, touch the power button once, computer freezes on boot. Try a second time, gets through that initial part but freezes on the page where you enter your information to register Windows. Call Wal-Mart, they don't have another in stock, but don't sound too enthusiastic about exchanging it anyway. So, I tried the only thing I could think of: I used the system restore disc that came with the PC. Never actually loaded Windows, but already reinstalling the OS. Not a good sign.

After using the restore disc I was able to get the OS loaded and download current drivers for my DSL modem. After that the thing would freeze absolutely randomly. Could be 3 minutes, could be 6 hours. I restarted it in Safe Mode several times over the next few days as that was the only way I was able to keep it running long enough to actually download and install some of the drivers that it needed. The motherboard driver, for instance, is outdated. There is a new one available for download from the above-linked site, but why wouldn't they include a current driver when they actually boxed up the machine?

Anyway, I spent the next couple of weeks thinking that maybe it wasn't the new computer that was having problems, I was blaming it on Windows Vista. I have no experience with Vista, but I do have some experience with Windows ME, and the problems I had with that OS were very similar to the problems I was having with the new, Vista-installed Compaq. I was trying to soldier through the problems by uninstalling every program that it was running. This included the antivirus software, automatic update, windows firewall, anything I could think of that would be connecting with something outside of the computer itself (the freezing seemed to happen most often when downloading over the network), but I eventually took a day to just try to figure out what the fuck was wrong with it. Here is what I found:

Tested Video Memory from Windows: Failed. hmm. maybe something serious.

Tested Hard Drive from BIOS: Hardware Error.
Tested RAM from command prompt: Failed hmm. maybe somthing REALLY serious.

I installed a known working PCI video card, and known good RAM into it (changed the path to make it ignore the integrated video) fired it up and ran the same tests, with the same results. So the only thing left to do was *cringe* call customer support. While I didn't actually keep a transcript of the call, I can assure you that at some point I did tell him that the problem was that "the very first time I turned the power on, before I connected it to a network of any sort, I turned the power on and it froze before it could finish windows installation." and he really did reply with "This is a sign that you have downloaded a virus." I told him several times, yelling at him a couple of them, that I had not connected the modem or network card to anything, only the power cord. And he said, I shit you not, "A virus can be transferred over any cable connected to your computer." So he is saying that the fucking power cord is where I got my virus, I mean it is the only thing that was connected to both my computer and anything else.

I had to talk to this moron for at least an hour. This guy is proof that people in other countries (I believe he was from India) really do watch American television, and it dumbs them down just like it does our own native sons and daughters. Certainly not the type of influence to be proud of. He made me try to use the system restore disc again, but blissfully it froze in the middle of that process. His response "It should not freeze during system restore. The virus should have been eliminated with the drive reformat." So an hour in I think I have him believing that there really is something wrong with it, until he says "Unless you have a boot virus." Dumbass.

After a time I was transferred to a supervisor. Being the senior technician on staff, he also spoke the best English. Aside from a very sleight accent, the only thing that gave away that English was his second language was the quote "My name is XX, I will provide you perfect customer service and make satisfactory your problem." He was at least willing to take me at my word that this wasn't a simple driver problem. He asked if I knew how to access BIOS, and had me check a couple of stats from there (hard drive type, Boot Path, a couple of other things) then said to try one last time to turn it on. When it froze this time, he had an empty box overnighted to me to pick up the defective piece of shit.

Along with the empty box there was a page that said, "Please describe your problem in as much detail as you can." Unfortunately I didn't think to save a copy of the message that I included. I tried to keep it under 2 pages, figuring they would quit reading by that point anyway. I told them every symptom it had, gave a list of some of the specific error messages I was getting, some from the event log (a Modulo20 error kept appearing while testing the RAM), and details of every piece of hardware that I had changed out attempting to isolate the problem. I concluded it with "I will guarantee you that either the Motherboard or the CPU are defective. Please let me know which, I am quite curious by now."

I got the thing back today. While they didn't specifically reply to tell me what was wrong with it, it did have a copy of the service report, which reads as follows:

Repaired (The customer problem was duplicated during full diagnostics)

Failure: MB118 No boot/Hangs at POST
Failure: RC514 TATTOOINFORMATIONINCORRECT-MODEMBF2 TATTOO MOTHERBOARD
Failure: RC515 SWReloadedduetoCorrupt/MissingRecoveryPar
Failure: MC912 LocksUpConsistently MBF 1 Replaced Motherboard
Failure: RC515 SWReloadedduetoCorrupt/MissingRecoveryPar
Failure: VC316-1 VideoMemoryTestFails
Failure: CP512 ConstantLock-UPS/ApplicationandOSERR Replaced CPU

Since one of the error codes is there before the motherboard and again after, I must assume that this is the exact order in which they got these errors. Guessing by the incomplete descriptions, it looks like they attempted to reinstall the software -just as I had- from a disc. The recovery partition of the hard drive was destroyed when it froze up during the attempt to restore it. After that they were still getting lock-ups and video errors. So they replaced the CPU. I was almost right, I said it was either the motherboard or the CPU, I never dreamed they would have sent it to market in the first place if Both of them were defective

The repair was free of course. And aside from being treated like an idiot by a nameless schlob in India, I don't suppose the service was too bad. I have yet to plug it in since getting it back though, so I won't set forth any judgment about the service over there just yet.

But seriously, how does it make it out of the shop when the first time you touch the power button it locks up?