xmas etc

Well, i got my results back for uni.

The ECTE182 exam was harder than expected. But did okay.
ECTE192: 87% HD
The STAT131 exam was easier than expected. Was quite happy.
STAT131: 89% HD

Woowoo!

Ahh, we journeyed off to the 'near goulbourn' tree farm for a xmas tree. It didnt look quite so big out in the paddock...



but when we got it home... ack. Wouldnt fit in front of window, and so we had to move it,m but it blocks the tv! lol. I lean the ironing board up against the tree when we wanna watch tv and that pushes some of the branches out of the way. hehe



Next year i think we'll have to pick a smaller tree, tho for our first xmas in the house, i think it good that we have an enourmo tree... hehe




Ah andd here's an obligatory mikey shot, we forgot a hat for him when getting the tree, and it ws quite warm and sunny, so my shirt doubled as baby hat:


So anyway, we also have lights on the house. And being as we have that great view, it means our lit up house can be seen from vast distances all around, heheh

We also had Livy's 8th Birtday, and Mikeys first and Kristinas 30th. Ahh busy time of year.
Livy had her Xmas concert. Heaps good. There is a dance where the whole troop splits off to either side of the stage and she's left in the middle to dance forward to front center of stage and then does a sidemount and then drops into the splits. Heaps cool. Total star, hehe

Mikey is a Strongbad fan. Well sorta. I sometimes sing the strongbad techno song to him.
Dum Dum Dum, duda da dum duda da dum.
Dum Dum Dum, duda da dum duda da dum.
Doo Doo dee doo doo Doo Doo dee doo doo
Dum Dum Dum, duda da dum duda da dum.

When i stop he goes 'dum dum dum' and bounces up and down. hehehe

And you ask him "mikey how old are you?" and he holds up 1 finger and says 'Waaauuuun!'
Not quite walking, but has started letting go of things while standing. And still crawls like a rocket.

Spent so much time the last two week working in a map for the BF2 mod POE2. I had started a map months ago just for fun for the mod. Then they announced a mapping contest. So decided to finish mine. Numerous late nights later i got it submittable. Tho i dont like my chances of winning. -map stuff- But a great learning experience.

Saw Borat. Heaps funny!

Work is busy as hell! Vista Exploded! buahhh

bwah, months since last update

Okay, so mikey is turning 1 soon! weee

Exams coming up, STAT131 and ECTE182. Hate STAT131, statistics. bah. So far, running at, i think around 85% or so marks for the first 50% that's been done so far. So if i get 85% in the exam (worth 50%) i could manage a HD for this subject. Which would be nice, hoever i'll just be happy to put it behind me. Im not too confident tho, cos the last assignment i got like 76% and one of the lab tests i got 6/10 so im sure i wont manage the 85% in the final exam to keep my marks in HD territory. Fortunately i got 95% for my first assignment and the 6/10 test wont be counted for marks cos they take the top 3 scores of the 6 lab tests and disregard the rest, meaning that the 10/10, 9/10 and 8/10 get counted and the 2 7/10 and the 6/10 get ditched... but what worries me is that material will be in the final exam. Anyway, like i said, be glad to just put the subject behind me so a pass is enough, a HD or D is just gravy.

ECTE182 was so far a breeze. easy material, light workload. Tutorial class that runs for 15-20mins. No probs, again running at over 85% currently (not sure how far) the only stuff up was the final lecture quiz where i got 11/15 cos i forgot it was on and had skipped a previous lecture where most the material was covered. ooops. Most the answers there were educated guesses. Tho i saw the marks for my (tutorial) class. and the only score higher than mine was 12/15 the rest were like 6/10, 5/10 etc etc. Man.

So exams next week. The ECTE exam is worth 60%, eep, so i hope i do alright. It's mostly multiple choice and i get the impression it is largely questions in the same vein as the tut q's and lecture quiz q's in which case it should be fine. Still, a HD is not assured, but i'll be dissapointed if i dont get one... Mind you the only other ECTE class i have done is my only non HD mark so far, a D for that, and i bombed that exam cos before the exam i was running at roughly 90%'s on most other tasks for the subject. I got complacent thinking i knew what i needed to know for that exam and then realised i'd studied some wrongish topics... well anyway. Hopefully this one wont be like that, that one was essay type answers tho, this one will be MC and short answer.

Soooooooo enuff of that crap.

I had a birthday! And i finally got me a portable MP3 player. No, not an ipod! An iriver clix. Even better!
Basically if i were to get an ipod it'd be an ipod nano, cos anything bigger is too much money for a glorified walkman!
So as far as things go, were i to get an ipod the market niche that caters to me would be the nano. Small so carrying it aint a chore, cheaper cos the big ipods cost too much, flash memory cos i dont want a HD based one for wear and tear reasons, and i dont need/want huge drive space cos no ipod is big enough yet to hold ALL my mp3's (i have a lot) and if it wont hold all of em i dont want one that will hold 'most' of them cos all i do is pine for those last few GB. So a small one, for select songs etc is better for me.
So an ipod nano is what i need, but wait. The iriver clix is the same space as the base nano (2gb), can view pictures, comparable size (ie tiny) BUT has a bigger and brighter lcd screen, can play flash files, ie games, can play video... VIDEO!!, has an FM tuner, voice recorder, and can read text files, plus purportedly has a better quality sound and better quality screen.
The only downside is i cannot be used with a mac cos it uses stupid bloody windows media player plays for sure garbage and thus needs WMP to connect and synch to and so can only be used as a flash drive for windows.
Using a mac at work means mac compatability would be nice.

BUT compared to the other features, most importantly the ability to watch video (you gotta go big in the ipods for that feature - something i have used many a time to kill time before lectures etc watching family guy and southpark etc.) the mac incompatability pales in comparison to the extra features of the clix. So bleh on ipod. The clix rox! Very bloody happy. And it just might be enough to get me that extra few % marks in stat131 cos ive been listening to mp3's of past lectures on it too, hehe.

overclockers clix review;
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=497580

Also for father day i scored a new phone!! wheee

http://www.nokia.com.au/nokia/0,,85753,00.html



finally have a camera phone. and it also plays music and can connect to internet and all of everything else. very feature packed. most happy. AAAND scored a 1Gb memory card for it for my birthday off the inlaws. who needs a thumbdrive? i can use my phone! (just need the right cable)

So now onto more important things, Mikey:

has started saying stuff and crawls like a hoon. And loves standing up, not walking yet, but loves to stand by climbing up on things or being held up by his hands. He dances little jigs.
The other night Kristina pointed at Livy and said 'whose that?' and he said "siss" which was petty much the first time he's said anything with an S sound. And says book, and dog and look and mum and dad and a bunch of other simple things.
And when he's annoyed he frowns and points at you and says "dohhhhhhhh"

And Livy is doing well, she was very chuffed cos she got 20/20 in a spellathon at school. Very proud of here effort, she spent a lot of time practicing and learning the words. But nowhere near as chuffed as she was when mikeys 'first word' was "sissy" hehehehe

In bad news, Nana is in hopsital with a sore back. And Kristinas grandmother died the other day, so tuesday we are off to Canberra for the day for a funeral.

New additions... puppy, and a kitchen for him to wreck!

Yes, we finally did it. We got a puppy.

We have always wanted a dog since we got our new house. "We have a yard, we can get a dog now?!?!" but have for obvious reasons postponed any such move.

Well, Friday night i took livy to the video shop to get a movie. Snow Dogs is what we ended up with.
That night Kristina had a dream. A dream that we had a dog. The next morning she decided to time had come. We would surprise livy with a trip to the pound after dancing to save a dog from doggie death row. Obviously we had talked in the past, and talked on way there to livy insofar as rules, etc and only if we find the right dog etc and so forth.

So anyway, we found the right dog. A little 11 week old dog that is most likely half german shepherd, half black labrador. Ive always wanted a bigger dog, but am a little aprehensive regarding having a big dog now that there are kids in the mix. So we intend to train the dog well.

But of course being the RSPCA ... seems they have to come out to do a yard inspection and make sure it's big enough, that they have an appropriate kennel, and the fences are high enough etc.
That would be Monday. This was Saturday. Our fences arent quite high enough (retaining walls/sloped property makes for high fences one side, but low on the other... while those low are hig for the neighbour, etc) Sooooo. Sunday. Buy Kennel, Buy star pickets, buy wire cutters, buy wire mesh... use pickets, and mesh etc to raise fence by half a metre or so...
Fun... indeed

Come monday, inspection and all is well. Expected to pick up puppy wednesday (today) but they alredy sent him for the snippity snip desexing, so now, puppy is ready to get tuesday. Long lunch, early home to beat livy home from school for surprise of puppy a day early.

Awwwww

:-)

So, pictures.







Aaaand, the last few weeks were kinda chaotic. We had our kitchen redone. Fridge and microwave and dining table in the living room. hehhe. Now we have new cupboards etc. Two weekends ago, had to paint. I hate paining rooms. Done now tho.
Still need to get our flooring sorted out, new lino, or floating floors, or just for now relay the OLD lino? (tho since we have walls removed, the old lino has gaps where the old walls were...
But after rest of kitchen stuff and now all this puppy stuff, broke broke broke. So who knows. Maybe we'll have to use the old lino.

WOOWOO!

WOOWOO!
Got a HD for CSCI124! (C++ programming subject)
Didn't think i'd manage it for that one, thought if lucky i'd get a Distinctions, but just made it to the HD.
Soon i start STAT131 not looking forward to that.

In other news. Livy finally got thru her solo modern dance without forgetting it. 2 previous times she danced it (sutherland eisteddfod and a showcase) she forgot the dance partway thru and add libbed it instead.
Yesterday, Wollongong Eisteddfod. She got thru it without forgetting and got a "highly commended" for it.
Also did her solo jazz dance for the first time (to 'uptown girl') and got a highly commended for that too, tho i felt it was rather good and deserved a place even. (full credit to those who got places, but not sure if gender encouragement may have played a role - ie the two boys, while good enough, didnt quite seem to have deserved to win) - but anyway, matters not at all cos the main thing was she got thru it and did well!!!
:-)

And pete and nerida are having a boy! A little mate for mikey.

And i need to design a cubby house to build in the backyard when we put in a retaining wall and flatten the top part of the yard. Mmm buildy stuff.

Saw Xmen III. good stuff.

Thanks to pizza hut, pete and koren have BF2, alas neither of their computers will run it. Pete has just gone out and bought a new 7900GTX video card, the bastard, and an Asus A8N Premium, AMD 3700+ and 2 Gb Ram to run it. Got it all home and realised he didnt have a good enough power supply for it all (340w and 20pin not 24) so a delay there, but i think he got it all sorted yesterday.

Koren is pricing parts for a new computer and Frog also got a new AGP video card - shame he's not able to build a new one and go PCI express but at least he's able to get some later stuff running now - tho now he's having monitor issues.

Me and the Fam drove to Berrima for the hell of it on Sunday. Nice.
Very Very Enjoyable.
Need to do stuff like this more often.
Tho next time, while yummy, refrain from blowing the budget in the lolly shop. Tho we DID get peanut butter M&M's, and Reeses Peanut butter cups, which was quite the hit with Kristina.
:-)

Academic super genuis!

hehe

anyway - I've still gotta post some pics etc from the lamb roasting day, erm - i mean Mikey's Christening/Housewarming party.

but first i thought i'd comment on my studies.

i just submitted a c++ assignment wherein the progam doesnt work/do what it is meant to. Most displeasing as this is the first such that i have submited without being happy with what i have submitted.

has to do with linked lists and hash tables. alas my collisions overwrite the records and i just ran out of time to fix it. so reading 250 records with 190 collisions means i end up with 60 records... :-(

not happy.

happy in other ways tho... the assignment accounts or 5.25 marks of the entire subjects and thus far ive gotten close to full marks for every other assignment/excercise for the subject and distinction level marks for the tests so far... so im not toooo stressed.

tho i doubt i'll get a High Distinction for this subject. Hopefully i'll manage a Distinction tho... with luck and work.

just to clarify im doing a Bachelor of Internet Science and Technology (Internet Applications) (link).
And so far, not including the subject im doing now have done 4 subjects.
(ie 4 subjects per year as studying parttime, 2 per semester. Except this semester im only dong the 1 subject. New baby, new house... subject with high fail rate. and 6 credit pts advanced standing... means 1 subject this semester and back to two next semester. Thus finishing all my needed 1st year subjects this year.)

Anyway, so far ive done:

2005 Autmn --> ECTE195 (Design & Management) - Distinction
2005 Autmn --> CSCI103 (Algorithms and Problem Solving) - High Distinction
2005 Spring --> CSCI114 (Procedural Programming) - High Distinction
2005 Spring --> CSCI102 (Systems) - High Distinction

currently im doing CSCI124 (Applied Programming)
the subject divided in 4 modules. mod1 = 84.5% mod2 87.8% mod 3... i have gotten 15/15 for exercise. But have this bodgy assignment to worry about now. :-( and then the module test. the 4 modules add up to 60% of total mark. Then final exam. I do worse in the module tests than the assignments/exercises normally. Hopefully i can manage a HD (need 85% plus for whole subject) but i think i'll need to hope for a Distinction if im lucky.

Next semester im doing
ECTE182 (Internet Technology 1) .. no worries. should be okay. "this is the www, this is packetswitching etc etc"
and
STAT131 (Understanding Variation and Uncertainty) ... statistics. *breaks out in a cold sweat* Nooooo! I once made the webpage for this subject. As i made it (and made little graphics for all those annoying little forumla symbols) i said to myself. 'i pity the poor fools who have to do this subject... im glad i do Arts* and never will have the misfortune to do this subject....'
lol

Anyway...

Point being the hard work on some ofthose HD subjects has paid off.
Work is now paying for nearly half my hecs for 5 years... essentially a special study allowance given to a couple Uni employees that i had to apply for... which nets me $1000 per year for 5 years to help pay for the studies as i see fit. Hecs working out at this stage to about $2500+ per year so that helps muchly.

ANNNND

I scored some awards/prizes! wheee!

SITACS Advisory Committee Prize
ELIGIBILITY :The prize shall be open annually to candidates who are enrolled in either the Bachelor of Information and Communication Technology degree or the Bachelor of Computer Science degree and enrolled in CSCI102 Systems. The prize shall be made to the candidate with the highest mark in CSCI102 Systems
VALUE OF PRIZE : Varies annually, but no less than $250 – shared if two or more equal candidates

The Pearson Education Australia Prize
(formerly known as Addison-Wesley Prize) for First Year Bachelor of Computer Science Students
ELIGIBILITY :The prize will be awarded to the candidate with the best average performance in three 100 level CSCI subjects offered by SITACS.
VALUE OF PRIZE : The value of the award will be text books to the value of $150– shared if two or more equal candidates.

This second one is shared... so only $75 for me.
:-(

hehe, when i told my mum she sorta mulled it over and said... "I thought you were going to say a couple thousand dollars" *sigh* It'd be nice... but lol.



* Ive done about half a Bachelor of Arts degree (History & Politics), but gave up on that.

oooh im a genuis... i mean genius.

Christening etc

Had Mikey's Christening and our house warming this past weekend... tired...
had spit lamb. mmmm

More info to come soon.

dyslexic

Goodness gracious me.

I have just reread my prior post and I am sitting here wondering where the dyslexic freak that wrote it has gotten to.

Oh, alas! He is right here, for he, is me!

I suppose that's what I get for writing such a blob of text in such a rapid manner.

Train of thought stuff, train of thought.

I haven't the time for punctuation and capitalisation dammit!
Not to mention the wasteful follies of grammar!

That stuff is for people with nothing better to do than spend all afternoon proofreading!
I say!
Exclamation!
!
!!

So anyway, I built a new computer... :-)

My old computer was starting to give me trouble, it had been giving me periodical trouble for some time, it's getting on a bit in age and since I let dust buildup a summer or two ago the cpu kept over heating and I think I did some damage...
Was all okay again once I got in there and de-dusted, but then when living at the inlaws the power here got shorted and nearly burnt the house down and my PC wasn't quite the same since. Anyway, long story short I think the RAM was a little flakey, the CPU a little fried, the video card dodgy, and the motherboard a bit loopy (including the CMOS battery dead etc, I had to reset bios anytime it was unplugged from mains and then spent forever tryingto get the VGA signal to be recognised etc and then using the rear USB or PCI card firewire would make the comp freeze, a problem for my external HD etc etc)
All in all, too much heat that past summer, a cheap (and possibly overloaded) power supply, and the power probs at the inlaws meant it just wasn't reliable... (eventually I had to put some old cheap ram in there to get it to POST)

So sure I mighta been able to do some heavy surgery and get it fixed but I figured best go for a new one.

So a few weekends ago I did so... mmmmm

I did alot of research online, being that my last computer I built in october 2002, I had some catching up to do.

I almost went for a storebought but after breaking it all down, I think I get more bang for my buck doing it myself.

So anyway, from a couple local computer fairs I bought me:

AMD Athlon X2 4200+ (Dual Core)
Asus A8N SLI Premium Motherboard
Leadtek 7800GT Video Card
LG DVD-ROM
LG DVD-RW Dual Layer
Leadtek TV Tuner Card (analog channels only)
Floppy Drive
Rear case fan for exhaust
Keyboard & Mouse (i was so close to getting a logitech G15 keyboard... but restrained myself)

as far as HDDs and RAM and the case etc there was nothing at the faires that i wanted/suited my needs so I ordered from an online store:
(I ordered from macotechnology, awesome customer service, rapid responses to questions/emails and the stuff arrived safe, sound, well packed and within a day of payment)

2 GB Corsair TWINX2048 3200C2 DDR RAM
2x 250GB WD2500KS HDD's in RAID 0
Coolermaster 550W RealPower PSU
Coolermaster mid Tower Centurion 532
Viewsonic G90F 19" CRT Monitor

and for an OS, last year my in laws got me a legit copy of WinXP for my birthday so:
Windows XP Professional SP2 $0
($0, the perfect price for microsoft products... hehe)

So anyway, having had certain portions of this beast sitting around for more than a week I eventually finished painting mikeys cot (I had promised to get that finished before building the machine) I had the weekend to spare on building the "Feen Machine IV"

Pete came round, and brought with him some nice software disks and we went to work on the kitchen table:



Now the case was interesting in that it is supposedly one of these "tool-less" cases. Now really, I didn't care much one way or the other for tool-lessness and of course it wasn't entirely tool-less, we still needed to screw in the motherboard etc etc... but that's sort of a given.
I got it cos it looked okay, had decent reviews, wasn't too flashy/gimmicky and the price was quite cheap for what seems to really be a fairly quality case.

The drive bays have these plastic clips that were interesting, and certainly it's nice to not have to screw them in.
The pci card things have little plastic clips too, but you can also still screw in which is good cos with that heavy video card that little plastic clip just didn't inspire confidence in the retention stakes. The tuner card tho, no worries.
So anyway, the little metal shields for the drive bays were a pain to snap off, took a lot of work ... but all okay, and I popped in the DVD burner and floppy drive. (I hadn't bought the DVD rom yet).
And I put in the power supply.

So by now Pete shows up, nicely in time for the real work...

so now, I plopped in the CPU to the Motherboard, and nervously affixed the cooler fan. Man those things are just too heavy and bulky and clippery to feel good about jamming it onto your CPU and MoBo... but anyway it all went fine.

Then popped the RAM in... and then we screwed in the motherboard to the case. So far so good.



mmm purdy

Then we plugged in the cables, or rather Pete started rushing ahead plugging in cables... then I started pulling them back out muttering "cable management, must be neat" and berating him for running that one over that one and that one under that one while I raid the supply of cable ties that Maggie left behind when they moved to the US...

Plug in the video card, the HDD's and all that jazz. By this stage I didn't actually have the extra fan, the extra DVD ROM drive, new keyboard/mouse, or the Tuner card.

Anyway, fired it up and ... it works! Wheeee

BIOS!

Now Pete has had more experience with bios stuff than me and I deferred to him for the most part, but I had also done a bunch of reading up and kept scaring the pants off him when I started fiddling with voltages and CAS latency and all this stuff but I held off making any real changes.... for now. Lets get it going at defaults then tweak later.

Now, you'll notice I have a floppy drive in there. Korens first reaction upon meeting my new computer was "What'd you bother with a floppy for?" etc etc... well. I bought two identical harddrives. I wanted to see if I could RAID0 them. Supposedly gives better performance and all that, while I'm not convinced of that fact, and wasn't too fussed whether they were RAIDed or not, I at least wanted to go thru the process of trying to set it up as a learning experience.

It ended up being only one of two real problems in the entire build process.

Stupid Floppys!! I have always hated them and always will.
Working as a CES case manager and then as an IT trainer person back in the day you have no idea how much I came to loathe Floppy drives... or at least loathe the concept of people who carry around a floppy with, say for instance, their only copy of their resume/application letter/life work and memoirs, then put it in a drive, open the file from A drive. Work on it from A drive, then save it to A drive, then take the floppy, pop it in their pocket and then move on. And Surprise surprise when the day comes that they pop that "trusty" floppy in a machine to work on their important file and it Doesnt Work!! - naturally it's their Only Copy!

Well, anyway, floppies suck. And the ONLY way to install RAID drivers during the windows install process is using a floppy!
(well, you can 'slipstream' windows XP... but for various reasons that wasn't an option for me)

Where does one get these drivers? Off the CD that comes with the motherboard.
Can one install the drivers off the CD. No, you need to get them from the CD to the floppy prior to making you computer...
Now sure it's less of an issue if you are installing windows on a HDDrive THEN setting RAID drives later. But I only had the two drives, wanted them as RAID, THEN install windows... so ...

old computer. insert MB drivers disk.
"This application does not recognise any hardware on this computer that is relevant to this CD" (or whatever the hell it was) ... so the autostart application on the CD chooses to NOT display Any options in it's menu other than... exit.
Fun... so I guess I can explore the CD and find the thing I want. Rummaging thru various folders I find what looks like a little app to make the driver disk.
So I dig out the ONE floppy disk I bought in advance for this purpose. and run this little prog which says insert disk, yadda yadda then appears to work but gives no feedback to that effect other than just stopping what it was doing and going back to the "create disk" window.

Sooo... lets get to the install windows part... smash f6 a million times at the right time to make sure it knows I wanna install 3rd party drivers etc....
put in floppy.

okay worries,

another step or two... insert that floppy again.

BahBUhhm

"widows does not recognise... blah blah... damaged... yah whatever..."


Okay, lets try again. nup.
Lets pop this disk back in the other machine and have a look.

Bzzzt chugga chugga chugga... A drive does nothing. You know all those annoying clunky floppy drive sounds you get when it's being an ass.

To be honest I think I may have used the floppy drive in my old computer about once of twice in it's 3 year or so history.
I don't think it ever really worked right...
It sure aint working right now...

hmmm

Pete, got yer laptop? "damn I took it out of my car Just before coming over"
Hmmm
Wait Kristina has a laptop.

Do go find this old laptop of hers which currently has the sole purpose of letting Livy play an old arcade simpsons and pac land thru Mame and Amiga Lemmings thru an emulator on those occasions where she is too bored for a video and I wont let her play sims2 on my computer cos I'm using it for something important (like playing sims 2 myself... or BF2 or UO, or maybe, just maybe doing a uni assignment)

Anyway, lets put this disk in there. Corrupted wont even let us format. Throw it away.
Hmmm, I only have one floppy.
Wait, I know where there are some, rummage in old boxes and find some old floppies that Kristina had uni work teaching stuff on. Okay, format, corrupt, what's on this disk, cant read that, this one works, install the drivers. Oh wait, first we need that motherboard CD.
"this application cannot run on this operating system"
Kristinas laptop is running Windows ME ... and the motherboard disks little program wont even run on this. doh. okay, rummage thru those folders again.
Okay make driver disk... failed corrupt. Okay all these floppies are crap.
Pete rings Frog who was also coming around today but hadn't shown up yet. "Hey frog, got any floppies? Bring em around, etc. You got a floppy drive? Well hey, bring your whole computer...."

Anyway - as we are waiting for frog to rock up I find another floppy laying around in a drawer. lets try this one.
Viola it works! It actually works, a working floppy disk!
raid gets installed no worries.

we partition away, Pete gets annoyed at me for divvying up my 500Gb into 4 partitions.
I say , I like to organise my things...
he's like "folders man folders! that's all you need to be organised"
Yeah I know that realistically the partitions don't do much, but I prefer it that way.
Personal preference.
1 small partition for Windows XP and all the programs etc.
1 bigger partition for worky stuff, like uni work, work, important things.
1 bigger yet partition for games, temp files, swap files, and video capture/dvd ripping.
and then a huge 250gb partition for junk, downloads, pictures, movies, overflow etc.
It's just the way I like it!
Especially when it comes to defragging and backups (I know I dont wanna be defragging 500Gb everytime I wanna defrag my c drive).

Anyway, frog rocks up carrying his huge bloody monster tower as windows gets installed and we get to tell him, sorry, we dont need it.

poor frog.

anyway, we install windows, new drivers, macafee, sygate firewall, updates, etc & so forth and install the net stuff.

Seems the router Pete got of ebay for me was the wrong one so we need to use just my old adsl modem, but that's okay (if only we'd figured it out tho before i'd gone down to the garage to find my big ethernet cable... anyway)

and we are good to go! except for one thing.. No sound.

*sigh*

at that stage I think I know what the problem is... and decide to hold over til tomorrow to fix it

anyway, next day I'm off to the computer faire for a new keyboard (almost got the logitech g15... but instead i'll use that money for mikeys cot mattress), new mouse (just a generic microsoft 3 button optical, it's what I already had and I'm happy enough with it), tv/fm tuner card (got analog only since when I bought it I was thinking I WOULD get the G15 and thus get a cheaper tuner card -- sure they say they'll switch to digital only in a few years, but hey, I should have a new comp by then and I'm sure they really wont by then), and a DVD ROM drive. I really hadn't wanted an LG as I found the LG burner was the loudest component of my new computer, but it was the only decently priced thing I could find with a black face and I wasn't gunna wreck my new stylish machine by putting an ugly beige drive in the front of it...)
oh and I got a fan for the back of the comp, also a blue led coolermaster matching the front one perfectly, hehe

mmm blue glowy glow glow shabadoo....

my small concession to pimping up my pc, hehe

anyway, so I get home from computer faire, and pull apart the machine.
install new drive, tuner card, fan and I'm good to go, tempted to pull out the floppy drive and install the little power reader that came with the power supply but figure it looks like it could be a little tacky and i'll wait til some long term running without fail happens before I pull out that floppy drive.

So, now, to fix the sound.

from the front of the case for the front panel audio usb etc the audio thing we plugged in may have been the wrong one, there was a HD and some ACwhatever it was... basically the cord for the audio had two plugs. To plug it in we pulled off some little blue jumpers from the onboard motherboard audio plugs. Now alas I cant remember which one we plugged in. The ACwhatever it is is the right one, I know that. But maybe Pete plugged in the other one or maybe they are mislabelled.
Anyway, at this stage I just want sound so I unplug the font panel audio and put the blue jumpers back.

Then I spend the next... forever wrangling cables and using those cable ties of maggies.
basically unplugged EVERYTHING and replugged it back in so that stuff was neat.
Never has a case innards looked so neat. Everything snug and running out of the way and tucked into empty drive bay areas etc. mmmm airflow.
sata cables are much nicer than pata/ide ribbon cables... tho there are still them for floppy and cd drive... but they tuck away nicely.

I shoulda taken a photo. anyway, shut up case and try it out.

Sound works! yay, and tuner card and everything else.

And the computer has been running as such since. I know I need to get back in there and try that font panel audio plug again. But I'm happy enough at the moment with the rear audio (justa hassle swapping rom speakers to headphones) so I'm happy to wait til next time I Need to get in there and muck around inside it.
Soon i'm gunna check it for dust and see if it needs a clean so i'll try the front audio then.

Battlefield 2 runs damn nice. 2 GB ram does wonders.
Civ4 now takes mere seconds to load and stuff. I fired up a saved game from my old comp. It was a big map and i'd end up with MINUTES of it doing nothing while it took my through to my next turn. Now, scant moments.
I can play Civ4 while ripping DVD's even, heh
UO, mmmm hi res screen on 19" monitor means I dont have to crowd my play area with spell icons etc, and it runs like a madman! huge black space.

I havent tried any video capture from external sources, nor hooked up my old monitor as a 2nd monitor, but tv capture is nice (despite using rabbit ears thus a poor connection... our house aerial is crap)

I installed quake 4... OMG!
candy...

photoshop ... I pulled up a large pic and rotated it 90 degrees. on my old computer... i'd have to sit there and wait for it to think about doing so. Not anymore. Instant rotation. Bwahah!

ahhhhhh.

needless to say, I'm happy.

Ive only had one crash.
I used itunes to burn an audio cd from a playlist, I went away and came back to see my machine booting up... the cd worked tho. and while I havent burnt another audio cd from itunes as I havent needed to yet, I havent had any other problems. running probe and various other things tell me my temps are nice and low... so yeah. all glowy blue goodness.

I have not taken a proper pic of the final completed machine... but you can sorta see it in the background here:



ahh civ4, hehe

and here's what it looks like sans drives etc:


I had meant to order a black monitor, but stuffed up and forgot to specify that, turns out the were outta black anyway. and besides my other monitor is beige so who cares...
and I'm not yet convinced re lcds' and least not considering how much you'd pay for a 19" with a low enough latency for gaming and video etc...