OMG!!!! It's a new growth.....

Finally have my new baby put together, POST'd, and with an OS.

Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 512K 939-Pin
ASUS A8N-E nForce4 DDR400/SATA RAID/PCIE
Kingston 2x 512Mb DDR 400 PC-3200
Chaintech SE6600 GeForce 6600 PCI Express 256MB DDR Video Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JD 320GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer
Liteon SOHW-1673S 16X Dual DVD+RW±R Black
Aspire X-Navigator Aluminum Computer Case
Dual Blue Cathode Kit
420W Orion Power Supply
Zalman Reserator 1 Plus Fanless Computer Water Cooling System

Would have had it up sooner, but ran into a snag with the POST. Apparently my original video card was bad (or I jacked it up putting the water block on it) and wouldn't POST. So I had to wait an additional 5 days to get a replacement. Worked out well though, price had dropped by about $40 on ZipZoomFly (which apparently was a 30 minute blue light special b/c the card is now $20 more than I finally ended up paying for it).

I went over budget, but I'm smiling in the end and I considered this an new job/new city present. I'm pretty excited about the Zalaman water kit. While I have always considered myself a pretty decent hardware guy, I had never tried water cooling (or water block installation). I was a little nervous in the beginning, but after installing the cpu block, the vga block, putting new thermal grease on my old PC (more in a bit), and then installing the vga block AGAIN. I feel pretty confident in my skillz. I just have toe REALLY remember to make sure the water pump is on BEFORE the PC.

My last PC (named Cypher) is still whole (I didn't scavenge any parts from it), so I have my new powerhouse (codenamed Skrubby-Pimp until I get everything installed) and a very good secondary (Cypher). Cypher has always had cpu heat problems though. Generally he runs at around 65 C when doing business computing (Word, Excel, etc.) and up into the 75+ C range when gaming. I never replaced the original heatsink/fan that came with the AMD chip. One of the side project of making the new PC was to replace the thermal grease on Cypher (my boy Pat convinced me to do this). WOW what a difference. I used Arctic Silver 5 and kept the factory heatsink/fan combo, and now my cpu temp runs at about 55 C when gaming.

Protect the gene pool, get yourself spayed and neutered...

Why you should be proficient in PASCAL....

Generally I'm a big supporter of MS's Visual Studio. It took me a year to start feeling comfortable using it after learning C/C++ with Borland's Turbo C++ IDE. But for whatever reason VS is really *@%&#$% me off today. The main thing is that when I hit F1 (which is a highly used key for me these days), the "context sensitive" help is STUPID! It always comes up with the MFC or .NET help....like I've EVER used either of those on this PC. Every program is a Win32 C++....even if I set it to Visual C++ or Platform SDK, it still wants to come up with MFC help....gee thanks but your documentation is WRONG!!!! grrr......

The other thing is child control sub classing. What a pain in the @#%! Its darn near impossible to trap what should be considered common window messages from child controls without running seventeen stupid hoops. I mean come on, wouldn't it seem pretty useful to be able to catch WM_CHAR or WM_KEYUP messages for a freakin edit control! Instead you have to provide a callback function....which is great except when you might want to have a C++ class....callback's have to be static...which means EVERY instance of you class will use the same freakin method AND all data in that method must be static as well! There's a few ways around it, but it just seems like a stupid idea to have to perform nuclear fission on the code just to catch when the focus is on a text box and the user hits tab.

Of course, it's probably much easier to play with tab in MFC or C#, but even those have their drawbacks that piss me off. Like easy access to the message pump. Control over the parameters for CreateWindow() and a few others. Viva the PASCAL revolution....

Hurricane

My dad was brilliant enough to stay in Biloxi through Hurricane Katrina....so that's a hell-yeah for the gene pool right there. At any rate, they made it through the storm no problem. A 100 square foot section of his shingles on the house had to be replaced and the roof on the garage building will need to be redone, the privacy fence will need all new posts, and lots of detritus needs to be cleaned. All in all, he got off EXTREMELY light in comparison to the houses 2 miles south of him (those are the ones that were wiped).

They had been without power and water for a bit over 5 days. The finally got it back. At one point he wanted me to load up on groceries and any gas I could get my hands on (yeah right!!) and drive to him in the middle of the war zone.....300 miles in...no gas to get out...just to deliver some wheat bread and 15 to 20 gallons of gas for his generator (which is only on to "save" his food in the freezer). I didn't think this was the smartest of ideas. Luckily the power came back in his area and walmart is open now, so that saved me the trip.

I have been playing info goffer for everyone he knows though. Which has been keeping me pretty busy. I've been answerin his emails to friends outside the Gulf Coast area letting them know who is alright and answering what questions I can for them. Dad calls me up for the news (they have no cable still) and the weather.

At any rate, they're fine and I\ve had no troubles up here in the Bham. I was out of power/cable/phone for 9 hours Tuesday morning and did get to take off half of Tuesday (my work is on the same power grid as my apartment).

Safety tip: If you live in a trailer in a hurricane prone area and decide to ride out the storm in it, please just go ahead and shoot yourself and save me having to hear about you on the news.....

P.S. Kayne West.......with all that money you have.....get an education before you open your retard mouth on national TV. Moron!