Things I Never Thought I'd Say

When I was a kid we had a program for the Commodore 64 that was called, I believe, Silly 64. One of my favorite things about the program besides the "Don't touch me I'm not READY" that sent the uninitiated running out of the room, was the random quotes. My favorite one that made me cackle with glee, was some silly quote that read "Hey, keep your kids from playing in my garbage!" What I never thought is that I might actually have to say it.

So far, I haven't. But I've said close. My son is quickly heading for the big number four, much faster than time really travels and in that time I've yelled many silly things. Here is a short list.

"Don't kiss the lobster!" in the grocery store by the lobster tank.
"Stop kissing/licking the TV." No apparent reason for it. It's possible he likes dust flavor.
"Don't bite the dog!" and also "Don't lick the dog!"
"Do not put your food in your ear, hair, pants."
"Use your fork, don't eat like the dog." Seems the dog is a very bad influence on my son.
"Don't drink water out of the toilet!" Actually I've never said that, I made a bunch of weird angry noises. He got the point though.

There are more, some which even include the trash.

One Hot CPU

I'm not a fan of the Family computer, I'm more of a Personal Computer sort of person. I'm on the computer more often than an episode of CSI is on TV, and from what I hear, that is a lot. This doesn't leave much time for other members of the family to use the computer, so everyone has their own computer for the most part. Which brings us around to the subject of my Wife's computer.

It was built at the same time as mine. It replaced the AMD Athlon 1700+ she had with an Athlon 64 X2 3600+. Usually I trickle parts down, so she would have gotten my AMD Athlon 2800+, but most of that systems RAM had failed. DDR ram was priced rather ridiculously at the time and you could get twice as much DDR2 for half the money, so DDR2 motherboards for everyone. The 3600+ was roughly $15 more than a higher clocked Sempron single core, so I went with it.

Lately though, her computer complains about heat. More specifically CPU heat. If her PC is doing much more than idling, it's too hot. Well, the machine was running the stock HSF with the pre-applied thermal paste. So, step one, clean up the paste and apply some more. Worked for awhile, then the machine began complaining again. Well, my machine is running a heat pipe CPU cooler that keeps it quite cool, all considering, so I got a similar one for her computer. Same result, the computer was happy for awhile, but a short while. Maybe the case isn't circulating enough air. Her case had 2 fans, not including the power supply. Side fan in, rear fan out. So, I added some more fans. A 2nd one out back, one in the front and one at the top. Still complaints from the machine.

Contact is good with the HSF, air flow seems good on the case, so what is the issue? Well, I'm beginning to suspect other issues. When a CPU is made, it isn't made for a specific speed rating. It gets made, then tested, and then they sell it based on the speeds it could run stable at the recommended voltage. The 3600+ is the slowest of the Athlon 64 X2 line, and there is a reason a CPU ends up there. It might not run stable at a higher speed, or it needs more voltage, or quite possibly, it gets too hot to run any faster.

So the next test is to see if my Athlon 64 X2 5000+ runs cooler in her PC than her current CPU. If it does, then I think we know what the issue is.

Past Glory

A lot of people like to relive their past successes. Grasping onto our shining moments is something everyone does as justification for who they are, what they've become, and where they have ended up. For some it's something simple, and all together insignificant to most people, but it is their glory and they have a right to it. For others, it truly is greatness. Something epic or heroic, and they also have every right to it.

The problem with the latter is that it usually isn't very funny.

Not Massively Multi-Playing

Once upon a time I played video games. Lots of video games it seems, so much so that I regularly regurgitated my opinions of games and the gaming industry to a web page on a regular basis. I also spent a lot of time in the game Diablo, my friend Fuse didn't like the game much so I ended up with his copy and I played it for hours with my room mate, Short Circuit. We setup a third computer with a low level character to act as our server to keep our Diablo dungeon persistent. Eventually we beat down Diablo.

A few years later Diablo II came out, I was living with the woman who is now my wife and while she never got into the game, I spent a lot of time playing Diablo II and the expansion with all my close friends. I can say with full geek pride the last night I was a bachelor we spent a few hours getting a network going and played Diablo II and drank beer early into the next morning.

I had played Diablo II since it was in beta, so when the next Blizzard beta rolled around I signed up. World of Warcraft was free for me to play for about a month, and as the day it was to come out got closer I mused with another Tauren while waiting for the severe lag to subside about weather or not I would buy the game. I had decided not to. I mean $50 and a monthly fee, that's a bit much. Sunday night the servers were turned off, and by Tuesday when the game came out I was jonesing so bad I bought the game that day, and I've played it up until August 26th 2008.

Yep, nearly four years WoW was the main video game I played. Got 3 characters to 60, did some raiding, and some PVP. Even got the wife playing. Then got the expansion and got one of them to 70 an epic flying mount, and got 2 others fairly close. But, it's time for a break. It's time for me to play the other games I've been buying.

Still I find myself lured in by other MMOs even though I like RPGs, and not MMOs... And have decided to look at some free ones. It's been awhile since I've done that, the last one I played for any length of time was Rappelz which was a very nice looking game, but that doesn't make a great game. I wasn't fond of the controls, the combat system was painfully slow, and the dialog of the quest givers read like a voice overs for kung-fu film. Still, I'm about to give some others a try.

Or maybe I should just go play some Super Mario Galaxy.

Potty Humor

It's been quite a few years since I was toilet trained, so I'm a bit rusty on how it works when it comes to my son. It probably doesn't help much that at the time I was the trainee and not the trainer. As such I'm becoming very familiar with training pants, or what is basically a diaper with a waist band and lots of padding, pull-ups as my son calls them.

One of the bad things about all this is that he lives in his own world more than reality, which is a trait he inherited from me. I'll have to apologize to him about that some day. So his attention span for toilet training is the same amount as his attention span for anything, which is gnat like. In this process we go through a lot of pull-ups, and a lot of these pull-ups have decorations on them. Spiderman, Diego, Cars, all the things that are popular with boys are on them, and they tend to have a design which disappears when they get wet.

I have to say I admire the Cars ones for sneaking in potty humor on them. How so? The ones that have the disappearing checkerd flags have Lighting taking a pit stop. There are others that have disappearing Piston Cups on them. To quote the movie, "He did WHAT in his cup!?"

Well, time to get him off the toilet, he loves to use it as an excuse to not go to bed.

My Jeep

Twas the Friday after Christmas, and I was off work, which really isn't too unusual. I was leaving a restaurant and tightly holding my son Jake's hand as he likes to run free like a wild man whenever possible. I unlocked the door to my Jeep, with the keys as I don't have a key fob to perform the magic, and threw the keys in the front seat since putting them back in my pocket at that point is usually a hassle. Hit the door locks to unlock the doors and, uncharacteristically closed the door. I went to open the back door to load in my two year old and found it very locked. I turned to open the driver side door I had just unlocked, and found it just as locked.

As my wife approached the vehicle I asked her to unlock it with her keys, which she quickly pointed out that they were sitting in the cup holder, seems she found putting up keys a hassle as well. At this moment, I have to admit I was feeling quite livid, but it's hard to fault someone who has the same faults as yourself, at least without being a blatant hypocrite. I tried being angry in several different directions, but really I was the only one to blame, and at that point it seemed like a waste of energy. Luckily I had just had a big lunch, and had plenty of energy to waste.

It took a few hours, and most of it waiting, but eventually we worked out how to get back into the Jeep and drive it home. Seems giving a spare house key to my mother was a pretty good idea.

It also seems that somewhere, someone asked Santa for a real off road vehicle. And Santa being the snow and reindeer type of guy must have mistakenly brought them a Hummer, and they in turn, realized they should have said Jeep. With quite a few shopping days left till Christmas 2008, they decided that waiting on Santa wouldn't be prudent.

The next day was Saturday and it was a lazy day. I did about nothing, didn't even get dressed for most of it. Then late in the afternoon I get a call from my Mom, and she is having problems with her computer. Seeing as she had rescued us the day before, it was only fair for me to head over and take a look at the problem.

So, I walked out to the Jeep to warm it up before heading over there, and found the driver side passenger door ajar.

"Great" I thought, "The battery is probably dead from the door being open all night."

Then I realized the window on that door was smashed.

"Great" I thought, "Some one broke in to steal something." I briefly wondered if anything of value was in the Jeep.

I opened the door and the tinted glass fell out here and there. I habitually went to unlock the front door and opened it up, to find bits of my ignition on the floor board. At that point it slowly dawned on me that they were trying to take the whole Jeep.

It took two months to get my Jeep back and working properly again, and a few more months to get over the paranoia. I still don't turn off the light in front of the garage where the Jeep sits, and I always park it where I can see it from my bedroom window. So I guess I'm still not over the paranoia.