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A Fate Worse than Death Every day I wake up and thank God that I don't work on a product like this one:
"BarbieŽ Pet Rescue CD-ROM
Join BarbieŽ on rescue missions to find and care for lost animals! Feed, brush and bathe them just like your very own pet! Plus, play fun games and activities with each animal! "
Oh, the horror! I can only imagine what QA on that must be like.
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Crab City A must on any Baltimore tour: Obrycki's Crab House.
Power Down That's what the folks at Roll Your Own Blackout are proposing we all do on June 21, in protest of U.S. energy policies, and to enjoy the longest day of the year. Hmm. I think I can go outside and enjoy the long evening without having to shut down the server...
Iron Chef Officially Overexposed The "cult" cooking game show has officially become an overexposed victim of the system. Columbia Pictures has bought the rights to Iron Chef, the movie. "Can a short-order cook rise from the grills of obscurity to defeat the legendary Iron Chef? He'll soon find out amidst a battlefield of heated stove-top burners."
At least that means some good parodies. They'd better strike while the "iron" is hot, though, or they'll be more tired than Funniest Home Video's "football to the groin" staple film. SNL has already done their parody (with Charlie Sheen.) Once Homer Simpson does his Iron Chef appearance, the party will officially be over.
CounterStrike Turrett's Syndrome I think it scares my roommate how much I curse at my computer every evening while playing CounterStrike on-line. The game definitely evokes more rage, profanity and indignance than other multiplayer on-line games, probably because all you can do after you die is sit around and curse until the round ends. If you haven't had the pleasure, you can now see just what people playing CounterStrike look and sound like.
Middle Block Summer volleyball starts today. I've got practice with the Boston Knights starting at 6:30. Just wish I wasn't so tired.
Quiet Project Follow-Up Installing the Sanyo Denki low-noise fan from Plycon Computers was a huge improvement on my computer's noise level - I can actually occasionally hear my hard drive now. I also added a 7/12 volt switch that lets me drop the RPM on my case fans down, further reducing noise while still refreshing the air inside the case. Very sweet. Pics coming as soon as I clean things up.
Tricked Out Ooooh. Found a new place to shop when looking for custom computer parts. CaseETC.com has a good selection of mod parts, trinkets, and cooling kits, plus a decent site with good pictures and captions. It'll go on my bookmark list with 3dCool and Plycon.
Hardware Issues No, not with the web site (although we were down a bit due to ATT Broadband problems.) I've been working on my home system for a bit this week and found a few unhappy issues. First, when I actually examined the Front Side Bus heatsink/fan on my Abit motherboard, I was disturbed to find it hardly even touching the chip. I removed it, put in Arctic Silver thermal compound (they had previously put a tiny dab of some white compound, not good) and replaced the assembly. Seems to help stability a bit. I also found that my GeForce 2 was getting ridiculously (i.e. burn-your-finger) hot, and the stock fan assembly on that was completely useless. Replaced it entirely with a Thermaltake Blue Orb fan. It's somewhat cooler now, although still hot, and artifacts during play are way down. Plus I'm not crashing at all now. Tonight the new 60mm fan should arrive and once I replace it, my computer might actually be quiet enough that I can sleep in the room when it's running. Right now, it sounds like there is a vacuum cleaner somewhere inside my computer.
Camera Envy I'm totally jonesing over the new Canon PowerShot G1 digital camera. 3.34 megapixels, 3x zoom, a real external flash shoe, F2.0 lens and rangefinder-style design are all things that high-end prosumer photogs have wanted for a long time. The camera is the first prosumer (read: sub-$3000) digital camera I've seen that would actually threaten to replace my traditional N90S for non-snapshot photography. Too bad it's about $800 right now. Hopefully it will come down enough over the summer that I can buy one for my next vacation. (Although I really hope I'll have my next vacation before the end of the summer.) Image from the review at Digital Photography Review.
Shhh! (Part 2) In my new project to try to silence my rather loud air-cooled gaming box (an AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz), I've spent some time researching vendors. Last night I ordered the following:
Take it With You In the nifty toy category, you can now get a keychain trinket with USB plug that holds 16 megs of data and acts like a hard drive when you plug it in. Available in 16, 32 an 64 MB sizes. I might just get it and store SSH (terminal software), some diagnostic software installers and perhaps some important documents on it. The USB Hard Drive 16MB retails at CrazyPC for about $70.