Chris Halverson’s Blog

Wow.

No, not WoW, although that’s been consuming about every waking hour that I’m not at work, but “wow” as in, “my new computer is freaking fast” wow.

I ordered a Dell refurb last Sunday and it showed up on Thursday. I left work early and got it setup and I’m very impressed. I got a Dell XPS 600 (P4 dual core, 2GB RAM, 500GB HD). It came with a Nvidia 6800 video (256MB) which seems to be working well. I still will probably upgrade to the 7900 to be current (and may splurge for the 512MB version).

I went the refurb route for a couple of reasons. My time is important to me. It may not seem like it since it’s now spent playing WoW, but I play it with my wife and friends, so it is a good social time. Researching which motherboard to get is tedious and not worth my time. There’s also the warranty. When you piece it together yourself and something goes wrong, you’re screwed. Now I just call Dell and they send somebody out. Again, time. I’m capable of doing things myself, I’ve done it before, but hardware problems are not things I like to screw around with.

One thing that suxors about buying from somebody like Dell is all the crap they put on there. A brand new machine should not take 5 minutes to log into. Even after you go through and get the stuff so it doesn’t ask you anymore, it is still slow as hell. This is a terrible user experience when getting a new computer. In some ways it’s worse then having an infected PC.

Thankfully my friend mentioned an app that will remove most of it automatically. If you are getting, or know somebody who’s getting, a Dell, run and get the Dell De-Crapifier. It kind of crapped out a couple of times, but I just re-ran it and it uninstalled everything. Awesome! Reboot a couple of times and things are flying without any of the junk on there.

Going into Second Life is a whole new experience. The graphics are so smooth now it’s not even funny. The particle effects are stunning. The avatars move smoothly (negating any network/server lag). Incredible. This is how it was made to be run.

World of Warcraft is much smoother too. I think that’s more due to the extra memory and CPU power than the video, but the video is sharper and faster. I am able to keep up running because the computer isn’t swapping all the time. Much better experience.

All in all I’m very, very happy. Things are so smooth and fast it’s unreal. I made an image of the disc after removing all the crap so I can quickly get back to a known state if need be and not have to spend hours doing the OS install (hopefully). Just need to install a few more things, copy my music over (and free up space on my laptop) and I’ll be good to go.

Oh, and this was paid for with poker winnings. Even though I suck, I was still able to pay for it all with poker winnings. So it’s like it was free.
Woo hoo!!!

I was right, poker is nowhere in the forseeable future:

While not exactly maniacal and not “I’m on the verge of losing my job”, 11 hours of WoW and 9 of SL so far this week is an average of 4 hours a day or so of doing “stuff”. Of course, I’m not watching TV, and I’m spending time with friends, so it’s all good in my book.

I have to admit, WoW is pretty fun. My wife and I are more or less on the same page in terms of how we want to play it, although I think she may be into it more than I am. Last night on the way home I called home to try to ask my son something and my wife answered saying she just walked in the door. Less than 10 minutes later when I got home, where was she? Playing WoW Our little group made some headway last night, finally getting the teamwork down a bit and playing our roles better which made things a lot easier.

All of this gameplay has led me to realize I need (yes, need) a new computer. Second Life is much more intensive than WoW due to the dynamic nature but both need more than the 32MB card I have in my laptop. So now I’m looking to get a new computer. So the big question is: Build or buy?

So, Lazyweb, help me out on a good computer. I’m not opposed to building my own, but in that case it would help in terms of model numbers and such. Intel or AMD is fine, but I want dual core to prep for future things. I will be getting a Nvidia 7900GTX as the video, so there is no discussion on that. Pretty much everything else is up in the air, but I want to move semi-quickly.

Poker has taken a huge backseat lately, as in non-existant, so let’s just skip that for now.

My son went out to go to school today and came bolting back into the house yelling that somebody broke into his truck. Yup, somebody broke his driver’s side window and stole his stereo and his subwoofers. Yes, they took the time to unscrew the custom box that held his subwoofers. They didn’t just break them out, there’s no tool marks and such, they actually went through and unscrewed them. Ug. What a way to start the day.

I delayed on my taxes until Sunday night because I thought I’d owe. Nice job dumbass. I’m getting a decent refund and I put it off until the last day. sigh

Poker looks to continue to take a backseat in the near future too. A small group of us (6) from Second Life are going to escape some of the drama there and start playing World of Warcraft. Oh boy. I’ve avoided this for a long time, the whole leveling thing just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve got the social aspect in SL, so I haven’t needed it for that. Now, however, the group that we all were heavily involved in is causing more stress and frustration, so while we’re not abandoning SL, we are escaping a little bit. I’m just pissed that you can’t download it. WTF? I have to actually go to a store and buy it? Ug. I don’t know hardly anything about WoW though, but whatever, should be fun. I just had choosing races, names and all that crap. All my characters are always named “Chris” because I have no imagination So now it looks like I’ll be a WoW dork in addition to an SL dork. Woo hoo!

I got moved into an office today at work. A real office. As in 4 walls, a door and a big ass window.

Forza!

I do, however, have to share it with 2 other people. The upside is that it’s big enough that it’s still roomy. Plus, the other 2 people aren’t here right now so I got dibs on which desk to take. Talk about choices: The window runs the length of the wall opposite the door. Two desks are setup along the wall with the window putting your back to the door. The other desk is along the wall with the door, putting your back to the window, but giving you a side view of the door.

Decisions.

I took the one by the window directly opposite the door. I’m not too hip about not being able to see the door, but the window view is the best one. I also don’t get any glare. I am going to have to get little mirrors and put it on my desk so I can see who’s coming into the room.

I do have time to decide what to do. One of the guys is on vacation until the 17th and the 3rd guy hasn’t been hired yet, so I can try the other ones if I want. We’ll see.

Hmm…I’m sitting here now and the sun is shining right in my eyes. Damn, gotta mess with the blinds. Who would have thought that this could be such a tough decisions. This is going to seriously impede my work while I work on these important issues.

Back to adjusting the blinds…

Blogger ate my Poker Champ post.

Will return to regularly scheduled posting shortly, working on a serious one, if you can believe it. And yes, the Champ posts were lame. Especially because I was kept out of the loop. Screw you all, I’m going home.