E. Olah Virus

I tried to resist it as much as I could, even sleeping for 12 hours on friday night hoping to fight off it's unwavering hold. Too bad all that sleep was just setting me up for the all nighter that was to follow. My friend Norm was back in Houston for a couple days attending his 10 year HS reunion...(Has it been THAT long already???!!!!!). He had some spare time on saturday and much like old times, we decided to spend that time catching up. I brought the E. Olah virus along, thinking maybe we can just spend a little bit of time playing it before his reunion. Well....the virus was much more infectious that I thought and even with reunion time coming around, Norm only took a brief moment to get dressed...before coming back for more. It didn't end there, as after his reunion, he came over at 2 am in the morning, and Catnipped, he, and I tried a couple of more rounds. Catnipped couldn't handle it and had to sleep. This would have been a good time to stop, but we kept going until 7:30 am....then I woke up at 11:30 and kept going. Damn you Bungie and MS!!!!

Almost as good

While the winners of the tailgate contest got these nice shiny trophies, I got something infinitely more practical. The CIO was so impressed by our performance, that he decided to buy all team members a $15 Starbucks certificate... Seeing as how I don't drink coffee, I am not particularly sure what I will get. Even if I did drink it, I don't think $15 is enough to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks. What's it at now? Your left kidney for a coffee?

Tired? Sleepy? Grab yourself some PowerMax®

Today was the tailgating contest and Team PowerMax totally dominated.



Our food menu consisted of steak fajitas, chicken taquitos, and cream cheese tortilla rolls. The gimic was the meat and tortillas were all red in color to match our theme. Our secret weapon was PowerMax® brand drink. It was this awesome mysterious red drink which we claimed "Gives you energy for the whole day." We used plastic shot glasses with the selling slogan being "Here, Give it a Shot!" Some common questions asked when approached to try out PowerMax®.

Q: What is this stuff?
A: It's PowerMax®

Q: What is in it?
A: Power to the Max

Q: No really, what's in it?
A: Some Brazillian stuff.

At this point, usually they get curious and take a drink. I was manning the PowerMax® station and noticed several people sneaking multiple shots. Alas, we did not win. We lost the food contest to this team that had shrimp cocktail and a chocolate fountain. Who the heck brings a chocolate fountain to a TAILGATING party!!!?? On the plus side, they did have this really cute asian girl in a referee costume... We lost the theme contest to people dressed like pirates. Well, the costumes really weren't pirate costumes. They basically wore something more like linen with cutlass props. They didn't EVEN talk like pirates. But today being National Talk like a Pirate Day, I suppose it was destiny or something.

I think next year, our theme will be ninjas, and we will just eliminate all the other teams before the competition begins. We can claim it was merely "following our theme" Our food can consist of rice balls that poison people, leading to easy stealth kills.

Tech discussion?

Had a Tech discussion session today as a part of some requirement. I thought it was one of these serious talks where someone actually has a presentation about data security or some stuff like that. I was about to take my portfolio, since it was padded and could masquerade as a pillow in that darkened room. When I got there, there wasn't a discussion at all... Just a bunch of ice cream lying around for people to eat. So everyone just grabbed some ice cream, chatted about the Texans/life/kids/etc etc, and went back to their offices. Dang, why can't all meetings just turn out to be excuses for everyone to eat ice cream.

Team PowerMax

Next Wednesday, the company is having a Tailgating competition. While traditionally, this is an activity conducted outdoors involving numerous BBQ pits, the tailgating for this event will be done indoors. Our team was "voluntarily" signed up by the new team lead who believes this is an excellent teambuilding event. Apparently, he and some other team members agnonized for weeks to come up with a name and appropriate theme. One especially interesting one was team Hurricane. We planned to have giant fans and mist machines to simulate a small hurricane at our booth. Someone also suggested we all dress up like Katrina refugees....Luckily, that idea fell through in favor of a more politically correct, yet equally as "interesting" concept. Our new team name?? Team PowerMax. I should have suggest Team: Solarixx or something...Did I mention that our official decal is going to be this tachometer displaying the needle in the red section with a motto : To The Max!!!

Our theme color is Red because it's totally to the max. I mockingly suggested I should bring in some pig's blood with tofu since it's also red, but they took me seriously!! After convincing them that I actually had no clue how to make it, I was given the task of buying enough red tortillas to feed 300 people. Totally to the max.

Upgrading

While I wish I could have just awakened my old computer to make it more powerful, the prospect of its wanting to eat human guts outweighed the benefits. So, I got a new computer. Most of you already know, but for those who don't, here are the specs:

CPU:Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz: Pretty good CPU, not the top of the line, but it's pretty close.

Motherboard: EVGA 122-CK-NF67-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI: Originally, I had chosen an Intel board, but it does not support SLI (does support crossfire).

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800: My previous machine only had 1 gig of ram. It took forever to "verify client data' during BF2 matches, easily meaning the difference between successfully taking airfield and being farmed by J-10s. This deal was too good to pass up, 2 gigs of ram for $71.00 ($40 mail in rebate)!!

Video Cards: 2x MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC GeForce 8600GTS 256MB: This is probably going overboard, but I just wanted to try out SLI. Ever since I heard about it, I was curious as to how much better it was over 1 card. Time to find out!

Hard Drive: SAMSUNG SpinPoint 400GB 7200RPM SATA: 400 gigs should be more than enough for whatever I need.

Case: Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA Black Aluminum ATX: I originally had chosen a Lian-Li case but Lemon had some doubts as to if there was enough room in it to fit 2 video cards so I upgraded. I really like this case, it comes with screwless drive rails, and backplates. Almost every part detaches for ease of installation. On nitpick is that the motherboard tray doesn't come out but it didn't make the installation any tougher.

Power Supply: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W PS: With SLI, I was pretty sure I needed something greater than 500. This one wasn't as expensive as the other power supplies, but it received very favorable reviews.

Monitors: 2x ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q20WB Black 20" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD: While I may have had a semi-legitimate reason for SLI, these 2 monitors were just completely frivolous. I really have no excuse as to why I got 2, other than the fact that I like 2 monitors.

Other random stuff: Generic Floppy, Black NEC DVDR

The total price tag including shipping came out to be just a bit under $1,700. Assuming I get all my mail in rebates ($200), the total price is: $1,500. I probably could have gotten some items cheaper if I shopped around a bit more, but I think it's not too bad. My hope is that this computer will last another 4 years or so like my last one.

Wanna buy a JSF?

Fire Sale of USMC goods!! Get your JSF today!

The only truly effective weapon against Chopperwhores

SRAW? Stinger? IGLA? These are merely distracts for the dedicated BF2 chopperwhore. How can these fiendish beings be stopped? Is there no hope for the ground-pounders? Our wishes have come true!!

Only you can prevent maximo fires

To the smart aleck who designed Maximo and made the field sizes non-editable without some use of an expensive tool. I hope you spend an eternity in hell trying to resize a stupid window from 8 to 15 characters!!!