And with out of the ashes rose a "Pegasus"

So when I got home from hunting I came home to a desktop rig that would not turn on, after 3 hours of dicking with it I still couldn't get it to post. This is the 5th time this year it's done something like this to me and 3rd time since August.

So I did what any sane normal person would do, I ordered the parts for a new PC.

So 3 days and a bit of money later I now have a desktop rig and laptop rig that are truly on par with each other in almost all aspects except for one.

After screwing with Vista for 3 days to finally get it where I want it I am no longer of the opinion that those Mac vs PC commercials were were advertisments... THEY WERE WARNINGS!

Vista vs MAC OS X, hands down no contest MAC OS wins and I'm not saying that just because I have special place in my heart for Unix based operating systems either. It truly is the better OS, except for that whole playing games thing... Steve Jobs, hell Fake Steve Jobs even, if your reading this GAMES ARE NOT BAD THEY ARE GOOD!

So yeah I'm on Vista but it is nice to have a desktop rig that can play all of my games again. I guess that is why I bought a MAC so I could do work on it and not be bothered with all of the games.

Two final thoughts...

1. I know a few of you (Clint) are probally kind of curios as to what I got for a rig, The general specs are a.... Intel E6850, 4GB of RAM, 500GB HD (main system drive), 8800 GTS 320MB Video Card.

2. I also upgraded from Tiger to Lepoard on the Mac over the weekend... I found the icon for a PC file share server to be how you say... Intersting : )

Pay no attention to the Moose, the Squirell, or the Wapiti

As is tradition for me since I've moved to blogger I take the month of October "Mostly off" to do whatever it is the fuck that I do when I'm not working.

This year has been no different. From the 10 year high school reunion to a successfull elk hunt to spending money like I have a endless supply (which for the record I don't... I get paid next week, two weeks after that I should be good though).

A while back I talked about my indecsion on going to my HS reunion, well the stars aligned and the truck drove true and I went. I had a great time until Jack D, showed up... it was all down hill from their. My brother provieds a nice synopsis on his myspace... you should go their and read it yourself. Of course you need to be my brothers friend to read it, so you probally need to friend him while you are at it.

Anyway the reunion was fun I only did the main Saturday night dinner and dancing thing. I once again confirmed that I can't dance nor do I have rythm. On the whole it was a good experince it was good to see some folks I haven't seen in a very long time and catch up. And if anyone from KHS97 is reading this feel free to drop a line.

So after two days of recovering from the reunion Dad and I went elk hunting, much as we have done for the last 15 years. Unlike the last 15 years we actually have something to show for our efforts. If you would like the full story drop me a line, since I don't want to bore the general public with the tails of my hunt.

So since the hunt ended 4 days earlier then we planned I actually had a couple of days of downtime, man that is a unique concept for me. With 5 days of straight downtime I planned on getting a ton of crap done... and as is so often the case with everyone I only got a very small fraction of it done. Eh oh well.

I now return to work, and I'm almost scared for what awaits because I know the next month is going to be rough.

Peace in the pasture my ass...

Swung by the grocery store this evening on the way home... had to pick up a few essentials you know beer, milk, more beer.

So I'm wandering through Safeway towards the milk and I go for the half gallon of organic that I always buy since I'm trying to healthy and the experation date is 11/18/2007....

5 weeks from now? Wow what is this some sort of super organic milk? I start checking, all of the milk with the same batch code has a experation date of 11/18/2007!

Holy Cow! No really what kind of cows are they getting this from holy cows? So now that I'm curious I look at the regular non organic milk and the best date I can find is 10/27.

I don't know how they do it but I don't know how "organic" organic milk really is.

Angry Tooth... you may meet your end.

I work in a hospital you would think that I take pretty good care of myself...

yeah right...

Take for example my jaw, a few weeks back I started having some pain on one side of my jaw for no real reason. I ignored it for about three weeks. Why did I ignore for three weeks? Because I'm tough like that and I really dislike going to the Dr's office. I have more important things to then sit in a office and be told how badly I'm not taking care of myself. If I wanted that I would go visit mom at least then I don't have to pay a copay and I get fed.

So I make a appointment for the dentist, and get an appointment for the next day. Wow what a difference dentists offices are in Phoenix compared to Kingman. It's like a Jiffy Lube for your teeth. So I'm in the dentists office and they poke, prod, and x-ray. Come to find out that I have had the crown of a tooth collapse and it's not doing so hot back there... and oh yeah it's my wisdom tooth in the back of my mouth. Joy!

So I'm given the option of either getting it pulled or a root canal done. I've heard horror stories about root canals so I opt for the tooth pulling. Have you ever read about how your tooth gets pulled? You should turns out that only school you really need to goto is the "school of hard knocks and better dentistry" these folks offer classes online and on campus just in case your interested.

I'm also given the option of Nitrous Oxide or full general anesthetic... Well hell I've always heard good things about Nitrous I will take that doc! So I get an appointment with the oral surgeon for a week later to get the tooth pulled. I guess if it hasn't killed me by now it isn't going to kill me in the next week.

So a week rolls by and it's time for my appointment...

I get my nitrous

I get my local number (3 shots!) (OH BOY CUZ I LOVE SHOTS ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE DOCTORS!)

I get 10 minutes to myself to contemplate the deeper meanings of life while breathing Nitrous Oxide with a contraption that bears more then a passing resemblance to Miss Piggy's nose attached to my nose.

The doc starts to do his thing and says "Now let me know if this hurts"... HOLY CRAP THAT HURTS!! Like bring tears to my eyes hurt... so I get 2 more shots of the numbing agent and I now have enough on board for a "horse"

Wow if it takes that much numbing agent for or a tooth what other things are are horse like about me? My appetite? My Attitude? Other things?

So I get another 5 minutes of contemplation before the doc comes back this time he's pulling and pulling and tells his assistant "Yep this is a classic angry tooth"

What the hell, it's bad enough I'm pissed off half the time but now my tooth is too?

So one or two more good yanks and the tooth comes out. I get my gauze and some post op instructions and am sent on my merry way...

48 hours later the only thing that hurts is my jaw when I open real wide other wise I'm fine. I'm sure your all concerned.

The moral of this story? If your getting your tooth pulled and you have the option for a local anesthetic take that.

Blackhole sun, won't you come?

Soundgarden was a great band, but you really have to wonder about what kinds of drugs they were on. You know between the lyrics and the Iron Butterfly esque guitar solos, I would be willing to bet it was a great live show.

As all of 3.2957838 (<-- almost to 3.3 loyal readers!) know in addition to thinking that Soundgarden was the best band to come out of Seattle in the 90's I'm a pretty big Pearl Jam fan. So when Eddie Vedder comes out with what is basically a solo album I take notice. The rub is the "solo album" is actually the soundtrack to the movie "Into the Wild". OK Eddie did a movie soundtrack so I go and read about the movie. This guy gives up all of his worldly possessions for a life as free of trappings of modern life where he eventually ends up in the Alaska wilderness living off the land. Which appeals to me because I've always had this desire in the back of my mind to drop off of the grid totally and disappear. Problem is the only person who would notice would be Kristina since there would be leftovers and beer for Curtis all of a sudden.

And how did I know all of this about a movie that I hadn't heard of up until two weeks ago? Why Cody of course! So Cody and I go see "Into the Wild" at what I call a "Art Theater" because it's the first theater I've been to in Phoenix that has less then 20 screens (it only had four?!). Of course when you goto the movies they have the commercials before the movie now instead of just the trailers... don't get me started on commercials before movies that is another rant in of itself. The last set of commercials are for Team Fortress 2!!! It's a fucking brilliant commercial (click the link to see them all, the one that was in the theater was the "Meet the Heavy") I thought it was a brilliant commercial.

So the movie finishes which was also excellent you need to go see it! And I'm looking at all of the people in the theater... Cody and I are the youngest ones in their. Wow they must have been really annoyed by the Team Fortress commercial. It's a great commercial from a gamers perspective but if your not a gamer (Cody) then I can understand your annoyance.

So as a somewhat direct result of that commercial I purchased the Orange Box and have been playing Team Fortress 2 on and off all weekend. Holy cow that game is fun!!

So looking back at the title of the post it is rather true, because Team Fortress is a "Black Hole Sun".

And oh yeah to top off a great weekend the Cardinals offed the Steelers!

Really?

You find the most interesting things on Wikipedia... I have to say that I am a bit surprised by this...
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The Packers' fan base is famously dedicated: regardless of the team's performance, every Packers game at Lambeau Field has been sold out since 1960.^{[citation needed]} Despite the Packers having one of the smallest TV markets, the Packers have developed one of the largest fan bases in the NFL. Each year they consistently rank as one of the top teams in terms of popularity.^[6] The Packers have one of the longest waiting lists for season tickets in professional sports with about 74,000 people as of May 3, 2007.^[7] That is more names on the waiting list than there are seats at Lambeau Field. The current wait time for season tickets is approximately 35 years. For this reason, it is not unusual for fans to designate a recipient of their season tickets in their wills or place newborn infants on the waiting list after receiving birth certificates.<sup>[8]
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Linkage</sup>

It's a battering ram..... OYE OYE OYE

Ok so 88 degrees is a bit much to be sitting out on the back porch and type, at least it's not as cheesy as 98 degrees.

Sorry bad boy band pun, bad blogger bad!

Every now and again I like to reflect on where I've been and what I've done. And if your a regular reader you know that those two things main consist of drinking beer and consternating myself about Linux. So I thought I would take a real change of pace tonight and wander down memory lane.

Turns out that memory lane has been bought by a rather unscrupulous developer and is now a 10,000 home subdivision renamed "Best Times of our Lives Acres" which is really a misnomer since everything out there is measured in Hectares.

If you don't know what a "Hectare" is you should probably brush up on your metric system I hear all the cool countries are doing it.

Honestly though it's been two years since I bought the house in Mesa, it feels like home. Three Years since I switched to blogger from my own perverted system of frontpage and yahoo. And 10 years since I started college.

Speaking of 10 years since I started college, I got the invitation to my 10 year High School reunion in the mail a while back. Yes my parents are officially old! I on the other hand have always found the concept of a 10 year reunion dubious at best. Add on to that how much I "love" large gatherings of people that I have no vested interest in whether or not I care what they think about me and then add a 200 mile one way trip along with a dash of $30 to get in.

And oh yes, it's in Kingman too... and we all know how much I love Kingman. I love my family but I am really starting to understand why certain Aunt's and Uncle's only visited during the holidays.

Take the other side of the coin, I can see how I'm doing compared to other people I went to school with which will either completely inflate or kill my ego... and since my ego has been on life support for the last 9.5 years I'm not really that worried about it. I also know that I can eat and drink my way through $30 with not allot of a problem.

Which leads me to my final question, when people ask me what I do for a living do I tell them...

1. "I work in health care IT on a group of systems known collectively as PACS. Think of it as Flickr for the body, and with big magnets."

or

2. "I'm laying my final plans for world domination, you will be calling me 'Lord Zod' by the end of the year"

hmmm decisions decisions.

Heaven Beside You...

Whoo Hoo!!

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/09/11/free-iphone-unlock-supposedly-pending

Now the only thing standing between me and a iPhone is a lack of storage and a pesky contract on a cell carrier that actually works well for me.

And they gave no quarter...

A few observations from laying on my couch all weekend due some weird combination of what I think is a ear infection and a head cold... I think they are related but I'm not totally for sure, it would be a first for me if they were.

- Dennis Green has been cropped into those Coors Light commercials hawking 24 packs of Coors Light with tickets to the Super Bowl. I find this to be a unique choice to say the least on the part of the people from Coors.

- Remember when there really only two trucks and those "other" guys? No? Me neither... I've seen enough truck commercials this weekend to drive me up the wall. My favorite one? The Tacoma commercial. Why? Because I only saw it once! (And bull shit a F150 can stop a C-130)

- John Norris is still on MTV... again I was laid on my couch and surfing... I was bound to catch it sooner or later.

-Football, whoo hoo! Now it's time for Tom's totally meaningless picks 2007....

Team most likely to disappoint me for the 8th year in a row... Cardinals
Team I follow most likely to actually do something... Chargers
Team I follow mostly to piss off Clint.... Chargers / Broncos
Team that is going to win it all... Not the Cardinals, and not the Chiefs.

There you have it kids... musings of a sick man. But I did finally figure out John Madden's purpose in the football universe it's to explain things in such simple terms that even someone with the attention span of a nat (like me this weekend) can understand.

Someone to Belive in...

If you do nothing else useful with your day read this link and understand what is happening to us as a society and what we must do to protect ourselves from ourselves.

http://newsite.michaelrighi.com/2007/09/01/arrested-at-circuit-city/

blatantly stolen from Cody...

Email Silliness...

Got a couple of email's that I had to share;

First up Greg and his adventures with fast food...

From: Greg
To: Tom; Nathan; James; Scott; Victoria; Keith; Eric
Cc: 'Tuffelmire'
Subject: McDonalds Southwest Chicken Sandwich

I had the same experience today.......Had to surf today to make sure my McDonalds Combo #5 was correct for $5.06

http://burningbuilding.blogspot.com/2007/06/mcdonalds-has-taken-its-latest-step-to.html

Luke said...

I hate MCDONALDS!!!! I went there yesterday for the first time in a few months because I didn't have any food in the house and I was in a hurry. I drive up the the order thing and see this amazing looking Southwest Chicken Sandwich. I was strong enough to order just the sandwich. No 76oz of cola or a bag of potatoes stuffed inside a piece of cardboard, Just this amazing juicy looking southwest chicken sandwich. I was so hungry that I ripped open the paper and tooka huge STICKY DRY BITE!! There was nothing on this chicken sandwich. I swear to god it was a bun, a pickle, and a dry piece of fried chicken breast. I almost choked. My teeth were covered in rubbery bun. I wish I would have purchased the 76oz of cola.

June 28, 2007 1:52 PM

Post a Comment

No butter, mayo, or spicy southwest sauce.......

Greg

I would make a smart ass comment to Greg, but he suffered enough with the sandwich.

Next up Mom, and a reaffirmation as to why she doesn't email more often.

Did you know there is no such word as lefted?
Mom

mom picked the wrong day to pick on me, and my response....

"Righted" isn't a word either yet everybody else uses it.

Please read the following...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

and

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Also please see smart ass picture, as I've been waiting a while to do something like this on MAC.

Keynote from PAX

IF your a gamer, go download this recording from PAX 2007

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2007/08/pax-ftw.html

You can thank me later ;)


Update... It seems someone forgot to make it a link... and I know how lazy you damn dirty gamers are.

Pegasus revisited....

3 months of MAC Book Pro bliss and I have to say I'm not regretting my purchase one bit. Dual booting with Win XP and the MAC OS is nothing short of the best of both worlds. Granted I think my total time in Windows is something like 6 hours while not playing "Supreme Commander" other then that it is all Mac all the time. I would even go so far as to call the Mac my primary computer.

However to every "Ying" there is a "Yang" and the "Yang" in this case is my desktop. All 75 pounds of it. I've been mulling over the next iteration of "Yang" for a while and I know it won't be a iMac... I love my Mac Book but honestly I do use my desktop primarily for one thing.

Gaming.

While I can game on the Mac Book under Windows I do like that I have a desktop with a full size keyboard. And after a couple of hours you really begin to apperciate that full size keyboard.

And the fact that I have come home to a computer that says "failed cpu test" on boot twice in the last month tells me it's time to start really thinking about a new rig.

I have the case picked out... it's my usual ungodly huge case.

I'm having pain and consternation with other pieces parts and I now am formally soliciting input. Please note that this input will be throughly hashed through and then hashed through again with another party (you know who you are) before landing on a final configuration.

Here are some talking points...

- Dual Core 6750 vs Quad Core 6600.... the dual core has a faster front side bus and is more over-clockable then the quad core. The quad core is a quad core. Price diffrence is ~$75

- SLI.... It seems like a good idea if you actually do it. The kicker is when you strap together two mid range cards you still don't equal the current high end. And for the over all cost of the two mid range cards you can get a kick ass high end card. Also which platform Nvidia 650 or 680?

- Hybrid drives will be out soon if they aren't already. I'm not one to pick up on new technology very often but this one does seem like a winner.

Other considerations, the new chips from Intel and AMD will be out in the next couple of months. Is there enough reason to wait for those chips or utilize what is out there currently? (Personal thought, most of the new chips will be of the quad core and 1300mhz fsb variety and may very well warrant sitting tight).

I'm defiantly in hurry to build this rig as I'm happy with the MAC Book and my Wii (and since Metroid 3 comes out next week I know that is going to keep me busy).

Intersting....

He's not that stupid....

Return of Furbee...

I saw "Furbee" on TV this evening, so between that and the sudden rush of football games one can only assume that football season is on us yet again.

So it is now only a few weeks until the Cardinals march onto the field and school their opponet of the week in the ways of the bird... for the bird is the word.


Yes here is to the hopes of entire group of maybe twenty people that the Cardinals will be 8-8 this year.

Go Cardinals!