Speccing some new hardware for a new project at work. Looking at systems with 80 cores and 4TB of RAM. Looking at maybe ten of them. It makes me feel funny in my pants.

So, my wife is starting to think about moving her laptop from Windows 7 to some flavor of Linux. The hard-core, get-your-fingers-dirty Gentoo geek in me wants to give her Sabayon. The part of me that knows Ubuntu is what all the cool kids are doing wants to give her Mint. Then there's a third part that keeps hinting at CentOS for super shiny management. The one, lone, plaintive cry of "Solaris" has been ascribed to too much laudanum, and quashed, just like the weird burbling noise and that sounded something like "bee ess dee".

EVERYONE! GET IN HERE NOW AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

Naming no names and assigning no blame, I merely ask, "What do I do now that my laptop has shown that it does not have the ability to fly, or stay on the boot of a car at 45mph?"

It is dinged up but still use-able (as I type on it now.) Dings are on left side, both corners, but bad enough to have an eighth inch vent in left corner, where the bottom is not so seamless any more. It now has that annoying rock a dining table with a short leg has when I type.

Do I (we) replace it with a brand new or refurbed laptop?

so. my newer machine has become hosed. of primary concern at the moment, is that the HDD seems faulty. i'm not convinced that's the root of the problem, though it may be. current plan is to yank it out tomorrow and cart it over to Intrex and see what they can do with it. and it seems likely to me that i'll wind up buying a replacement.

just puttin' that out there so people are aware of possible expectations. though i should still be able to play from thi---oo. well. maybe i can still play from this box. maybe i should set it patching tonight...

Hey all. Now, it has been mentioned before that, instead of just asking those in the know, I might do some good by looking up the information myself. There is merit to this claim. However, I have found that in certain instances relying on your own expertise and ability to winkle out the truth of the matter might not be the best thing to do.

OpenOffice.org Wont Print on Tuesdays:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161

The root cause of the bug is magic. No, literally "magic":

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/file/+bug/248619

I am so glad I didn't end up being the poor schmuck who had to figure *that* one out...

All right. I have a dinosaur computer lurking in my closet. I've been keeping it with the thought that someday, when I finally get a teaching job again, I can put it in my classroom for students to work on or something. A while back I decided to go ahead and get all the stuff off of it and put it on one of my newer machines. It runs Win 95, so I went online to find kludged together USB drive drivers for it, since apparently those weren't made for the '95 OS.

Alright, I need someone who knows more about electricity than myself regarding my computer. I just upgraded some components:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4 GB DDR2 RAM
2 SATA HDD's in RAID 0
Soundblaster PCI sound card
2 DVD Burners
2 EVGA NVidia Geforce 9800 GT superclocked edition in SLI
800 Watt PSU
about 10 USB devices total - 5 on a powered USB hub
22" Monitor.
All Plugged into an APC UPS.

okay, there's a list of release servers up, as well as a description of server types, so we should go ahead and pick where we're gonna be. unforunately, they went w/the same idea for "open pvp" as WoW did, so i'm rather disinterested in that type, though i could be persuaded to try one. (though w/the chicken debuff, i think it may be somewhat less ganky...) but i imagine we'll be taking up residence on a Core server. Red Eye Mountain is a Core North American server. figure that's gonna be us?

It's that time again!

Duane has haphazardly offered up his house for yet another lan party.

It'll be the weekend of August 22nd, and our two primary games will be Team Fortress 2 as our FPS and Company of Heroes as our RTS.