Checksum Arcanius

Perhaps the best part of the new computer is that I’ve been able to use my Sound Blaster Audigy again. While I haven’t gotten around to setting up the 4.1 surround sound again yet, the sound quality is so much better with the Audigy than the poor, poor amps in the laptops that it is truly a different experience both in headphones and on the Stereo.

Work has been good, but it is hard to get into a homework mode afterwards. Angeringly, but perhaps fortunately, Comcast is sucking it up in the ping and packet loss department (I ran some ping tests last night to confirm that it wasn’t a wireless link on my side), so counterstrike is a pain for me and those playing me with all my teleportation.

I started work on a scouting database program for nationals. I hope I’ll get it done in time; If not, there is always the plane ride and wednesday and thursday before the finals begin. T miunus one week until we leave. I can hardly wait.

But before then, I have three photography assignments to complete and probably a bunch of computer programs to write and lots of diff.eq. to study. Fun stuff!

Last night I enabled Magic Quotes so Bobby’s Uberblog-powered site would work properly. Its unfortunate that Dris doesn’t instead use the “addslashes” function, but until that time, I’m willing to compromise.

The nieces are over for another day it looks like, and I’m pretty tired – thats what I get for my inconsistent sleep schedule I guess.

Yesterday, I went to Creighton’s, got my comuter working, then watched the Passion of the Chirst with Scott, who went home today. The movie was extremely well done and is the first movie of this type that I’ve seen that doens’t back away from the violence involved at all. I didn’t sense anti-semitism. I handled it alright, and thinking about it, I think I may want to see it again.

Today, it was a relatively busy Sunday – Missed some church, but made it in eventually. I dressed up a little more than usual. Next, i went to a LAN party at Tim’s to try out the new computer. It worked well. Then I helped out with the “Behold the Man” Production at my church. Then I returned home to play some CS and found the performance of my machine significantly downgraded. I thought maybe I got a virus at the lan party. So i reinstalled from scratch since I didn’t have much time invested into the computer yet. But that didn’t’ solve the problem. I checked for overheating, for loose cards, etc. But its even stranger. The problem is that whenever my mouse is plugged into my USB hub, the computer takes about 70% of its cycles when i move the mouse. If I move the mouse to any other USB port, no CPU cycles are consumed. Its extremely confusing – I’ve never heard of this happening before. If you have, let me know!

School starts again tomorrow, and I’m up way too late already, especially since I still need to by books. But first, some CS with a framerate that doesn’t drop below 99.9 even with smoke grenades…

Inspiration hit me today while doing the final “Behold the Man” Church Easter program rehearsal. It had very little to do with the program (except, perhaps, for the laptops we are using to run the multimedia presentation). But here the plan is:

1. Get the new computer up and running (It also needs a name)
2. Transfer silverfir.net from sf2 (500 MHz PIII) to oasis (600 MHz Athlon)
3. Load Windows onto sf2 for Mom
4. Reclaim Mobius (Athlon XP-M 2400+) for myself
5. Have Mobius repaired at Fry’s per the extended protection plan I got (serial port and power supply connection)
6. Transfer Kleinoscope (P4 2.8 GHz) to Dad ($1300-$1600 value)
7. Get Horatio (IBM THinkpad PII 300) from Dad once transition is complete ($100-$300 value)
8. Get Saturn from Dad once he gets a new vehicle ($1000-$1300 value)
9. Turn Horatio into a Linux machine (Rename to Blackbrick II?)

Thats the grand plan. It would leave me with:
-New computer (yet to be named, but I just thought of “Kleidoscope,” since it is colorful)
-Mobius as my laptop (comlete with serial port for programming, which Kleinoscope lacks)
-oasis as SilverFir.net
-BlackBrickII for Wardriving and Linux fun
-A car with a radio that gets 40 mpg instead of a truck that gets 10 mpg with no radio

My Dad’s computer is significantly upgraded, so he should be happy

My mom likes the laptop, but she never bought it, so I still can claim ownership. And I’ll be getting her a nice computer to use. And I’ll be paying for my own gas, which should make it worthwhile to her.

Now, the problem is the first two steps which will make all the other steps possible.

Well, the computer thing is certainly taking its time. I went back to Harddrives Northwest to get a new processor and ended up leaving with a new processor and a new mother board. I got things installed, took my time figuring out some things (like the fact that the radeon requires its own power connector), and made it more quickly through the things I figured out yesterday. I fianlly got the system up al the way to the point that it can boot. In fact, it has booted windows xp installer, but now I have just learned that I’ll need to install a Flppy to get my RAID disks running under Windows. Thats pretty annoying, you would think that they could actaully get some sort of abstration going on, but no, we need low level drivers for everything. So I’m going to working on this project for a few more days if I don’t just give up and return it all sometime next week. It all depends on my luk getting my two 80 gb hard drives wroking together in RAID mode 1, striving for additional disk bandwidth. It should be good. Not I’m practically falling asleeo here so its time for me to go

Today I bought a new computer. I got a snazzy case, an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe MoBo, and P4 2.8 GHz Extreme Edition (1 Mb Cache) and a gig of PC3200 (DDR400) RAM. But it doesn’t work. And I think its the processor. The reason I think this is that, without the processor installed, the mother bord tells me “No CPU. System Failed CPU Test. No CPU. System failed CPU test,” which is exactly what it is supposed to do. However, when the processor is properly installed with the incredibly-hard-to-maneuver heatsink/fan combo, the system start up, says nothing, and then begins the terrible two-tone warning beep, which continues indefinitely until I power off. I left everything else (except hard drives and cd drives and front-of-case USB ports plugged in, so I’m pretty sure the problem is with the processor.

ITs really late and I have one more day of 7:00am work, so I must be to sleep now.

I’ve started intensive research into the new computer – it looks like it is the first project that will get completed. I’ve tenatively decided to stay away from the 64 bit offerings until the market there stabilizes and prices come down. So I’m looking at a Barton Core Athlon XP 3200+ and a MoBo with an Nvidia Nforce2 Ultra 400 or Via KT880 chipset, dual channel PC 3200 DDR DIMMS (probally 2x512Mb), a nice looking case and a sturdy power fupply. I’m probally going to throw in an ATA controller as well so I don’t have to pick and choose among my hard drives, dvd roms, cd burners, etc.

I need to get to sleep earlier if I am to be productive at work. Its a good job. They seem to like the work I’ve been doing so far. Tomorrow I’m leaving early to do more work on Tim’s robot, then its off to a Beth’s birthday party. Thursday, Bobby, Creighton, and I are going computer buying, then, presumably, computer building. Maybe on Thursday I’ll rebuild Kleinoscope as well, get it working up to snuff again with updated drivers and all that good stuff, then see if I want to keep it or go back to Mobius. Both are fine computers, but neither will be able to compare to the new guy, which I will have to come up with a name for here. Suggestions are welcome.

I did surprising well considering no sleep. I plan on sleeping tonight, I’ve been lsightly out of it all day, and I slept a bit while Rich did the real work on the calculus homework. I need to be strong tomorrow to finish off my photography assignment and, perhaps, attend the republican caucauses.

Other than being nearly stoned all day, it was pretty uneventful. I stocked all sorts of canday at work, so stop by and see my handiwork sometime. Windows Movie Maker keeps crashing (due to DivX?) so I have to invest in a real solution. Perhaps Pinnacle? Larry seems to like it.