daf

What can I say the shit hited the fan once again, this time movable type refuses to run and I have no idea why, maybe I got hacked, maybe the Webhosting guys did something screwy, in any case I’ll need to reinstall and with my unreliable upload speed it’s going to be a pain, I’ve already failed several attempts to update movable type because of it.

On top of that my computer is down for repairs, it’s a actually a funny story I was going to get one of those big and quieter heatsinks for my CPU and got talked into a watercooling system (I’m so easy) I let the shop install it since I was afraid to screw up which was mistake (but kind of turned out to come in handy down the road) since the watercooling system was huge, when I looked at the assembled thing I discovered I had lost use of all my PCI ports and easy access to pretty much everything inside the case not good but hell, I already paid for it so I guess I was stuck with it.

Fast forward 3 days and BAM wile trying out a TV card (actually managed to stick it in by removing the pump from it’s support) the motherboard sink (there were sinks for the CPU, Motherboard and Graphic chip) dropped and landed on the graphic board, very surprising considering the only movement the box suffered was a small drag forward and the removal of the case’s side plate, in any case it broken the graphic board, at least I think since all I can see is bits of color on the screen when I boot up the PC.

So I sent it back to the shop so they could repair the graphic board (most likely replace) and removed that cursed watercooling system that wasn’t that “cool” in the first place (I just hope there’s a chance I can return that piece of crap), now I’m left using the PC I built for my mom (time she gets on the digital age), a frankstein beast built from bits I updated slowish but very usable, best of all Half-Life and Serious Sam run ok so Co-op fun has reached my house.

And that’s it, an update in my life. I’ll try and fix this mess till then adeus (goodbye in Portuguese).

Well I must say these pass few days with all the new hardware I bought I started wanting more speed and the only way to get it for free is to overclock (oh yea baby)!!!

So first up was my graphic board, I knew all that separated me from the Ultra model was a mere 50Mhz of core speed so using coolbits tweak in the Nvida drivers I overclocked my board, all seemed fine until I decided to run 3dmark 2003 to see the gains and was presented with BSOD courtesy of the nvidia graphic driver. Obviously it didn’t like overclocking so I was forced to give up that until new drivers are released.

So I turned my attention to the CPU it was already using the maximum possible multiplier (12.5x) so I my only choice was to had to bum the FSB to achieve higher speed. The thing is that I only have DDR333 RAM that didn’t overclock that well so the only safe setting was to make the FSB 200 and the RAM speed 83% of that so it would run in spec (166Mhz) and lowering the multiplier, I set it to 10.5x with gave me a 12Mhz gain, but after some testing with PCmark04 the results shown a speed decrease witch I concluded was being caused by the fact that the RAM and FSB frequency where now out of sync so I pumped the multiplier to 11x a 125Mhz gain that proved to make windows very unstable until I bumped the voltage up to 1.8v.

At last I had better scores but that was it I was unable to pull any further up, even a few MHz would make fail to boot and even at 2200MHz the CPU was running burning hot so I backed down and restored the original settings.

My conclusions were that unless I bought DDR400 or better overclocking was pretty pointless, very sad indeed…

One is always learning about himself, once upon a time I watched a show of horror and gore, and wile scenes of self mutilation where being shown I felt it coming for me, I started to feel the blood leave my skin, breading become harder, my mind started to float and I felt like I was about to loose my senses.

I was force to retreat to shelter were I looked into my then pale face in a mirror. I couldn’t understand what had happen, in my mind I had not seen or done anything that could of cause this but my body was showing me wrong.

Days passed by, I looked for the same horror and gore so I could confront it again, but it was nowhere to be found, so days passed by and the other gore and horror stayed unwatched, my mind kept telling me it was because they would be boring to watch but my heart knew the truth, I feared it would return and that I might not be able to resist.

But this day having used all alternatives, the only shows that were left unseen were those I had avoided for so long, and I took the leap and dived in, all was fine but then I felt it coming for me again, I couldn’t breed my body was weakened, I growled and stood strong I would not be forced into hiding again I breathed harder and fixated my eyes on what I was seeing, I was stronger then it! I would not let myself go down like this…

In the end I passed my test, at least this time, maybe I’ve beaten it and made myself stronger beyond his reach or maybe it’s just hiding waiting for an opportunity to get me for good, only time will tell, one thing his for sure this was just round 1 and now theres no going back…

Having just written Me and my Cousin bicycle I decided since I was already at it to write a little about what’s been going on in the life of DaF.

Yes DaF is me, I used DragonSoull for 4 years but it wasn’t a nick I really liked, I simply couldn’t think up anything better, and it had is problems like being to long for several stuff like games and irc networks.

So this day back I was playing with the letters in my name and DaF cammed up, I liked it. It was one letter short of daft which was funny and it was 3 letters long so I could use it even in the old Arcades High Score.

So I’m starting to change my nick, well I will try, I don’t know how many DaF’s there are out there…

Any way, as I was saying even after that encouraging post I haven’t really made significant progress on anything, I’m such a lazy bastard.

On the other hand I think I fixed the backup issue, all it took was 2x120GB hard drives. Unfortunately now the temp inside the box is really getting dangerous and with summer at the door a new box is needed, I’m thinking int getting the Antec P160 but those things tend to be pricey so only time will tell.

And I would like to announce here that Optical mouse ROCK!!!

Shame I didn’t had one of those last weekend when I was at my second Counter Strike LAN Party, has always I scored very low with is to be expected from a guy who only plays counter strike at LAN party’s.

All in all it went pretty well but the “only counter strike” is a bit annoying, it may be a great game but I suck and waiting all that time to play again sucks, may the next will have more games (there where roomers of that).

And that where the highlights of the last few days, theres allot more I could type about but that would make this post grow way to big, so until next time goodbye.

Well here I am typing way, I fell good but tired and my legs have turned to jelly.

My cousin took one of his long bicycle rides over here to the city but this time his father couldn’t take the bike home in the van so he left it here for safe keeping. I, not having a bicycle of my one for years didn’t wast time and went for a ride.

It was midnight so I headed to the DEI building to see if there where really races around the DEI building (a tip a a friend gave me has I was about to leave for the ride).

After much puffing a huffing (it doesn’t pay to live in a city full of ups and downs when your riding a bicycle), I arrived at DEI, all seemed quite but after a wile I started to hear the roar of engines at the distance below. An down hill I descended…

There were some cars but no “crowed”, I asked some guys if that was the place where the races happened and I they confirmed I was in the right place just at the wrong time, I was told the real party time is Sunday at 2/3:00 AM still I got to see some guys drifting and spining around.

One thing I noticed was that the cars were all junkers, I guess people here just want to have fun driving then to show off there “coolt” rides, or then again maybe it was just because it wasn’t Sunday.

Then I went back home and cycled around my street, and several things cammed to mind, the fact that the streets are pretty safe at night, that my legs are really out of shape and that I really miss having a bicycle.

Not only that but riding with my old friend with I long grown apart and last I heard already had a daughter (dam he didn’t waste any time).

It was good night to go for a spin, it as really nice…