New "baby" on the way

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted here. Guess I've been busy. Or at least thought I've been.

First off, I failed the CCNA - again. Surprisingly, I really don't care that much. Talk about Cisco burnout. I'll probably go back and try it again at some point, but not until my brain has regained its confidence. LOL. Perk: All that studying actually did cement subnetting and a few other things in my head, which is great considering I don't get to use this knowledge much. I think I'll keep reading up on the stuff and try to stay somewhat current, just in case I do go back. The bad thing about all the studying I did was that I burned myself out and got too nervous to take the test properly. So my mind blanked out. Terribly. Still, the knowledge is there. Yay to me.

Second, I'M BUILDING ANOTHER "BABY"!!! It'll be Soyo/AMD all this time. Figured it's about time I try out Intel's competition and see what all the hype is about. Besides, this is going to be a gamebox for the most part. Specs follow:

CPU: AMD 1.83mhz CPU (333mhz fsb, I know, bottlenecking system, hush)
MB: Soyo KT600 Dragon Plus
CASE: Chieftec Mini Tower Dragon (blue, 7 bays, clear side panel)
RAM: Ultra 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz
VID: Chaintech GeForceFX 5200 256MB DDR 8X AGP w/TV (yep, this baby's got nvidia in it)

Just hope Selene doesn't get too "jealous" this time. She has a habit of acting up every time I bring a new computer into the house. It's very weird! Maybe by now she'll realize that she'll always be my first and foremost concern 'cause she's the first computer I built... AND she's still my music tower. Amongst several zillion other things... (photo editing, writing, website creation, im, chat, internet, etc etc etc not to mention pda stand and makeshift bulletinboard)

Anyway, just had to spread the awesome news!! All necessary parts should be here by next week. w00t!!

~nvnohi

heh, insatiable questions

Sometimes I'm annoyed by people asking simple questions about computers, especially if they claim geekhood and I've already answered them about it once less than a month or so ago. But then I have days when it just rolls off my back, and I'm almost amused by it.

Take a friend of mine, for instance. We'll call him Spasm today since I value my friends' privacy and it's the first word that popped into my head. Hm. There might be a reason I chose to call him Spasm, now that I think about it. Nonetheless, it's not exactly traceable back to him, so I'll keep it for now.

Spasm seems to think he's an elite [good] hacker dude. He spends countless hours at the computer tweaking his XP box with every tweak he can find. He downloads almost every little program he sees. And, much to my dismay at times, he tells me /I/ need to use these programs. When I'm not complaining. I mean, I tend to tell people to use Mozilla when they're complaining about popups and asking for advice, but I don't keep insisting before they even ask. And for the record, I still do not see why people are so afraid of something that works the same but /looks/ slightly different. Mom's kind of like that and it really perplexes me given the fact that she's so smart and I, the geek, came from her.... anyway, for a while I thought the guy was more of a script kiddie than anything, but over the years he's mellowed. A lot. And when I say a lot, I mean _A_LOT_.

Don't get me wrong, I love the guy dearly most of the time. In fact, despite some really silly questions that I think he oughta know the answers to by now, he has actually helped ME out at times. I never discount what he tells me because he has been right on numerous occasions and outsmarted ME. (Is my own arrogance showing at all? I think it is. Whups.) Yet he'll still be asking me things like, "It's okay to unplug a hard drive while the computer's running, right?" And no, he's NOT referring to a hot-swappable drive!

I dunno. I guess we all have our special talents. He's a geek in another sort of way, perhaps. Sometimes I think I'm helping to keep him in line and keep his mind going the way it should be going. And sometimes I think he's helping me learn how other people think - even fellow geeks. Maybe, just maybe, it's a mixture of both.

~nvnohi

anime - shun

THIS is interesting. I finally got see some anime. I'm watching "Love Hina" from a desync.com server. I've been sitting here for almost two hours now, and I think I'm addicted. I even like the music. I even put up with the buffering every five minutes. It's scary.

And now I'm going to stop using "I" at the beginning of all my sentences. LOL.

Okay, back to Love Hina.

~nvnohi

Can you mouse me now?

Sorry, I just love those commercials... I was just seeking information on this Unicode issue some people have with Trillian where I'll IM them and they'll get a message about not supporting Unicode. I remember this from my pre-trillian pro days and one would think it would have been fixed by now! Anyway, I ended up with my hand on the mouse for quite some time. Then my tastebuds wanted some of the peanut butter cup ice cream that's melting nearby, so I pulled my hand off the mouse. That's when I noticed the red flashing on it and realized that if I'd not had that hankering for ice cream, I probably would have let the thing go dead because my hand was covering up the light. Although... it's still not in its cradle yet... LOL Still, one would think the flashing light wouldn't be on the dying-battery-mouse but rather on the mouse cradle instead. At least there's software that messages you... then again, I turned that off long ago... hehheh the perils of having wireless input devices!!

July newsletter will be out within the next two days I think. I just need to figure out what I want to write in the second main section. ::grumble:: Got lots of links, though!! In part due to a friend from class who sent me a whole slew of them this morning, but still, they're cool links!!

Guess I'll stuff the mouse in its cradle and head to couch myself with my ice cream and a Star Trek DVD. Besides, I keep seeing lightning flashes outside despite a lack of thunder. Might as well unplug everyone in case it gets closer and decides to hit a power line. Definitely do NOT want Selene or anyputer else to fry. And the flashes are getting to be more frequent. So, 'til next time!

~nvnohi