Really though, I can't tell you how many times I sat down to post something here and immediately felt like I was getting bonked in the head with a big heavy thing. Of course, trying to post at 12:20AM is not probably the ideal time to put any thoughts down.
The protracted battle to fix the house continues. The contractors have been here all week and working late. It's kind of odd trying to sit and watch a DVD with shirtless sweaty Polish men working all around you. But that's life these days. If you want to watch a DVD, you have to do amidst the symphomic clamor of drills, hammers and saws interspersed conversations in Polish that I'm sure go something like:
"Peter, this wall isn't level."
"No surprise there Michael. This place was
built by retards. The ceiling isn't level either."
"It looks like an interesting part of their movie. I will now turn this drill on."
With luck, the guys will finish up today and we'll be ready for the counter-top guy to install our Maui colored Corian countertop in a few weeks. Then a week after that, the tile guy is going to come back and finish up the backsplash.
At that point, I think we will take three deep breaths, gaze at the rennovations and enjoy them for about 10 seconds and then call Century 21. Atlanta seems to have an abundance of tech jobs and the housing costs are still -- relative to Westchester Cty, NY -- cheap. Who knows really where we will wind up, but I can't imagine staying there too much longer. Of course, if I could work from home two days a week, we could buy one of those McMansions in the Poconos that you see advertised all the time in the Daily News and still put money in the bank. The future is wide open.
Most of last weekend was spent in total frustration as I tried and tried and tried again to successfully install a brand new, kick-ass ATI X800 XL AGP card. After installing a new Antec TruePower 430 psu for the X800 to feed off of, I tried to install the new vid card. Tried. And Tried. And Tried.
To say the least the litany of removing the old ATI software, installing the card, installing the Catalyst Software and Drivers was repeated again and again. All I ever got was screen defects and XP freezes and my monitor going into power-save mode interspersed with the occasional blue screen of death. I tried to upgrade my BIOS, but for whatever reason, the damn thing just won't upgrade. The most frustrating part of all this, is that the damn card actually started to work all of a sudden and continued to work for about 2 hours. Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2 never looked so good or played so well. I was amazed at all the new details, espcially in BF2 where the rotor wash from a helo will bend and shake tree limbs and leaves. Even more amazing was the way the jets and helo's handled in singleplayer mode - smooth and fast. What a difference a new video card can make. I was sooo happy. I thought about all the nice new kill records I would post and how my BF2 stats would climb.
Then the card crashed again and never came back. Tell you what - I really wanted to do a John Lydon on my PC. I wanted to hack it to pieces and whiz on it and give it the finger. But, I managed to retain my self control and put my old 128MB ATI Radeon back in it works fine. But, BF2 won't load now. So now I need to reinstall that. Grrr.
Basically, I know the problem lies with my older mobo and its frozen BIOS. I just need a new motherboard and chipset and to reinstall XP. But then I need to get a mobo that fits my Gateway case, which is going to be problematic. So, I already have a new vid card, a new power supply and a 1GB worth of PC3200 RAM. Throw in a new case and a new 478 pin motherboard with a 3.6 processor and I'm on my way to building a new PC. I could add new drives as I go and eventually pop in a RAID controller and upgrade the RAM. Decisions Decisions.
On a different note....
The guitar playing is coming along pretty well but the licks and rythyms of Robert Johnson continue to elude me. So, for the most part I stick with a master the blues book and CD and another book and CD combo that covers scales over chords. That stuff I am starting to get. Like, I can see how the major scale breaks down into the blues, minor scales and pentatonic. I'm even getting fairly comfortable playing, say a primary form of a scale up the neck, and coming back down with the secondary form. Things are starting to click there. Plus the PODXT is just a blast to work with. I'm always one nob turn away from the clean bluesy tones of a Black Lux to crazy metal tones. Freedom baby.
In a few hours I'm flying with my cousin, Jody, to Newport News for a family reunion with our Virgina Beach folks, the Gradels and Autens. The only downer is that Clarisa is not going. She's staying here and is with her cousins and uncle who arrived here today. The original plan was for all of us to go see Wicked and tour around the city. Then this reunion came up and with it a scheduling conflict. We talked about it and I decided to go to VA. It should be a blast though. The last time I saw these people, I was 5. That's an awful lot of catching up.
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