9/29 what a week

Been a really interesting week for me. So a quick recap:

1: I wont be doing any more opinion pieces on this blog. I have been offered and after a little discussion and thought, accepted a place to put my opinions. My next opinion piece which I am working on right now will be appearing at thenixedreport.com. I would like to thank the editor of that site for offering this position, especially considering the rocky start we got off to when I publicly called him on the carpet for one of the pieces he wrote.

It takes a great person to be able to take a person who has called you out and then turn around with no rancor at all and offer to give them a place to vent their views points. I am really looking forward to working with him and am grateful for the opportunity he has offered me. I may not be a journalist, but boy howdy do I have some opinions.

2: My old reliable laptop has finally started to give up the ghost. A Compaq Presario R3000, a AMD 3000+ (1600 Mhz) with 512 on board, 40 gig HD and a 32 meg video card. It has been my traveling companion for these last few years and has logged around 40,000 miles with me. The cooling fan died and I didn't notice. It is rather silent to start with and it was sitting next to my desktop which is anything but quiet.

Since I run Sabayon I tend to have to compile software that I use. This jams the CPU to 100% load and leaves it there, sometimes for a long stretch. It did in this case at a time when I started the job and walked away. Too late I checked on it's progress and noticed that the case was insanely hot. While I did manage to get it turned off in time, there was some noticeable damage done. If I lock the CPU down to around 800 Mhz it will function fine as long as I dont stress it too much, but it's days as a work horse are over.

Which brings me to my happy news. I had to get a new laptop. A sparkly HP dv6000t, which has for the first time since my P166 so many years ago, an Intel processor, dual core even. Hi Def wide screen, 2 Ghz, 2 Gig onboard, DVD R/W, and a 256 meg nVidia video card. All for less than $850.00 including shipping via 2nd day air. Too bad I am in bush Alaska and 2nd day air actually means sometime next week, with luck. So it is a race now, to see if the new laptop gets to me before I leave the state for 5 weeks. If not my wife has agreed to ship it to me in Kansas City, but being offline for more than a few days is pure hell for me. Just have to play it by ear I guess.

Did I mention that the thing is being shipped with Vista on it? So for the first time ever I get to try my hand at getting the Windows Tax Refund. That should be interesting and different, however I have my Sabayon install disc all set and ready for it the day I get it. More on that experiance later. Until then ...

Have Fun
~Az