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December 17, 2006

Bring out your dead!

So today I go to use my desktop computer. The machine typically stays on around the clock, as I never really see a need to turn the thing off unless I'm doing something drastic to the unit such as upgrading hardware or upgrading software. My monitor was in sleep mode, so I moved my mouse and waited for the password screen to come up.

And I waited...

And I waited some more...

Wait ... still waiting ... wait wait wait ...

At this point, I'm thinking that maybe the machine has frozen. I hit the power button to turn the machine off. It goes through its normal process of shutting down and comes back up. As the computer came back up, I still wasn't seeing a video signal on my monitor. I unplug my monitor and plug it back up ... still nothing. I change out my monitor cable, still no go.

At this point, I knew that the problem was going to be with my monitor or video card. I grabbed the laptop and hooked it up to the monitor ... sure enough the video came up on the screen. I was happy to see that my monitor was okay, mostly because I didn't feel like spending another $300 dollars on another unit. I also like my desktop monitor. It's very bright and vibrant and the colors look very good.

R.I.P ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - 2004-2006

My ATI card has served me well. I got it for free from a well known computer vendor a few years ago due to a mistake on their part. I had ordered a machine that took roughly three months to deliver. When it arrived, it had the wrong video card in it. When I called the company up, I expressed my frustration with the delay on the computer and the annoyance for it to arrive with the wrong video card. They said that they would send out the right card immediately, and for my trouble I could keep the card they mistakenly sent me.

I've used the heck out of this card. It has served me well for many years and through quite a few video games. It will be missed, if only for the fact that it was a great top of the line video card that was given to me for free.

My hopeful replacement? A PNY GeForce 7600GS video card.

~out...

Posted by ed at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

Three years old this month

I just realized today that my blog is officially three (3) years old this month. That's right ... around this time three years ago I was bored enough to start blogging about myself.

What's really interesting about having a blog around for this period of time, it gives me an insight into what I was thinking over the past few years. It shows me how much I've grown as a person and how much growing I still have yet to do.

Some observations:

1) I don't cuss on my blog as much as I used to.
I honestly think this is because I've stopped hanging around the people that used to upset me so much. I'm much more mellow now.

2) I don't make nearly as many entries as I used to.
Most of my entries lately come in spurts. I try to blog something at least once per week, but if you look back even at this month you can see how much I've failed at that attempt.

3) I don't talk about work as much as I used to.
Maybe because I'm paranoid...

4) I'm not the only person who's slowed down on their blogging.
I think that the "newness" of blogging has finally reached its peak. It's something that everyone has tried, either on their own personal page or on a MySpace page. It's yesterdays trend. Same thing goes with Podcasts.

5) No one reads my site.
This is actually a good thing. This site is really for my own purpose. I started it as a kind of experiment to reflect on my life over a period of time. It's also a good reminder about the things that I have done and things that I want to do.

Well, that's about it on this weeks entry. Tune in next week and we may have something posted ... but the odds are that probably won't happen. :)

~out...

Posted by ed at 10:55 AM | Comments (2)