A New Year

Life In General No Comments »

It's 2010.  What the...?  I spent the night drinking champagne and watching The Empire Strikes Back.  It was quite relaxing!

I haven't said much the past ~4 months.  I don't have a very good excuse other than being busy and not having a lot to say.

I'm thankful that, at the time of this writing, I still have a job. My friends and family are healthy.  Life is going smoothly.  What more could I ask for?

Here is to a year better than the last. May anyone reading this be blessed!

Asus VW266H (and settings)

Hardware No Comments »

I recently purchased a second monitor to get rid of my behemoth Samsung 21 inch CRT that my older machine was using.  I shopped around a bit looking at reviews trying to find a monitor for gaming with a 2ms response time to upgrade my gaming machine - the intention being that I use my 24" Gateway (that oddly enough I have been very satisfied with for the past 2 years) on the older box.

I decided to take a gamble and go with an Asus monitor.  I've used their motherboards and dvd drives in the past without problems and the reviews on various sites were pretty good.  Since I prefer to see what I'm buying before even considering online ordering I went into Fry's for a gander.  I ended up finding 25.5 inch beauty that looked very appealing... the VW266H.

I got it home, set it up and was instantly unhappy.  No dead pixels but everything had a blue tint.  So I went in search of some settings others had used online to see what I could get the monitor to do.  The annoying thing is I didn't really find anything very helpful.  I may still take the monitor back since I haven't made my final decision but I figured I would post the settings I found to be the best after a couple hours of messing with them.

Splendid Mode: Standard Mode
Brightness: 70
Contrast: 92
Sharpness: 63
OverDrive: 60 (default)
Color Temp: User Mode
Red: 85
Green: 75
Blue: 62

So that is that.  I'm going to try the monitor out for a week and see how I feel.  After the changes I'm pretty happy but time will tell.

ATI Radeon 4890

Entertainment, Hardware No Comments »

xfx4890_topview
xfx4890_slantedFor the past several years I have used mainly Nvidia graphics cards when building my home computers.  Originally, I was an "ATI guy", but at some point Nvidia seemed to take the lead and I found I had less issues using their cards than ATI models.  This was probably four years ago.

Times change.  Apparently, ATI has made a huge comeback after being purchased by AMD... and it shows.  What change my mind?  A coworker told me that he was in the same boat but decided to go with ATI when his built his most recent machine since the cost to performance ratio was better.  

xfx4890_package

After taking a look at what he proposed, a 1Gb Radeon 4890,  as an upgrade to my 512Mb Nvidia 8800 GT I said sure why not.  I went to Fry's (instant gratification much?) and bought one after work.  There was only one... maybe it is the overly strange shape of the box that is attracting people?  It only took about 20 minutes to install... mainly due to having to shuffle around the internal wiring coming from my power supply.  The card requires two 6-pin or 8-pin  power connections instead of the 1 my last card needed and I had pushed the wire I didn't need in an awkward place out of the way in my case.

The ATI Catalyst software seems to have been revamped and improved greatly.  Setting up my dual monitors was a breeze and everything integrated perfectly into Windows 7.  My FPS in WoW went from 60 to 140 (outside Dalaran).  An incredible improvement. 

ATI Radeon 4890

Windows 7 RC

Windows 7 No Comments »

windows7So, about a week or two ago, Microsoft announced their release of Windows 7 RC (release candidate). I've been reading about Windows 7 for a while as others tried out the beta and decided to finally take the plunge myself.

I've only ran into a few problems... and I am going to list their solutions here in case they may help anyone.

Extra hard drives don't show up and can not be accessed... but Disk Manager can see it!
This ended up being a pretty simple issue to remedy. Right click on the drive in question and go to "Properties" and you will find an option to "Add a drive letter" to the disk. Just give it a drive letter and you are on your way...

Symantec anti-virus would not install...
I ended up going with AVG Free, since no matter what I tried, Symantec would not install correctly.

Apart from that I've had no issues and everything works great so far.

It’s been a while…

Life In General No Comments »
It's been a while since I have posted here. I don't know if it just that I've been overly busy (work, school, etc) or that I haven't felt there is anything worthwhile to say. Things are exactly the same as they have been for the past several months - at least in my own life. For the most part I've just been pinching every penny just in case since the world seems so volatile. I've watched a few friends lose their jobs, others have had their pay cut by up to 10% and the light at the end of the tunnel seems dim.On a positive note, after two years of my mom having pain in her stomach and repeatedly talking to doctor after doctor... one finally did an exploratory surgery and located scar tissue that was causing the issue and removed it. Here is hoping to a speedy recovery (and that the issue won't recur).

I'm still going to the gym, eating healthy and all that... which brings up something I saw on Consumerist a week ago. Two clowns (working at a Domino's pizza) thought it was funny to make a video where they do horrible things to food while they prepare it. Despite the possibility of the incident being a "YouTube prank", it just reaffirms my already solid disinterest in eating food prepared by anyone I don't know. While I don't care for their pizza, I do feel pity for Domino's pizza... more power to Domino's for taking them to court. Other news I've been watching closely is the case against The Pirate Bay - where the greedy corporations are trying to stifle technology (imo) to make another dollar because they aren't innovative enough to utilize P2P for their own benefit. I hope TPB wins either the 'conflict of interest', which would make the guilty verdict be thrown out, if not that at least to win their appeal.

Let's see what else? I am looking for a new place to live since my lease ends in August and I am ready for a change after being at my current residence for over two years. I have a few ideas but I fully intend on taking my time until I find exactly the right fit.

School is out in two more weeks. I will be glad to not have to drive to Kokomo twice a week. I really have enjoyed the class (macroeconomics); the current economic situation has dramatically increased my interest and the professor relates everything to real world numbers.Regarding my most recent musical tastes I have been listening to PIG for the past couple months on a near daily basis, as my last.fm profile will show, my favorite song being Blades (KMFDM Remix). Raymond Watts is incredible. I really hope he is working on new material. On a similar note, the new album Blitz by KMFDM was almost a complete letdown; I just couldn't get into it like the past few albums. I guess my expectations were too high.

That's all for now...

Design by j david macor.com.Original WP Theme & Icons by N.Design Studio
Entries RSS Comments RSS Log in