There you go. Still alive… or something like that.

List format update, because I like lists (and said so many times before):

I’ll make a new page on my ACL reconstruction later. I’ve documented my road to recovery.

I found a MDR-G72 street style headphones in my box of computer stuff. Looks like a BestBuy price label. Weird. I don’t buy Sony stuff, nor do I shop at BB. Hooked it up to my system and gave it a whirl. At first, I was appalled at the shittiness of the sound. Then I listen some more. I guess it is acceptable for a cheap (~40 bucks) set of portable phones. That and I am spoiled on my fullsized Sennheisers. They don’t produce a very deep sound stage: the sound is right next to your ear as opposed to immerse you in sound. Of course, you look a ton less dorky with these on than the fullsized cans I won’t even go into imaging and detail. I’ll just say it is lacking. I am still eyeing that CX500 for my portable music needs. I just need to get off my ass to buy one. Until I do, these are almost tolerable

Update:
I left the Sony playing trance all night loudly to break it in. Of course this is very subjective and people will say this is bullshit, but there is seem to be a change in the sound for the better. Ya it still doesn’t knock my socks off but it is there. The depth seem to increased compared to when it is out of the box. It sounds less muffled. The bass is still a bit overpowering, but the mid range and highs comes through a little better now. Theorhetically, break-in is supposed to loosen up the diaphram, so don’t ask me why highs comes through better. I double checked my ears on 2 other fullsize big dollar cans to make sure my ears didn’t go bad overnight. The break-in doesn’t make the Sony a good sounding a pair of phones, but it has made it more tolerable. This reminds me to pick up the Beyerdynamics DT880. I wanted it for a year… Just when I stop thinking about it… I could pick up something for my portable when I go get this No I don’t think there is too much of a difference in quality after you go over 200 bucks on headphones. It is mostly taste on what you like your phones to sound like. I do LOVE the DT880’s sound though.

I just got a HD4870 reference card after swearing off ATi for awhile. Ok seriously, I thought they would have fixed their shitty drivers by now. A big fat NOPE at that.

First off, come on it has been 2 weeks since the card been on the shelf and where is the official driver? Oh there are BETA and HOTFIX drivers Then how about drivers that takes up 60megs of memory? Ok CCC disabled and got my memory back. Oh, now I don’t have access to settings and monitoring. This is the most annoying part: everytime I close a fullscreen 3d game or go from fullscreen to windowed, it blinks the display like it is changing the resolution. Seriously annoying. nVidia doesn’t do this. I mean resolution wasn’t changed, 1920×1200 to 1920×1200 and it takes a 1-2 seconds to do whatever it is doing. Um… ya Come on, that is seriously annoying. It is always the little thing that grinds on your nerve. Yes the card is fast and a good card for the money, you just have to put up with alot of shittiness, as compared to just a bunch of crappiness from nVidia. Meh. Color me underwhelmed from all the annoyances that comes with every ATi. Free with every purchase, y0! Man, I miss the old ATi control panel. Wish they would bring them back. Who gives 2 shits about live preview of the settings?

I guess I’ll give it a score: 79%. Almost, but not quite there. Buy it if you don’t mind the crappy drivers from ATi. It is just good for the money. A Dodge neon was good for the money; it just isn’t very good in grander view of things. GTX280 and 9800GX2 are still much faster. At least I know nVidia don’t have this annoying blinking problem and the driver are less bloated (still bloated of course). *GTX280 is quite mediocre too, perhaps even more so than the HD. I am an equal opportunity hater.

PS: The review is negatively biased on purpose. If you want to read the good things, just go flip through any other HD48xx review. I mean, people are giving too much credit to this card. Sure it may be an unbelievably good card compared to what ATi was churning out for the last few generations, but it doesn’t make it a grand slam. Someone need to balance out all the ATi dick sucking.

Excuse me. Mass Effect. Thank you Securom for ruining another game. Game I won’t buy. DRM and shitty games are killing PC games, not pirates. Yes consoles games are more profitable now. Except how long will it continue to be profitable if games developers keep makes shitty games for the consoles too? Yes console gamers are usually lighter gamers than PC gamers, but even they would know shitty games when they see it. Don’t blame pirates. Blame shitty developers flooding the market with generic games.

and apparently too busy to pay for the website. GG TYVM Come again. At least it is back now

Quick summary:
Busy writing stuff
Busy coding stuff
Busy worrying about work stuff
Busy looking at car stuff. Daddy needs a new ride

I did have enough time to decide that macbook air isn’t for me. I may get an Asus U6Sg though. Magnesium chassis. MMMMM! I need to put away enough money to overhaul all my computers when Nehalem comes. That is why I didn’t want to waste the money on a MBA. It fits my needs almost perfectly, except for the non-changeable battery. Not a deal breaker but I could spend much less and get almost an equivalent computer. Just a little heavier, faster and less sessay (of course it won’t have those awesome Macbook keyboards).

Oh, GT200 is coming soon. I am wasting money on that.

Many people are missing the point of these new ultra mobile PCs like the eeePC and 2133 Mini-Note. They keep screaming that for 4-500 dollars, you can buy a much faster machine. Very true. That means these notebooks aren’t for you. These machines are for PORTABILITY. For the purpose of these UMPC, performance is not that important. Eventhough I may be one of those idiots who would pay 50% premium for a E85 over a E84 for the tiny bit of performance gain, I could see the uses for these low powered computers. They would be the perfect computer to take to class. The mini-note in particular. The larger keys will help taking notes easier. Except of course, nothing beats pen and paper for note taking. It just isn’t intuitive to do things on the computer that could be easily done on a notepad, such as drawing a quick graph. I personally log around with a 14″ notebook. Although I am big enough not to care about the extra 5 pounds on my shoulder, but it does take away desk space when I do want to take notes the traditional way.

Although the performance doesn’t matter that much, I do still somewhat care about it when I use it for other purposes. I do own more computers than most people. I mean, my NAS server is faster than most people’s desktop (C2D equipped ). I am still thinking about waiting for the updated version of the Mini-Note with Atom or Isaiah processor. Not only these will have a bit more oomph, they will be easier on the battery too. Though by the time those come out, I doubt I will need that much mobility. I am still tempted to buy the Mini-Note. Of course, I could just get a Macbook Air and call it a day

PS. How come people say the forward tilt from the extended battery for the 2133 is ergonomical? As an ex-Carpel Tunnel sufferer, I can’t agree It it puts the keyboard LESS ergonomically position. A negative tilt is eaiser on the wrist.

Yes. The intarweb became even more stupid. Luckily, it was just for 1 day. I guess it is back to mild retardation now.
All the stupid pranks and fake announcements were mostly dumb. I did like Youtube’s rick roll. Hilarious. Rick roll is funny. PERIOD

Oh, NVidia launched their 9800GTX on April first. The only joke was the product… Oh don’t get me wrong, I am still getting one. Though, it is still nothing more than an overclocked 8800GTS 512M

busy^999999. Stupid websites

AcroRD32info.exe I hate this thing. To disable it, just use Shell Extension Manager, and go down to .pdf to disable it. Bam. It no longer launches when you mouse over a pdf.

I mean, I love April fools as much as the next person. It is fun playing pranks on your buds. Except… websites doing it is extremely stupid. Watch for a huge outbreak of stupid pranks and fake news soon.

Looking at them for ~250-260 bucks right now. orly? Q66 has already dropped to 200 bucks in selected places, and not that hard to find for 220. Q66 is faster clock for clock, cheaper, use less power, cooler, AND overclocks higher. What are these Phenom chips for again? Don’t even start on the Q9450 rapage. Thank you, come again.

Definite BS in AMD’s press release in the tri-core processors.

When paired with the AMD 780 series chipset, AMD Phenom X3 processors can deliver significant enhancements in gaming and high-definition experiences for mainstream PC customers.

See here. Even a quad core can’t regularly beat the Intel’s E82. Let’s not even mention E84 and E85. Thank you for playing. Nice try AMD. Phenom are still nothing more than low end processors that you’re trying to pawn on the less knowledgeable public. Shame on you. Well, I do think it has decent bang for the buck, except that it’ll get raped overclocked vs overclocked. Tri-core. HAR. Wonder how many people will bite into the marketing that 3 core is better than Intel’s 2

I’ll give AMD that they have the best ONBOARD video… Except that that is like saying someone is smart for a retarded kid.

Phenom is a dud, next generation please.

PS, these may make nice office computers, but you can get X2 for much cheaper and notice not much difference in speed in your office applications. Wait, what are these processors for again? X2 will do almost anything you need. If it isn’t enough, Intel CPU aren’t that much more and has better performance usually. May be if money is tight, and you really need a computer for compressing videos. Then it may make sense. Otherwise for most multimedia applications, X2 is more than enough.

What in the WORLD is hardware maker thinking? Mouse drivers that is 42megs. JUST WTF. ATi control center: Bloatware. NVidia control center: Bloatware. MS Intellitouch and point: Bloatware.
I can almost forgive the graphics card drivers, but the peripherals drivers don’t need to have fluffy interface. It is one of those things that we’ll look at may be once when we are setting it up and never again. Just give us basic look and free up ram for other things. I mean, I’ve refused to buy Logitech stuff for ages eventhough the mouse they have are really awesome. Why? Because the drivers suck donkey bawls (not to mention that it sucks for precision). It wasn’t that bad back in the days when you can simply not install the driver and have it work. Now you NEED the driver just so basic functionality like the back button works. Ever wonder why a simple mouse driver need 15-20 megs of memory? FOR WHAT? Mouse and media key binds DO NOT take up that much memory. Jeebus. Hey, how about releasing some non-bloated drivers for those of us who know what we’re doing. We don’t need fancy interface. It just need to work Oh Razer. YOU TOO. Stupid. Fucking. Driver.

So hardware vendors are not just writing shitty drivers, they are writing shitty drivers that looks like ass, slow, and takes up many times more memory than they need. Remove thumb from ass. Unbloat the drivers PLEASE.

One of the old clanmate is a project manager of a new cs mod. Didn’t even know

Click Me!
Cast doubt on your own abilities yet?

Two awesome quotes from that article:
Bertrand Russell: the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Charles Darwin: ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.