Quick Update

Been a long time, not that anyone has been expecting an update. Just wanted to post a quick couple things.

-We've decided on the baby's name, it will be Brayden.
-Still with Wireless Multimedia at Apple, we've fleshed out that group quite a bit, and I'm in the Tier 2 section. Tier 2 is only in Sac, so that's cool.
-I am in the process of creating training for all of the Wireless Multimedia Tier 1 agents, along with Tim B. We should have it done by the end of the week, and will hopefully be delivering it next week.
-I added a link on the bottom right that says "Talk by Phone". I have a trial account with Ring Central and if you want to leave me a message, or just check out my 800 #, give it a click.

Thats all for now, expect more to come in the next month or so. Baby will be born soon, so I'll have pictures and stories to post.

Keep it real.

It's a boy!

We had the big ultrasound the other day. I left from work for lunch at 11:00 and had the rest of the day off. We arrived at Kaiser in South Sacramento at 11:30. Here are the pictures of our son!

We were both really excited to find out. We both wanted to have a boy as our first child. For some reason we both thought the baby was a girl, but now we know! We spent an hour and a half at Babies ᴙ Us on the 30th, and an hour at Target tonight registering. We are going to be putting the nursery in the room I am using for an office right now. The theme for the room is going to be jungle.

Possible baby names: Blake, Parker, Garrett, Everett. Now that we know it is a boy, choosing a name will be easier.

Lateral

So I have a new job at work. I am one of 15 people in Sacramento, and 30 people in all of Apple that will be officially supporting the Airport Extreme 802.11N and the AppleTV. We are called the Wireless Multimedia team, and we go live on Friday. Technically it is not a promotion, it is more of a sidestep. Which is a good deal for me really. Lately I feel like my job is to clean up other people's messes. Which is no fun at all. But with the new team, the calls we will be getting we will take from start to finish, not just finishing what other people started. I'm excited about it.

And I got a new computer at work. Finally replaced my iMac G4 with a PowerMac G5. It has 4 processors.

O_o

Fatherhood

So, its been a long time since I last updated. I haven't really been feeling all that great lately, (mentally, physically, emotionally) but I figured this warrants an update more than anything else I've updated on. Last Wednesday the wife and I went to get her first ultrasound done, because we've know for about a few months now that she is pregnant. She's in her twelfth week, she'll be due in June.



If you can make heads or tails of that, congrats, as no one I've showed it to has been able to :P. I can see it, but that's probably because I was there watching it live, so the process leading up to that image kind of gives you an idea of what you are looking at. Baby was pretty squirmy, but she didn't feel anything yet (its only 5.25 cm at this point).

Exciting times ahead... have a house, two dogs, baby on the way.

Fiber

Right now, at my house, I have internet connection speeds that cause most of my friends to 'hate' me. I'd hate me too, if I didn't have these speeds. Observe:



Yes, that is reported correctly. My upload and download speeds are in excess of 9 megabit. And this is piped straight to my home, not a business or at work. As a comparison, DSL would register about 1500 down, maybe 384 up. Cable can be up to 8000 down, same up as DSL, but mine was only about 4000 down. So yes, 10 Mbit up/down for $40 a month is leaps and bounds better than anything else

On August 10th, Surewest finally came out to my house to install fiber optic internet and TV. Together, my speeds are faster than Comcast, I have more television channels, TV in two rooms, and the bill is about $20 cheaper a month. I know, hate me. But getting there... getting there was a pain. I fully expect at least a month's free service for my troubles. You see, Surewest had some problems keeping their appointments for install. We were originally scheduled for install July 28th. I spoke with the Surewest sales representative in my home, signed paperwork and ordered service in the first week of July. I could wait until the 28th because, well, I had internet and TV service currently, and I figured good things come to those who wait.

July 28th rolls around. I took the day off work, so that I could be with a friend returning from Iraq for hopefully his final tour of duty in the Army. Surewest's appointment is from 10-12. 11 o'clock rolls around, TV and internet go out. I look out the front door and there is Comcast, disconnecting the service like I asked them to. 1200 hours, still no Surewest. I call their 800 number to see what is going on, and while I am waiting to speak to the next available representative, I get an incoming call from my sales rep. She informs me that there was some kind of mix up in the paperwork, and they went out the wrong house. Yesterday. She tells me she will see what she can do about sending someone out a bit later, says she will call me back and let me know what she finds out.

I get a call minutes later. All install techs are booked up, and they can't get anyone out until 8/5, or 8 days later.

I forgot to mention something, so I'll mention it now. I already have the fiber box on the side of my house. Fiber is different from cable or DSL, and requires a separate line from their junction box to go to a box on the side of the house. This is a big deal, because there are things like sidewalks and pavement that need to be taken up so the line can run underground and come out of the ground next to the house, to go to this box. We already have this box, so no need to run lines, no cost for install, no lengthy wait while they tear up my yard and the street and/or sidewalk.

Back to the call. I'm not happy. They screwed up; I understand mistakes happen. From my point of view, all they need to do is turn on the service to my box, and plug in the modem and TV boxes. How is this going to take another week to coordinate. I grumpily accept the new install date, and desparately try to contact Comcast to resume service for another week. They explain that since the service has been physically turned off, they would need to send a technician out to turn it back on, and would have to charge me an install fee. I figure for a week of internet/TV, paying an install fee is not desirable and decline the offer.

August 3rd. I want things to go smoothly, so I call Surewest to make sure the appointment is still on, and that they have the right address. Miles assures me they do, and I thank him and end the call.

August 5th. I'm at work, wife is at home waiting for the install between 12 and 2. I get a text message from her at 2:10 saying no one showed up. Again. I call Surewest, and get a guy by the name of Dustin on the line. I also work in call center, so I lighten the mood a bit by joking about how people always get our names wrong (Justin, Duncan, Dunsten, Brian...). I then ask politely what in the hell is going on. He tells me that they changed my install date, yesterday. My new install date is August 19th.

...

You can imagine at this point I'm hopping mad, They pushed me back another 2 weeks, and didn't even bother to tell me? Why am I waiting around for an install tech if they aren't coming because they pushed back the install again!?!? Dustin goes to speak with a supervisor and offers to call me back to see if there is anything they can do to get a sooner install date. I'd be happy with today, but I can settle for Monday. 2 weeks is not acceptable. Dustin calls back an hour later, saying that they tried manually turning it on, but there was some kind of problem with the provisioning and it didn't work. He said the supervisor would call back on 8/8 because there isn't much they can do over the weekend. I take the rest of the day off work (2 hours) to talk to them and attempt to fix my internet problem, because at this point we aren't just inconvenienced, my wife's business relies on being able to submit orders online, and we are down because we don't have a connection. I buy a $50 wireless adapter, move my wife's computer into the kitchen, and leech off an open network I find to get online.

August 7th. More than a month since I've spoken to the sales person. I wait all day for a call from the supervisor, and receive none. I call Surewest on my way home from work, at about 4:30. I wait on hold for an HOUR, after the automated system told me my wait was longer than six minutes. Well, yes, it was longer... but an hour? Madness. I get Miles again. I explain, very calmly, that his company has broken their commitment to me 3 times now, and while I can forgive one as a mistake, the second two were clearly their fault, as they changed my appointment without telling me. Miles attemps to regain control of the call, saying that if I would give him a chance to fix things he would. I tell him that I am open to giving people chances, but my faith in the company at this point is very dim. He offers to have a supervisor call me back, I tell him one was supposed to call me, but it is now 6 o'clock and I've still heard nothing from them. He then asks to put me on hold while he tries to find another install date earlier than the 19th. I get his contact info in case I need to call him back, or we get disconnected, and go to hold.

While I am on hold, I get an incoming call from a phone number that looks similar to the number he gave me. Thinking there might have been a problem with the phone system and he was calling me back, I pick up. It's Nina, the supervisor. She says that some install dates opened up, and wanted to know what would work for me. I tell her anything, as soon as possible, you pick a time and a day and you be there like you say you will and I'll be there too. Amazing how that works. She says she will call me back and let me know what day/time. I switch back to Surewest on my other line and Miles is back. He says the earliest day he can find is the 17th. I tell him about Nina, and ask that we leave the install date at its current day as to not fuck things up any further. If she's changing it to sooner, I'd rather not have it botched because we changed it already.

I wait an hour, and then give Nina a call back (caller ID == teh win!). I get her voicemail, and leave my name a number asking her to call me with the install times so I can tell my wife when to expect them.

August 9th. Early in the morning I receive two calls that go to voicemail. One is Nina saying she has an earlier date and Dispatch will be calling to confirm, but it looks to be going through on August 10th. The other message is dispatch, giving me the date and time they will be out.

August 10th, I go home for lunch, Surewest is finishing up installing. I sign the paperwork. Done.

First thing I did after confirming the internet worked was run the speedtest and take the screenshot above.

The End...?

It's alive!

So I got my computer all done about a week or so ago, just have been basking in the glory of my new machine. It's fast. Way fast. And has an upgrade path, should I need to. To throw some numbers out there, I can run FEAR on max graphical and physics settings at 1024x768 and average 60 FPS. Doom at 1280x1024 also maxed with FSAA and AA about the same. And the Half-Life 2: Lost Coast demo at 79 FPS, everything once again turned fully on. The only game I have been able to give the machine pause is Oblivion... that is one monster of a game. Guild Wars runs like a dream. So without further ado, the pics. I didn't take nearly as many as the last machine I built, but you still get the general gist.



->
This is the Motherboard. Damn, you might say, that is one sweet board. Wish I took a picture of it out of the box.. but I was in a rush to get it installed. Lets just say it is the best board I've ever laid eyes on. You'll see interior images with the board a bit later.



Here is the processor. ->
Same core I put into the last machine I made, only $300 cheaper. That's what happens to prices on products sometimes several months later. I believe I bought the last one June of '05, when they had JUST come out. It screams.















<- Also, the RAM rocks. Notice the sticker on it that reads: Best for A8N32-SLI. See above picture of Motherboard.















Sweet, sweet nectar. ->
This graphics card is the best card $200 can buy, and it came with a $30 rebate. I am SOOO tempted to buy another and SLI my rig right now, but money will be tight (another post to follow as to why). PCI-e, 256MB RAM, and nVidia's latest and greated GPU == pure gaming bliss.


<- This pair of hard drives doesn't look like much, but they don't have to look pretty. SATA II, 80 GB Hitachi's in RAID 0. Only wish they were 10,000 RPM... but not everyone can afford a Raptor...


<- I've continued to be amazed at just how slick these Rosewill power supplies are. I bought the last one on a whim cause it looked cool, and it turned out to be great. This one is anodized red (matches the overall theme of my case), modular (only plug in the cables you need) and has a red light inside it illuminating the fan. Damn sexy.



As you can see, the finished product is very nice looking. Silver and red all over, with black PCB instead of the normal drab green. Red braided power cables, slim red SATA cables (no need for rounded IDEs on this machine), red 120mm case fans front and back... and she runs like a dream too. Windows installed in about 20 minutes, maybe 25. I leave you with a picture of the installation screen, my mouse, and my keyboard. Yes, that keyboard is glowing. Red backlit keys, my friend.

New PC for me!

Been a while since I posted here, and the wife was making fun of me for not updating enough in my blog. Quick blurb here, will be updated a bit later on.

I'm building a new computer for myself. The last one of its kind was built in the last quarter of 2001... and I've been patching on new technolog as it becomes available ever since. In fact, the computer I'm posting this on from now is that very same computer. To give you an idea of its age, is uses RAMBUS, doesn't have USB 2.0, no SATA, and still uses AGP 8x. I know, I know, ANCIENT. So to give myself a platform on which to last me another 5 years, I got myself a top of the line motherboard from ASUS. It's the A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

Lets just say, this board is beautiful. Dual gigabit LAN. Onboard 8-channel audio. SATA II, built in RAID, PCIe 16x times two (a feature not many boards have). I have ordered all the parts from NewEgg and everything but the keyboard has arrived (wait until you see the keyboard, it rocks!). I'll be taking pictures of the process as I did with the last computer I built, and soon my next post will be posted from the new computer.

All I need is a new name for it.

Real Transformer

Gotta quick post here, just a video of a robot that someone created that transforms!

Happy New Year!

So, 2006. Wow, ten years ago I was a freshman in High School. Now I work for a highly successful company, my position is secure, and they are already looking at how they can better use my talent. Life is good. ('cept my dog sucks, I think he is smarter than us sometimes and has managed to undo any housetraining we taught him, except for the rare times we are in the same room as him and he wants a treat. Then he'll go in his litterbox.)

Car is running decently (knock on wood), holidays are over, Scrubs is new tonight and Lost is new next week, booya. Got me a black iPod 30GB that plays video, and it has come in handy at work, let me tell you. Christmas was insanely busy for us. A few days after, we had something like 14,000 ABANDONED calls in the iPod queue. That's 14,000 people who called in and hung up before they even got to us. Macworld is in a week, and I have a feeling that there will be a release of some new products that will make us even busier. Hope its a new iBook, or Powerbook, with an Intel processor. Intel, BTW, has changed their 37 year old logo to this:


I think it's kinda bland actually, I liked the old one with the dropped 'e'. Oh well, change is inevitable.



Anywho, 2 new Scrubs' episodes in about 30 minutes, gotta go!

Apple

Well, I've been at Apple for 3 weeks now and I can honestly say I think I am going to love this job. It's everything Earthlink was and better. Apple is making insane amounts of money right now because of the iPod, in fact we just finished up the fiscal year and have had the best year EVER at Apple. So that's good. As I may have mentioned before, I am a Tier 2 agent. However, for the first 2 months I will be working in the capacity of Tier 1. This means I have time to adjust to how things work here and learn the ropes without being rushed. The training is absolutely phenomenal. I've never experienced anything like it. Earthlink's training was awesome, Apple's is... without words to describe it. Just plain good. Benefits at Apple are insanely good. Discounts at Apple and affiliates are mind boggling (60% off Monster Cable. Up to $5,000 off a new car through Volkswagon. Etc.) The atmosphere... so laid back. Dress code casual, nearly non-existant. The people are friendly and knowledgable. I know quite a few people already, from Earthlink and even HP. The pay... is the best I have ever received. The only thing that slightly sucks is driving for 30 miles, nearly an hour each way. However in January our lease is up and we are looking at moving to Elk Grove.

If anyone wants/needs a job, gimme your resume. Email me at dnewell@apple.com, dash16@gmail.com, or dash16@mac.com. We are hiring right now. If you are a software engineer, drop me a line. If you are in sales, or tech support, talk to me. I would like nothing better than to have my friends working with me at this incredible company. I used to hate Macs. As we approach the Intel crossover next year, the line between PCs and Macs will blur, and if you harbor an unnatural hate for Macs as I used to you may want to consider opening your mind. I'm not a switcher; you can pry my PC from my cold dead hands. But I will be getting a Mac as soon as I can afford it, an iBook in fact. The way I look at it, a man with one tool in his toolchest is a fool. There are many tools for different problems, and I intend to avail myself of as many of the tools I can.

Dual boot Yellow Dog Linux/ Mac OS X 10.4 baby. Gonna take over the world.

Fable

Been playing Fable: The Lost chapters for the PC. Great game, superb even. Haven't had this much fun since KOTOR 2. Fable has a very intricate morality system. If you walk into a town, go into someone's house and search their bookshelves for items and remove them, you will be punished if someone sees you do it. The owner of the house will run off and find a guard, who will come and offer to take the fine for stealing or breaking and entering or lockpicking or whatever it is the villager reported, and if you decline to pay they will attack you. Different crimes have different penalties, for instance if you kill a guard its a $2000 fine, if you are trespassing in someone's house it is only $150. The key is not to get caught if you are going to break the law. When you build up your stealth skill high enough you can lockpick and steal items from shop owners. At night, when everyone is sleeping and the guards are patroling, you can break into a shop and steal things. Whenever you do something wrong like this you get evil points; when you do good things like kill a bandit or give money to someone who needs it you get good points.

I'm playing through the first time evil cause its easier to do. Even breaking barrels in town for items like healing potions or food is vandalism and stealing, and you get fined for it. Also, sometimes in the heat of combat you could accidentally target a friendly and take them down, evil points galore. Kinda different from most RPGs, where you can walk into everyone's house, break their pots or boxes or open their treasure chests for money or food or items and no one cares. I'm focusing on strength and speed and melee attacks, next time through I'll play the Gandalf/Elminster/Merlin character and be an uber good magic user.

The world is alive, more so than any game I have played. In the wild between cities you will run into traders and people traveling to go to other towns, there is a day and night system so if you arrive at town in the middle of night and need to buy something shops will be closed. You can talk to everyone, maybe not have in depth conversations but there are different actions and expressions you learn along the way. Such as flirting, flexing your muscles, standing in a heroic pose, belching, pretending to be a chicken, and so on. You can have women (or men) fall in love with and marry you. You can buy real estate, fix it up, live in it or rent it out. You can make money by buying goods in one town and selling them for more money in another town. And there isn't an unlimited supply of goods, items will actually sell out until they get another shipment in. You can punt chickens for points (or just for fun), compete in an archery range for prizes, escort traders to towns and have them follow or wait in places while you clear out the bandits or monsters ahead.

I haven't even gone into the elaborate skills and leveling system. Its very easy to make whatever kind of character you want. Offensive magic user, beserker melee barbarian, stealthy rogue sniper. Storyline is decent, kinda cliche/predictable, but maybe there's a plot twist coming I haven't seen yet.

iEmployment

So far so good with Apple. My background check went fine, orientation starts on the 21st. Job will start on the 26th. Only final hurdle is a drug check, and I'm clean.

I've been doing some work for Ashley's stepdad in the meantime for his photography business, mostly sorting and balancing images and updating his website. He wants me to create a shopping cart system so people can buy photographs from him online, but I honestly think it is beyond my current web skills. As much as I think I know, I still have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. I think the shopping cart would take some other programming that I don't know right now, probably something like PHP. I don't know enough even to know what I'm going to need to learn in order to do it.

How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions and Access the Internet Privately

http://www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork/

This is a great walkthrough on how to turn your home PC into a proxy server and how to SSH to it from a remote site.

iJob

So last Monday I got a call from an Apple recruiter. I was having lunch with Ashley so she set up a time to call me back on Tuesday. Tuesday came, she called, I liked what she was offering so she set up a technical phone interview with a supervisor later that day. Supervisor called, I answered his questions with ease, and the recruiter called back to schedule an interview at Apple on Friday.

Apple is in Elk Grove, kind of a far drive for me.

Friday comes, I put on my best clothes and drive on down. The application and interview process took about an hour, I think I did really well. The position they are offering is a tier 2 position, so right off the bat I'd be getting as much as I did at Sutter. Benefits would start day one of working there, and I'd get discounts on Apple products. They even have a 3 week training class to ensure we are ready to take calls.

I should hear back by Monday or Tuesday this coming week. This could be a great job.

Contracting

In this day and age, the common employee is disposable. Take contractors. Being a contract employee basically means you get paid less to do the same job as a full time employee, you get no benefits, and you have no job rights. At any time an employer may terminate a contract employee without having to give any reason at all. They are filler, to get the job done when faced with budget constraints and/or an imminent need for help. The last three jobs I worked at started off as contract work. Earthlink through TAC staffing, HP through Volt Services, and Sutter through TekSystems. Earthlink was nice, I worked 3 months as a contract employee (basically a trial period) and after that I was hired on full time. At HP I was brought in to serve a need; they were outsourcing their call center to India and Canada and needed someone to stay until the transition was complete. Part of the reason I was brought in at Sutter was to help with the additional call volume of aquiring California Pacific Medical Centers in the Bay area, some thousands of additional customers to support. I have felt the good and bad of being a contractor, and today I felt the teeth.

At about 5:10 PM I got a call from my contact at TekSystems, the outstanding man who got me my job and has been nothing but nice to me. He called to inform that my contract at Sutter had been terminated today.

Initial reaction was denial.

I had just heard a few weeks ago from another employer at TekSystems, who happens to the the Sutter liason (and who also is an incredibly nice lady) that my contract had been extended to the end of the year. I was just about to tell him he should talk to her about that when he kept on going, intent on giving me the whole story up front.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and has since not returned.

Apparently I am not a team player. I am not courteous with customers on the phone. I have a bad habit of surfing the internet or reading between calls or while I am on the phone.

The only truth to any of this is my internet browsing. I do not believe it is/was a problem, but the fact of the matter is this: if it was a problem, my supervisor or manager should have approached me and informed me that what I was doing was a problem. I didn't see my performance suffering as a result, I made just as many if not more tickets than most of the people there. Plain and simple, from day one I have been kept out of the loop. No one saw fit to tell me anything that was going on in my job, even things that directly impacted me. Two weeks ago they moved my desk. I was told the day of, a few minutes before the time for me to move to shut down and move my computer. Last week they changed our extensions around. I was on the phone with a customer when the telco technician yanked my phone line. My phone was down for an hour and a half, and the ticketing system was down as well so I literally couldn't work for over an hour. Again, no prior notice. A month or so after I started working, one of the guys there was installing updates on my machine while I was on the phone with a customer, the computer rebooted, and I lost any work or notes I had created for that customer. I basically had to ask them to call back because my computer just restarted. Again, not a word of what was going on to me. Last week we started using a template to record all of our notes in the ticketing system. I was told the day of that I was doing things wrong and needed to use this new way of recording notes.

I took EVERYTHING in stride. Fine, I thought, They can't tell me everything that goes on in my job. I never was unprofessional in any way at any of these times, despite the fact that I was basically given the shaft. The only time I was ever approached about anything was when my manager told me I couldn't wear sandals to work. Guess what? I stopped wearing sandals. I have consistantly been above average when it comes to call volume. We get a weekly summary of the help desk average and our own personal average, and nearly every day I am well above average in terms of numbers. As far as quality goes, I solve a good number of tickets and I route most tickets to the proper place. Its quite hard to be 100% when it comes to ticket routing, even people who have been there for years still send the occasional ticket the wrong way. I have never, not once been approached about my decorum with customers or my "lack" of being a team player. I have never, not ever lost my cool or professionalism with a customer on the phone. Not once. Sure, after the call I may vent, but I don't carry on about it.

This has been a complete shock. I guarentee I was better than most of the other contractors there, I've seen the numbers, I've read the tickets that come back to us. I was nothing but helpful to my fellow teammates, and in turn was told I wasn't a team player. I am respectful and professional with every person that called in to me, every email I responded to, every voicemail I transcribed. I never, not once disobeyed any order my superiors gave to me, I never got into arguements with my coworkers, I never got pissed at a customer and let it show to them while I was talking to them. As far as I knew I was an above average employee, and yet they shut the door on my back without even trying to explain anything to me. They childishly, cowardly ended my employment after I had already gone home for the day, in the middle of the week no less.

I will not let this get to me.

I will be the better man, I will explain myself and my actions to TekSystems, and hopefully they will have me employed again soon.

Addendum: I am a little disappointed. For once, I was using my skills and knowledge towards something worthwhile, supporting hostpitals and the infrastrucute behind them. My efforts were actually going toward saving lives. Maybe not directly, but indirectly. My last jobs were hardly this noble, I wouldn't say helping people connect to the internet or helping a corporate executive sort his email were earth shatteringly helpful, in the grand scheme of things.

Roomba

So we got a Roomba after our wedding, with some of the gift cards we received, some store credit, and a bit of cash. Real nice, vaccuums the whole apartment, even under the sofa. Word of advice? Make sure you know where your dog is when Roomba's doing its thing. Chester left a nice big pile in the wake of the Roomba, and when we found it it was going over the same spot over and over trying to get the crap up.

Brushes, dust bin, grill, wheels... all clogged with Chester doodie.

You don't know haet until you've cleaned dog shit out of your $250 robotic vaccuum cleaner.

Building a new computer, Part 5

I believe I am finished. I actually had to reinstall windows, this time started from SP1. After tinkering with things for a while, I concluded that the problems I was having could be attributed to a crappy screensaver. I downloaded this screensaver that had some pretty cool 3d effects, but after a while the screensaver would stutter and flash white overlay like it was trying to induce seizures. I had applied the screensaver to basically test the 3d card over long periods of time, but have since given up on it. Doom3 runs fine at 1024x768 on high with everything turned on. UT2004 plays flawlessly at the same settings and everything turned to MAX. Thief 3 is a little glitchy, but it may be running better now. Splinter Cell 3 ran great, but I uninstalled it cause I couldn't find a crack.

So windows is up to date (SP2 with all the updates), NAV 2005 antivirus installed, Office 2003, Daemon tools and tons of ISOs. This beast is ready to go.

Happy 7Eleven day, go get a free slurpee already.

Building a new computer, Part 4

Well, the new video card is here. I am posting this from the completed computer, and so far so good. The card I bought was cheaper, faster, and just overall better. Which just goes to show, ordering parts online is the way to go. Here is a screenshot of the desktop with the applied skin:

Building a new computer, Part 3

It's amazing how many problems you run into building a PC. From limitations in software, to hardware incompatibilities, to defective hardware/software, it can be a rocky road constructing a PC from the ground up. The first Windows XP SP2 CD I created had some problems... probably due to the customization I built into the install. I had to create another CD, sans customization, so I can use it on other PCs I build. Now that windows is functioning like I want it to, its time to load up with software. Mouse and keyboard drivers had to be updated with versions from Logitech's website, audio and video drivers all downloaded... I'm beginning to wonder why manufacturers even bother bundling CDs with their product. Odds are you are going to need to download new versions of it to be compatible with everything else. For instance, the mouse software worked fine, in everything except Firefox. Didn't recognize the back/forward buttons. Updated software, now it works fine.

The video card I got from Best Buy needs to go back. I've been wrangling with wierd graphics problems for 2 days now, and I've run out of viable options. I've removed and reinstalled the Catalyst drivers twice now, once with Driver Cleaner to remove any tidbits left behind. I get wierd graphics glitches... occasionally it will stutter, in the simplest things like a 3d screen saver or the 3D view in the Catalyst Control Center. Sometimes the whole screen will spasm with white overlay. Half the games I installed won't even run. Some do run, and they run beautifully, like UT2004 (with all the graphics turned up to MAX). Half-Life 2 runs, if a bit choppy at times. Haven't even tried Doom3 yet, but I'm sure it will have problems. Max Payne 2 wouldn't run, Far Cry had this wierd glitchy thing where it ran really fast, and crashed 75% of the time. I've ordered a new card from NewEgg and am going to have to wait until I get it to continue work on the computer, as you need a display adapter in order to see what is going on in the computer. Can't exactly work blind... although I could try and boot it and remote to the machine from my computer. Nah, better to just give it a rest for a bit, getting kinda burnt out.

I loaded a sweet looking skin for Windows, really goes with the whole blue and black theme I've got going. Will post a screenshot of it once I've got the new card installed.

Happy Fourth of July!

iMario

Taking a break from posting about the computer. It's nearly done, I'll create another post once I'm satisfied. In the meantime, here's Mario.