Work

On Monday I had my first day off in 3 weeks thanks to Wilma. Since the managers @ Typhoon Lagoon didn't expect a huge crowd I got yesterday and today off as well. Having 3 days off in a row makes me realize exactly how much I truely hate working @ Disney World. Next week I start my new job working @ the Pecos Bill restaurant in Magic Kingdom and I'm looking forward to that almost as much as I looked forward to getting my wisdom teeth taken out.
Yesterday I drove down to Miami with Salinda to pick up Briana from her school since they don't have any power or water down there until further notice. I didn't plan on really going anywhere yesterday much less driving 600 miles; I just wanted to get Garrett's Mini up and running so I would have a cool car to take to work everyday and not have to wait for the stupid bus. I now have all of the parts ordered and they should be arriving sometime early next week. I also found out that it's pretty much a Frankencar. The chassis is supposedly from a early 60s Morris Mini, the body is supposedly a mid-70s Cooper, and it supposedly has a 1275cc engine from a late 60s Cooper. And once the new starter system is installed it will be mine until Garrett takes it back; probably when he gets back from his next Iraq tour.

WarCrafT...Rest in Pieces 24/10/2005

Today marks the end of an impressive piece of machinery; my computer, WarCrafT. The Windows files had been corrupted as my hard drive started the slow process of failing sector by sector. A recovery install failed before completion, leaving the drive completely unbootable. The recovery console died in this attempt meaning I can’t do another install without destroying my profile and deleting all of my files on that drive. My makeshift chipset cooler also has died and I don’t have parts laying around here to fix it like I do at home. (I'll pull the files off the disk once I get the new rig up and running because I currently don't have a platform on which to do so.) So my computer sits, waiting for a total rebuild with all new components. Out of the ashes of WarCrafT shall arise a new rig, one more powerful than before. And this rig shall be christened, Tartarus, because it sounds cool and reminds me of Disney World. I’m still looking for more suiting names if you have any suggestions, preferably from Greek or Welsh mythologies; my current leanings are also toward Aries, Titan, Arawn, or possibly Dyrnwyn.

Speaking of Disney World…the hurricane was rather uneventful last night. We had some strong winds and heavy rain, but that was about it. Power didn’t go out, the drains didn’t overflow in the parkinglot, and no trees blew down in our area. I did get the day off work and that was the best part of the whole hurricane. The seal did come loose on the window right above my bed so I woke up soaking wet around 0700 EST from the dripping water overhead. I cleaned most of it up and put a contained to catch the water and went to go sleep on the couch for the next 4 hours. Then my roommates and I went to the Florida mall for lunch. The closest I can get to good teriyaki in this whole frakkin’ state is Burbon Chicken fron Asian Cusine at the mall. It isn’t bad, but its definitely not upto Miyakko’s (no clue on the spelling so if someone can provide the correct spelling that would be nice) standards, but it quenched my teriyaki craving that I’ve had for the last 2+ months since I left home. I'm currently at Salinda's house and will spend tomorrow searching for a solenoid for a 1962 Astin Mini type-S so that I don't have to walk home from work as often. And with that I head to bed since I got rudely awoken this morning by Wilma pounding on my bedroom window.

Finally...an Update

I didn't start my new job today as I was originally told; that date has been pushed back 2 weeks to 6 November. Tomorrow the waterpark will be closed because we're supposed to get hurricaned and they don't think people other than I would actually want to go to a waterpark that day. My computer has been delayed by the post office so it is not up and running at the moment as I had planned. Hopefully the stuff will arrive on Tuesday so I can start working. I made a midnight run to the store to buy Batman Begins and was able to get it a little early, but decided to hold out for the Deluxe edition instead. I guess that's a good update for the moment, I'll have more after the storm hits.

Need new computer

That's the only real thing that I'm working on at the moment. My computer has issues and I want to get something faster as mine is completely maxed out and the components are starting to show their age. My Barton has spent at least 95% of its life overclocked and most of that time running Seti@Home or some similar distributed computing program. I am now getting weird fatal errors on a regular basis that are hardware related; I reclocked my CPU to a much lower speed and most of them have gone away but they still happen. A windows reinstall didn't help much either. So I am building a new machine this week.

Here are the components that will be in it:
DFI LANparty UT SLI-DR mobo
$135.50 on ebay
I like the DFI's performance and the tons of extra features that it has, and it was a really good price with tons of accessories
AMD Venice 3000+ CPU
Price negligible
I've had one for months hoping to build a system and finally have a good excuse now.
ATI Radeon X600 Pro Video Card
$75 on ebay
I like ATI stuff, it interfaces with my HD card, I needed a PCI-express card, wanted at least 256MB of RAM, and the price was right
Maxtor 200GB HD (ATA133 with 16MB cache)
Pulling it from my Barton system, its performance isn't bad and it's available
Generic 1GB RAM (2x512)
Pulled from my old system, stressed tested it in another machine to make sure it's good, overclocks well
ATI HD Wonder card
Isn't going to be available for long as it does its job too well and studios are suing to make it extinct
LiteOn 12x DVD/RW drive
Pulled from Barton, works well

Out of pocket this transitional system is fairly cheap and should perform well. The first components to be upgraded will be the RAM, followed by the harddrive, then the Vid card. That should hold me over until I need dual layer DVD burning capabilities or a dual core CPU. It will be running WinXP Pro w/i SP2 and Office2003 Pro.

I'll have Florida updates up within the week but I've been kinda busy lately and start my new job on Sunday.